THE SEARCH FOR PARADISE IN PALACIO VALDÉS III

 

Et in Arcadia ego (I in paradise), a Homeric phrase, is the north that guides the writing of the great Asturian novelist and that love transcends the plot and the majestic and exact style within its simplicity of the Idyll of a Sick Man, which is the work of youth. . The protagonist Andrés has some autobiographical features of the novelist. Upon his arrival at the rectory of Riofrío, a town in the brañas, the prosopography (the face) of the characters on stage performs a true tour de force unmatched within Castilian literature. Don Fermín, the uncle priest with a ferocious look that scares when he speaks, a country man, a hunter, a Carlist and respectful of tradition, who talks about the apples of the pipe orchard that will be collected in this year's harvest while the amito “merear, domine, portare manipulum fletus et doloris”[i] or the stole “Redde mihi stolam immortalitatis quam perdidi” [ii] prayers that were suppressed by the Vatican. The description of the environment, the landscape and the 'countryman' in this Sunday mass at the end of the 19th century that one seems to be living and I lived them almost in my childhood when I was an altar boy. Men on the right and women on the left, no mixing of sexes like in mosques and synagogues. The sermon of Don Fermín, a fierce priest who seems to frighten the parishioners, then becomes a meek lamb and attacks those who go to the Mass on Sunday and do not keep the festivals of the Holy Mother Church, promising them the flames of eternal fire. for his iniquity. The men who go out to the gate to have a cigarette during the homily, others who yawn so hard that their jaws seem to dislodge. Humor, respect for tradition and the eyes that focus on the stranger who has just arrived from Madrid. There is a girl who looks at him very discreetly. Who is she? Andrés asks Celedón. No way. That's a mare. But how? Well, to top it off, the protagonist will require love from the miller's daughter. The description of the rectory garden and the mansos. There is a forest behind and the author gives us details of each of the trees with that diligence of a good naturalist (you cannot write a good description without getting the word right, quia in Arcadia ego et in principle erat verbum) here goes this pearl … the meeks of the curate house were a vegetal cathedral where the wind prayed matins, vespers and compline whispering psalms:

  “See superb plane trees with splendid branches with their wide leaves bristling with spikes; magnificent elms with dark crowns carved into points like the spiers of cathedrals; large and robust chestnut trees with a patriarchal appearance, exuberant with health and freshness, next to birches with white trunks. There were also acacia trees supporting an immense canopy of leaves; numerous ash trees with elegant figures representing classic neatness; wild thorn trees, poplars. Yews, a tree that bore fruit in June. And several other kinds of trees fraternizing with the piece of land of the manses or properties of the rectory” et in Arcadia ego. Superb description. Fate or providence wanted me to be given a plot of land belonging to our elders with a forest of chestnut trees, oaks and laurels. One day when I returned to Asturias in one of my many convalescences, I found that one of those chestnut trees with twisted trunks on our farm that must have been thousands of years old and that saw the passage of the Roman legions through my braña had treacherously been cut down. I cried my eyes out and cursed the dendricide because trees for me are like pets, they have life. For this reason and for much more, Don Armando's work is outstanding. Teaches the wisdom of ecology and climate. Such attacks on the environment (selling land to speculators, giving up our real estate, leaving it in the hands of usurious real estate companies) will mean the end of the world, the extinction of life on planet Earth.

 

05/24/2024