Galician Literature: Vicente Risco, Otero Pedrayo, and Castelao
Vicente Risco
Vicente Risco, a prominent figure in Galician nationalism, underwent a significant personal and religious transformation in the early 20th century. This led him to distance himself from progressive Galicianism and embrace more traditional intellectual and political stances. He abandoned the culture of the Galician literati and explored artistic avant-garde trends. His ethnographic approach to narrative, drawing inspiration from popular oral forms, is evident in several of his works.
Narrative
Risco’s narrative works include The Case of Dr. Alveiro (1919), which reflects his pre-nationalist period. It features elements of Galician folklore, esotericism, and exoticism, breaking away from the traditional thematic focus on rural life. Between 1924 and 1926, Risco published a series of stories connected to traditional culture, emphasizing didactic and ideological symbolism. These include The Old Symbol (1924), The Wolf of the People (1925), To Catch the Gold Yield (1925), and The Warren (1926). The Wolf of the People focuses on the werewolf myth, while The Beam, Gold, and Lock combines elements of legends related to hidden treasures. Both works draw from original sources of popular narrative.
With Europeans in Abrantes, Risco embarked on satirical narrative. This seemingly unfinished work culminated in the publication of his only novel, The Pig’s Foot (1928), considered the most innovative of its time. The novel presents a grotesque portrayal of social groups and characters in the Galician city of Ourense during the early 20th century. It depicts the inexplicable rise of Don Celidonio, a symbol of the degradation of civil society, who becomes the mayor. The Pig’s Foot is notable for its rich and varied content and language, parodying dominant discourses of science, mathematics, and journalism. Through this novel, Risco depicts a chaotic and disjointed society transformed into a mass.
Essays
Risco’s essays include Theory of Galician Nationalism (1920) and We the Unadapted or Mitteleuropa (1934). The latter compiles collaborations published intermittently in the US and reflects Risco’s 1930 journey through Central Europe. The texts explore social trends and fashions in Europe, humorously and ironically depicting the dehumanization of the city.
Ramón Otero Pedrayo
Ramón Otero Pedrayo excelled in various literary genres, including poetry, essays, drama, history, and geography. He was also a renowned speaker and frequent contributor to newspapers.
Poetry
Otero Pedrayo’s notable poetry collections include Bocarribeira, a volume combining verses by both Pedrayo and Otero, Verses to Read and Burn, and poems collected in the Anthology of Portuguese Poetry III.
Drama
Otero Pedrayo shared an interest in creating a national theater with members of the Irmandades da Fala. He focused on a theater meant for reading rather than performance. In 1928, he published The Press, a rural drama about the murder of a wealthy old peasant as a result of a love plot. This play marked a significant step in Portuguese drama, introducing lyrical digressions and symbolic stage elements, moving away from the formulas of realistic theater.
In 1934, Otero Pedrayo worked on a series of pieces known as masked theater, designed in the style of art theater. Children Should Not Fall in Love, with text by Castelao, emphasized choreography, masks, and music. In the postwar period, Otero’s play The Hopeless Prior stands out.
Essays
Otero Pedrayo’s essays, alongside his novels, form the core of his production, showcasing his erudition and thematic range. He wrote extensively on geography, travel, and biographical evocations of various figures, including fellow Galician nationalists who died in 1936 or were exiled. Essay on the History of Galician Culture, written in Spanish for a non-Galician audience, describes the Galician landscape and the evolution of its culture with lyrical prose.
Narrative
Otero Pedrayo’s narrative work primarily focuses on historical-cultural novels. These novels prioritize historical and cultural evocation over romanticized action. His Galician-language novels include The Festival of Avenida, which explores the religious and medieval significance of Santa Catarina Avenue and its European connection through Santiago de Compostela, and Fra Verneri, which depicts an 18th-century journey through Europe, referencing the cultural environment of European Romanticism.
Otero Pedrayo also wrote historical-realistic novels, often composed of interconnected stories. These novels recreate the historical environment of the decaying nobility and the changing traditional Galician countryside in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The plots and characters in these stories possess a certain psychological depth, unlike his earlier works where characters served as mere expressions of ideas.
Otero’s first published story, Keep It (1925), and Free Man explore the theme of man’s connection to the rural world, with protagonists deeply rooted in the landscape. Purgatory of Don Ramiro delves into esoteric themes, featuring a skeleton as its protagonist.
In 1928, Otero published his first novel, Walks of Life, composed of three parts: “The Landlord,” “The Maorazga,” and “The Student.” It depicts the decline of noble families of the Ancien Régime, unable to adapt to societal changes. The latter two parts present a model of intellectual chivalry, connecting the novel to other Galician nationalist narratives.
Stories of the Road and Street reconstructs rural Galicia, particularly in “The Hidalgo” and “The Maid.” Between the Vintage and Castiñeira and the novels The Home of the Wilderness and The Señorio da Reboraina feature an ironic approach to the figure of the Hidalgo. These works share common elements: the novel as an essay, a Manichean contrast between rural and urban, good and evil, archetypal characters representing social classes, and the landscape as a protagonist through detailed realistic descriptions symbolically linked to history.
Otero’s works offer a chronicle of contemporary Galicia in the early 20th century, incorporating autobiographical elements. In Novel in the Mist, the character of Adrian Solovio reflects Otero’s own conversion to Galician nationalism. Adrian’s internal conflict and search for meaning lead him on a journey through Spain and Europe. Ultimately, it is the singing of Galician sailors in Antwerp that triggers a revelation and a reminder of his homeland. Rio de Janeiro becomes a symbolic discovery that fills his life with meaning, and Adrian dedicates himself to understanding and fighting for Galicia’s liberation.
In 1935, Otero published Devel, an innovative novel characterized by fragmentation, multiple perspectives, and simultaneity.
Alfonso Daniel Rodríguez Castelao
Castelao, like other members of the Nós group, demonstrated a strong commitment to Galicia and sought originality in his multifaceted career as an artist, actor, and writer. His visual and literary arts should be understood as a unified whole. Both his writing and drawings are characterized by an aesthetic based on commitment, wry humor, didacticism, and expressive simplicity, resulting in highly original works. A significant portion of Castelao’s work was developed in exile in Buenos Aires, where he debuted his play Children Should Not Fall in Love (1941) and published two volumes of his essay Always in Portugal, considered the bible of secular Galician nationalism.
Narrative
Castelao’s narrative work begins with Through a Glass Eye: Memoirs of a Skeleton, a short story narrated in the first person by a skeleton who, from the graveyard and through its glass eye, recounts the stories of various characters from Santa Catarina in the early 20th century. The stories reflect themes similar to those in Castelao’s album Nós, such as the role of working women, the failures of emigration, and the caciquismo system.
Cousas (Things), published in two volumes in 1926 and 1929, is a collection of stories that combine drawings and text. It features a synthetic style, blending techniques of oral literature with innovative procedures and diverse genres within a narrative format. The content of Cousas offers an interpretation of the Galician people through the evocation of archetypal characters and attitudes, focusing on individuals from popular classes, women, children, and gentlemen.
In 1934, Castelao published Retrincos, a collection of five autobiographical short stories that reflect on the construction of identity and the relationship between art and reality. The Two of Always, Castelao’s only novel, narrates the adventures of two characters, Pedriño and Rañola. These children represent a decadent society, with a profound ideological and philosophical background. Pedriño embodies a primal, instinctual approach to life, lacking ambition, while Rañola, despite achieving relative success, becomes aware of her folly and chooses suicide. Pedriño, on the other hand, gains the respect of his family. The novel’s ironic ambiguity raises a moral question: which path to follow, Pedriño’s or Rañola’s?