Currents of the Modernist Novel: A Look at Rural Themes
Currents of the Modernist Novel: The Rural Novel
Introduction and Features
With the rise of Romanticism, Catalan literature saw a surge in short stories and novels centered around rural themes. This trend, known as ruralisme, began in the decade 1900-1910. Critic Louis Marfany notes that ruralisme was a reaction against the overly picturesque and folkloric portrayal of rural life in Renaissance literature, which was seen as perpetuating a regionalist view of Catalan culture. Instead, ruralisme offered an alternative, anti-folkloric vision of Catalonia, one that focused on universal human experiences rather than colorful local customs.
The modernist rural novel often explored the complex and tragic conflicts between individuals and the masses—a restless social force depicted as a purely passive, oppressive entity seeking to stifle innovation. The masses were represented by the peasantry, which modernists viewed as an obstacle to the creation of a modern Catalonia. The modernist movement actively encouraged the struggle against the country’s backwardness.
The rural subject matter of these novels influenced their language, which aimed to reflect the specific speech of farmers or synthesize the various dialects of rural Catalonia.
The most representative works of this genre are Solitud (Victor Català), Els sots feréstecs (Raimon Casellas), and Vida i mort d’en Jordi Fraginals (Josep Pous i Pagès).
Raimon Casellas
Life
Raimon Casellas (1855-1910) contributed to numerous publications of his time, including L’Avenç, La Vanguardia, and La Voz de Catalunya. Casellas quickly established himself as an art critic and historian, becoming one of the most important theorists of the modernist movement.
Els sots feréstecs
Els sots feréstecs (1901) is considered the novel that launched the ruralista theme within Modernism. Its protagonist, Mossèn Lazarus, embodies the individual facing an amorphous crowd—the people of Montmany. Nature is portrayed as monstrous and chaotic, eventually consuming the priest. The struggle against atavism, reflected in Lazarus, symbolizes the tensions within Catalan society at the end of the century. The protagonist’s failure represents the failure of Modernism’s regenerationist ambitions. The intellectual’s function was to awaken a lethargic society from its slumber.
Victor Català
Life and Work
Victor Català (1869-1966) is the pseudonym of Caterina Albert i Paradís, adopted after the scandal caused by L’infanticida, a story that won an award at the Jocs Florals. Self-taught, she was born in L’Escala, a village in Empordà located between the sea and the Montigrí mountains, where the action of her works often takes place.
During her initial stage, her modernist works (Drames rurals, Caires vius, and Solitud) denounced the situation of women, particularly in rural areas.
Between 1918 and 1930, her second phase began with novels like Una film (3000 metres) and the short story collection Contrallums, which are set in the city and classified as Noucentista. This period is characterized by experimentation with new narrative formulas, which were not always successful.
Her third and final stage comprises two volumes of short stories: Vida mansa (1950) and Jubileu (1951), where she attempted to move away from the harshness of her previous works.
Solitud
Solitud (1905) is the work that established Victor Català as a major author. It shares parallels with Els sots feréstecs on both an argumentative and ideological level. In Solitud, the protagonist, Mila, a hermit, experiences the hidden forces of nature with the same tragic tone as in Casellas’s novel. The central conflict is Mila’s struggle against the aggressive environment.
The characters are powerfully symbolic and form an antithesis: Gaietà, the shepherd, represents purity, goodness, and the strength of the mountain; l’Ànima, on the other hand, symbolizes brutality, harshness, and the cruelty of the countryside. The hermit represents cowardice and materialism, contrasting with Mila, a typical modernist heroine. In the story, Mila lives in the mountains after a failed marriage—her husband is unable to adapt—and she must isolate herself from the hermit. Aware of her unhappiness, she decides to leave and live alone so that her personality does not dissolve. This experience also fails. The novel offers a pessimistic view of the countryside and highlights the protagonist’s spiritual crisis. Each chapter seems to function as an autonomous entity; in this sense, Solitud is more cumulative than evolutionary. This fragmentation can be explained by considering Victor Català’s background as a short story writer.
Josep Pous i Pagès
Work
The most important work by Josep Pous i Pagès (1873-1952) is Vida i mort d’en Jordi Fraginals (1912), which marks the end of the strictly Modernist novel. Its protagonist, influenced by Nietzschean ideas, struggles to dominate the world. The novel describes the process of his will to power and the stages of his struggle. Faced with illness, Jordi Fraginals must admit his failure and eventually commits suicide. His death parallels the death of Nietzsche’s superman.
Pous i Pagès also wrote plays, mostly focusing on rural customs.