Catalan Literature: From Romanticism to Naturalism
The Daughter of the Sea
This play celebrates Peter Martyr in Marion, the nephew of a wealthy fisherman in a fishing village. Agate, an orphan girl found at sea after a shipwreck, grows up with the parents of Mariona. Agate loves Peter and tells him that if he marries Mariona, she will celebrate the wedding. This promises fidelity, but due to a misunderstanding, she believes he violates the promise and threatens him. He then throws her into the sea, where they had found her. After 50 years, the play alternates between realism, patriotic monologue, religious drama, and romantic legend.
Different Dramatic Styles
- Patriotic Monologue – Religious Drama: Teacher Olegario – Jesus of Nazareth (could be considered an update of the medieval text “The Passion”)
- Romantic Legend – The nuns of St. Aimán
Last Stage and Modernism
With the arrival of Modernism (starting in 1892), Guimerá tries to adapt to the new aesthetic and premieres Terra Baixa in Italian, commissioned with a main character of high society. He uses forced language and loses spontaneity and richness. The Path of the Sun and Andromache return to tragedy in verse. The Spider is a realistic drama that tries to get closer to modernism with The Santa Espina, The Young, and The Queen. Finally, Jesus refers back to the war that is taking place in Europe.
Six of his works were known in Madrid before they premiered in Barcelona. Terra Baixa was translated into 16 languages, and there are 4 film versions and two operas based on it. Maria Rosa was adapted to film in 1960. The Sinful was quickly translated into English in the USA. In 1906, the Swedish Academy awarded him the Nobel Prize for Literature, but diplomatic pressure led to his translator, Jose Echegaray, winning it instead.
Novel
Origins of the Modern Novel
Tirant lo Blanc‘s production exhausts the Catalan novel. In the first third of the nineteenth century, the novels that were available were translations into Spanish by exiles who were abroad. Rimer translates Goethe and Chateaubriand. The 20 works of Walter Scott were influential for 40 years, along with works by Hugo, Vigny, Manzoni, Balzac, and George Sand. In the 40s, the sentimental novel by Dimas, Eugene Sue, was imposed. These translations prepared the way for the resumption of the modern novel; for example: Ramón López Soler published Los bandos de Castilla and El Caballero del Cisne, adapted by Walter Scott. The use of Catalan did not arrive until after 30 years. In The Esplanade (Abdó Terrades, 1835), one of the characters speaks in Catalan.
A Poet and Bankers (Pedro Mata, 1842) reflects on the possible use of Catalan.
Romantic Novels in Catalan
Three works by Manuel Angelon triggered the creation of the novel in Catalan: A Corpus of Blood, Prisoners of Catalonia, and The Forgiveness of Santa Eulalia in the Regional Law of Catalonia. These works encouraged Bofarull to write a novel in Catalan: The Orfeneta of Menàrguens. Until 1882, the novel was consolidated in three ways: those that were published in collections, those that appeared at parties, or those awarded by floral motifs. They followed the style of the historical novel in two ways: following the style of Scott (very objective) or following the model of Vigny/Hugo (historical facts are altered). Novels before 1882 include: History of a Farmer, What Colonel Anjou, Vigatans and Botiflers, Erica Lo, and Heart and Blood.
Realism
Following the 1830 revolution in France, a proposal called aesthetic realism emerged in 1857, which was anti-romantic. It took this name because it was the name that appeared in the magazine. This realism was based on the texts of Balzac and Stendhal. The latter wrote Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black): “The novel was like a mirror that we walk along a path, this mirror reflects both early in your eyes the blue of heaven, as soon the mud jets of the way.” The realist novel analyzed society in terms of politics, social issues, economics, or morals. The method used was objectivity with a flexible and varied language. In Catalonia, it is not accurate to speak of a realist group. Critics Joseph Yxart and John Sard imported these ideas from France. The one who took them the furthest was Narciso Oller. In Catalonia, Realism and Naturalism are intertwined with customs.
Naturalism
First in literature, the term naturalism was applied in philosophy, science, and art. In 1867, Émile Zola applied the term to literature, taking into account:
- The philosophy of Auguste Comte (called positivism), whereby experience is the only point of knowledge.
- The philosophy of Taine (determinism) denies human freedom and says that man is always determined by the social environment, biological heredity, and race.
- The ideas of physician Claude Bernard: the instinct suggests that physiology and psychology predominate.
This type of literature attempts to apply the scientific method. This involved: data collection, formulation of a hypothesis, testing the hypothesis, and analyzing results. In summary, the naturalist novel examines a character’s temperament as hereditary and environmental characteristics without the author’s retouching (it must be objective).
This movement ends in 1887 when Zola writes The Assomoir. It talks about alcoholism, violence, and the misfortune of the working class.
Naturalism in Catalonia
Critics Yxart and Sard disclosed naturalism in the years 1881-1882, coinciding with the first naturalistic novel in Catalan: Papallona (Narcis Oller). Catalan naturalism is moderate, that is, it is closer to the realism of Balzart and Flaubert than to Zola (naturalistic). Thus, Oller fails to deal with cold objectivity in his stories. The philosophy he applies is not entirely deterministic. Romantic elements appear.
Narcis Oller
Born in Valls on August 10, 1846. Orphaned by his father at 2 years old, he was educated by his uncle Joseph Moragas, a lawyer of great culture. He studied and worked in the council attorney’s office and the courts. In 1874 he married Hope Rabassa.
He was a passionate reader. He always kept up to date thanks to his cousin Jose Yxart. He maintained relationships with Emili Vilanova and Zola. His most brilliant era was the 90s. Since the emergence of Modernism, he was progressively marginalized and stopped writing from 1905. In 1925 he was paid tribute at the Majestic Hotel. In 1928 he published his Complete Works and died on April 26, 1930.
Artistic Aesthetic Theory
His aesthetic theory is based on realism, but he says he wants to convey “the large contingent of poetry which sometimes contains the natural who knows how to observe it.” This places him close to Romanticism. Oller uses the so-called theory of verisimilitude, created by Yxart. It is a fusion of naturalism and romanticism. What is proposed is that literary works respond to logic, that there is not an excess of romanticism or naturalism. Critics argued that the current naturalism influenced Oller in a transcendental way. Oller was not a professional writer, so he has shortcomings (the style is not entirely correct). He shows excessive sentimentality.
Major Works (1872-1882)
He wrote The Painter Rubio. He participated in the 1877 Floral Games and argued that the mother tongue should be the working language. Then he started writing in Catalan. He wrote with Yxart a joke about the lives of peasants and won the Floral Games. It was called Lluís. This is forgiven with excessive moralism. It presents very detailed descriptions. This descriptive detailism makes us think about the adaptation of realistic assumptions (explains what he sees) and naturalists (based on the scientific basis). It was a critical success.
Escanyapobres talks about the relationship between a miser (Oleguer), who will be his wife (Tuies), and the husband of this. He wants to be a study of greed and the introduction of capitalism in rural areas. Romantic elements appear. At the same time, elements are harmonized with realism.
Vilaniu is based on a story called “Isabella de Galceran.” It explores the sordidness of a community that accuses Elizabeth of having an illicit love affair with a young lawyer, criticizing the political fanaticism in this society. The ending is rushed. It is rugged, with a few forced suicides.
The Gold Fever is a highly ambitious novel that explains the evolution of capitalism in Catalonia following the strength of the stock market due to the Universal Exhibition of 1888. He wrote it very quickly because he learned that Zola was preparing a similar work: The Silver. It discusses the rise and fall of Barcelona and its protagonist, Gil Foix. He is a lawyer of humble origins who earns a lot of money due to getting the train to Vilaniu. He is tricked by her family and loses everything. He ends up living in a dark, damp apartment in the Eixample.
Madness was written when he was out of the crisis of the 90s novels, as an attempt to overcome it. It succeeds because the story is divided into two plans and three views. This makes it a very modern novel for the time. The foreground shows the experiences of Serralongue and the second, the deterministic attitude of Giberga, the paternalistic narrator, and the superficial Armengol.
Pilar Prim touches on the subject of the usufruct of a widow by drawing on a real event. The widow has a love affair with Martial Deberga, facing family, social, and moral prejudice and the possibility of losing the usufruct of the inheritance. The action unfolds on a journey between Barcelona and Puigcerdà; a kind of inner journey. It uses a realistic technique and has a dominant note that is open-ended. In addition, the omniscient narrator virtually disappears in favor of a character narrator.