The Tree of Science: A Deep Dive into Pío Baroja’s Masterpiece
Pío Baroja
Design of the Novel
Baroja championed a novel open to all possibilities, proclaiming absolute freedom for the writer in its design. For Baroja, the novel is a genre that accommodates everything from philosophical and psychological reflection to adventure, criticism, and humor. All these elements are reflected in his novels, but his reverence for action determines his preference for adventure plots. His characters are generally maladjusted beings who often fail in their vital struggles. Characterized by their pessimistic and hopeless words and actions, they are endowed with a powerful drive that, in most cases, proves futile, failing to overcome the world. In addition to the protagonists, Baroja incorporates a large number of characters into the central action who then disappear without a trace. The women involved are rarely more than mere circumstantial figures. Fictional conversations form the core of many of his works: the characters defend their views through believable dialogue. Baroja’s simple novel became a dialogical practice in the style of the Aizgorri house. He further emphasizes the mastery of description: the author selects the components of each scene and focuses on detail, occasionally pausing the narrative tension, thus restoring objectivity to the reader.
Major Novels
The Way of Perfection
This novel, published in 1902, is divided by its protagonist, Fernando Osorio, who, like other Baroja heroes, oscillates between periods of suffering and apathy. Finally, he reaches the fullness of life on Levantine land.
The Search
The Search, Aurora Red, and The Weed form the trilogy The Struggle for Life. The trilogy offers a faithful reflection of Madrid society at the beginning of the century and chronicles the struggle of “the bottom” to ascend, of “outsiders” to enter the city. The three novels gain their unity through the theme: the common areas of the anarchist proletariat and the “gulf” of Madrid, which materialize in the fluctuation between vagrancy and employment of the protagonist, Manuel. The Search is the most representative in terms of Baroja’s procedure: synthetic observation without comment, with a direct and sharp style.
The Tree of Science
Azorín saw this work as encapsulating the very spirit of Baroja. Baroja himself considered it one of his best novels. Written in 1911, it contains a great deal of autobiography, recreating many episodes and details of Baroja’s life. But the entire book is also a snapshot of the sensitivity and spiritual conflict of the era. This work responds to a “novel of character formation.” Indeed, it develops the life of Andrés Hurtado, a character lost in an absurd world and amidst adverse circumstances that constitute a sequence of disappointments. Therefore, the central plot of the novel is none other than the history of existential disorientation. The characters and environments are a mosaic of Spanish life of the time. It is around 1898, a Spain that is breaking down amid concern for the majority. Andrés criticizes the intellectual poverty of the era and the contempt for science and research. He also deals with social issues: soon the most diverse materials and defects appear, the product of a society that Andrés would like to see destroyed. Seeing the state of his country and the ignorance of its people, Andrés falls into a pessimism that is heightened by the death of his brother. This explains why we are facing a “philosophical” novel, in which, again, existential conflicts are central to the work. In religious matters, the protagonist is also critical and ruthless with a certain type of Catholicism, like his friend Lamela. Hurtado finds no intellectual anchor. Science does not provide the answers he seeks to his big questions about the meaning of life and the world. On the contrary, intelligence and science only exacerbate the pain of living.
In short, human life is without explanation, without meaning. Andrés’ philosophical readings confirm this. His main influence comes, sometimes almost verbatim, from some definitions of life that we find in Schopenhauer’s work.
The external structure of the work is as follows: it consists of seven parts totaling 53 generally short chapters. The number of chapters that make up each part is variable. Regarding its internal structure, we would divide the work into two cycles of the protagonist’s life, separated by an intermediate reflection. Therefore, the first three chapters constitute a cycle, until the death of Luisito in the fourth chapter. The fifth and sixth chapters are the reflection with his uncle Iturrioz, and the seventh chapter spreads to the second cycle, which ends with the death of his wife, son, and his suicide.
With regard to style, Baroja implements techniques of character portrayal and reflects the reality of environments. He tries to give little information, but in brief, representative paragraphs. He uses traits with great naturalness of expression, both in the narrative, as in the descriptive or in the dialogues. Of special interest is the intentional use of colloquialisms and slang, with a perfect awareness of its expressive values and “environmental” purpose. In conclusion, the novel The Tree of Knowledge is “the most typical novel of the Generation of ’98,” and even serves as a good example of how Baroja and his contemporaries anticipated a number of contemporary existential concerns.