Galician literature

[Vazquez]

[Unfortunately there's no flag for Galicia here...]

I'm curious if anyone here knows anything about Galician literature.

My father was born in Galicia and came very young to Brazil, along with my grandmother. I remember during my youth that many times I got sad because people would dismiss my descendance - most people didn't see them as "Spanish" at all, as nothing usual from Spain were presented at my home/daily life. In fact they didn't even speak Spanish (only Galego)!

I did visit Galicia some years ago and things became clearer (something like "oh, yes, this is the land and people my grandmother was talking about"). Now and then I try to read some books in Galego, but I don't know too much about this literature - the best writers etc. Some books I read - "Esperando o Leiteiro" (Xosé Neiras Vilas), "Diário do Mimo" (Carmen Panero), "Os Mortos Daquel Verán" (Carlos Casares) - were very weak, or at best ok. But I found one great writer - Castelao. I read two books from him - "Os Dous de Sempre" and "Cousas" and really enjoyed them both. In fact, for me "Cousas" is the quintessencial book from Galicia - it tells exactly about the customs and traditions my grandmother used to tell me about.

So, if anybody here knows anything about this literature and has any recommendation, please do write about it!

 

[Citog]

Hello Vazquez,

It's nice to see someone taking an interest in this literature. What you say about the perception of the Galician people also rings true to my experience (I'm currently living there for the second time).

While I'm not very well read in Galician literature in general, I have read quite a bit of poetry from the language (in both original and English/Spanish translation), so if it interests you I could suggest a few poets worth reading.

In terms of fiction though, the writer Manuel Rivas is probably the most celebrated of contemporary Galician writers. He has dealt with the era of Civil War in Galicia quite a bit (the novel "O lapis do carpinteiro" and the story "A língua das borboletas" have both been adapted into films so are pretty popular). While the other two I'm most familiar with "Os libros arden mal" and "Todo é silencio" both deal with other Galician themes in interesting ways.

I couldn't really suggest any other books without making a fool of myself, but a few other prose writers I've been meaning to check out properly are Álvaro Cunquiero and Eduardo Blanco Amor. Perhaps if you look into these writers you may find something you like, or the names of other writers worth investigating.

I hope you find this useful, sorry I can't be of more help.

 

[rouuqette]

The other obvious Galician writer is Álvaro Cunqueiro (http://www.themodernnovel.com/galician/cunqueiro/author.htm).

 

[Vazquez]

Thanks you, guys! I'll check those names. I'll probably buy some from amazon.es, I believe it's the best source for me. I have heard a lot about Eduardo Blanco Amor, I believe he is a safe bet. And Cunqueiro seems very interesting. Another writers I'm thinking about buying is Antón Riveiro Coello...

I will read sooner than later "Mazurca para dos muertos", de Camilo Jose Cela. Altough he wrote in Spanish, he was from Galicia, after all...

 

[Liam]

I can recommend an excellent bilingual (Galician/English) anthology: Breogan's Lighthouse. I have it at home and there are lots of goodies in there. The publishers are great too; they've already released Breton, Cornish and Manx anthologies (mostly modern writing, but some go as far back as the Middle Ages); with Occitan, Basque and Catalan anthologies forthcoming.

 

[Heteronym]

Gonzalo Torrente Ballester is, in my humble estimation, one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century. La Saga/Fuga de J.B. is a novel of peerless complexity, it has so many strands going it's a triumph of storytelling the way he keeps them all coherent, regardless of his going back and forth and interweaving plots. Fragmentos de Apocalipsis is simpler in scope but weirder since it's a novel about writing a novel, being written right in front of your eyes as the narrator/author discusses his bizarre storytelling choices, all the having an ongoing conversation with his girlfriend, a young Soviet literary critic (it was written in the 1970s) with very orthodox notions of what a novel should be. It's pure fun most of the time.

 

[Stiffelio]

Torrente Ballester also wrote the three part novel called Los Gozos y las Sombras, a masterpiece of XXth century Spanish literature, which was adapted into a celebrated TV series in the early 80s. Although he was Galician, Torrente Ballester wrote in Spanish.

 

[Vazquez]

So, I have ordered 4 books at amazon.es. Quite hard to get them - they have just one of each, and most books are out of stock:

Homónima - Antón Riveiro Coello
A Noite do Moucho - Anxo A. Rei Ballesteros
Xente ao Lonxe - Eduardo Blanco Amor
Tesouros Novos e Vellos - Álvaro Cunqueiro

The last two are classics, the first two are... well, let's have faith...

 

[Vazquez]

Just read Tesouros Novos e Vellos (New and Old Treasures) from Álvaro Cunqueiro. It's his discourse when joining the Real Galician Academy. Unfortunately it was the only book of him that was not out of stock at amazon.es.

Anyway, you can have a good glimpe of his style. Cunqueiro talkes about the myths and legends of treasures from all around Europe. The fundamental thing is: his stories are "old-school". Think about A Thousand and One Nights, the traditional tales of folklore, something that came from oral traditions.

There is an excelent introdution by a guy called J. Rof Carballo that explain this - in Cunqueiro's treasures there's no hiding meaning, no psychological lecture, no symbolism. A guy travels a thousand miles, he does a favor to a dwarf, and then he gets rich. And that's that. The treasure is really gold and nothing more, the dwarf is just a dwarf etc.

The book also contains a text by another member of the Academy (Francisco del Riego), in which he tells about Cunqueiro - a sympathetic biography. I have never read anything else by Cunqueiro, but it seems his other books (Merlin and Family, If Old Sindbad would return to the Isles, etc.) follows this principle - the good and old tale.

The book is good. It's a good way to know the author, and I believe people who already likes Cunqueiro, will for sure enjoy it.

 

[Vazquez]

If you don't mind, I'll keep a list of everything I read from Galicia, ok?

So, the last one was Homónima, de Antón Riveiro Coello. This is a book I wouldn't recommend. It tells about a bloke who discovers there was, in a small village in Mexico, a guy with name and surnames identical with his (and his grandfather's too). At first he is attacked by the villagers and is left to die in the middle of the desert. But then he is rescued and more or less makes peace with his agressors. Then he discovers the guy with the same name is his own grandfather. He begins to unwind the story of the man, an anarchist who fled the Fascist regime from Galicia to Mexico.

Anyway, as the story develops, you get the feeling "something big will happen sooner or later". Of course is later, and it's not that big. It's not a terrible book - Coello writes well, nothing to write home about, but well - but it's not a good story either. Too many stock characters - a dwarf, a whore the protagonist falls in love with, a dead and dumb killer, every village has it's idiot and so does this village, etc.

I can't say it was a letdown, because I knew the risks. It's hard to find information about books in Galician, so I usually buy them blindly. So far I have read 7 books from Galicia, and the score is 3 good books (two from Castelao and one from Cunqueiro) and 4 weak books. The other two I have left are from respected writers, so let's hope I have a better time with them!

 

[Vazquez]

A Noite do Moucho - Anxo A. Rei Ballesteros

(The Night of the Owl)

I've quite liked this book. An old man is speaking to some young people about his remembrances of Aurelio, an anarquist who is chased by falangists. The oral discourse is the base of the story: during the book, many times the narrator gets confused and backtracks his speech - "Mingos, who just told him, more than frightening him, left him… I don't know. It was like a hit in his head. And even now, thinking about that, he couldn't… it seemed incredible.", but Ballesteros uses this technique in a very sucessful way. It's not overused and, when it happens, you feel the impact, doubts, fears, making the book quite organic.

The time scope is short - some hours from the first chapter until the last. During it's 100 pages what you get most is remembrances of Aurelio's life - but Ballesteros is concise.

He writes very well. It's clear he has many tools and he uses them succesfully. His scope of Galician is wide, and you've got some extremely poetic passages, a coherent plot, and intelligent personal opinions.

The story is quite sad and melacholic. It's not something you keep reading because you must know what will happens next, but because it's so well written you don't want to stop reading. I admire that. The only drawback, and that avoids me seeing this book as a great one, is the story is missing something, mainly in the ending. I would give him a four star to language and style, and a three star to the plot. It could have been a little more daring, imho. Maybe the ending is a bit trivial and it's not on par with the rest of the book.

The author got very sick during his last revision of the book, and died afterwards, so...

Anyway, a very good reading, and a writer I want to read again.

 

[Vazquez]

Look what I've found:

I just received four more books in Galician:

Anxo A. Rei Ballesteros - Non sei cando nos veremos (terrible)
Álvaro Cunqueiro - Merlín e familia (weak)

Xosé Mendez - Con pólvora e magnolias (good)
Luís Pimentel - Sombra do aire na herba (weak)

Those two are very famous books of poetry in Galicia.

 

[Vazquez]

I´m writing quite a lot here lately, but I guess I must write about this book, as information about Galician literature is very hard to find (so I must buy books blindly and get some bad literature along the way). And it´s hard to find a good book in Galician, like this one. But I´ll try to be brief.

X.L. Méndez Ferrín - Elipsis e outras sombras

Published in 1974, with some deletion thanks to censorship (because of some erotic passages, it should be noted, not because of the criticism against right-wing fascism), we have 8 short stories that mostly tells about futuristic/imagined/dystopian worlds with a lot of similarities with the Franco Regime (or any other right-wing regime). The names are different - the socialists are called "Comuna Uno" or "Circuítos do Non", etc., the fascists "Orde Interminábel" etc. - but the idea is: rebels vs. empire. It reminds me a lot of Argentinian writers (most of all, one very little know called Alberto Vanasco), with a sci-fi setting, strange names, and a little twist in the end. Some stories are very good (Partisán 4, Labirinto), most are good.

The first and the last are more realistic. The first in fact is one of the worst. XLMF is a very socialist-minded writer, and in the first story he spills all his angry against religion, rich people, etc., and praise the International, poor people, etc. I mean, the usual... I´m used to it. (I almost laughed when he tells literally that rich boys look like a group of ants, following with some praise to the individuality of the field worker and the poor children).

Anyway, I guess he has his reasons, Franco fascism was tough, and it´s good to let it all out of your blood system (but it damages his power as a writer, because he uses the Galician language quite well).

By the way, this story reminded me A LOT Kenzaburo Oe´s "Seventeen" - a spoiled boy becoming member of a fascist group - published in 1961.

The good thing is, the last story is about a girlfriend of his writing to him from Paris - she is living a life of luxury while the author is in his poor Ourense (where the author was born - by the way, it´s the closest big city from the village my father was born, just 34km away). She described, just to offend him, the hapiness she can find in material products and in spiritual philosophies - things Marxists, like XLMF, are not friend with. XLMF is not completely defeated in his socialist ideals - notice that the title of the tale is "The Dictatorship of Things" - but it´s good to see he understands a bit the world outside his own head and his political beliefs, so he could make a little fun of it all.

In short: the first and last story are too political and have some unnecessary angriness, but the remaining 6 stories are good dystopian tales, enjoyable, without the author preaching that much (sometimes the characters are sided with the government, sometimes with the rebels, sometimes the government is defeated, sometimes the rebels are etc. - you have it all) - your good old fashioned 60´s/70´s futuristic short story, in this case obviously as metaphors of the Spanish regime, better than the average for sure.