Death visits the paupers` house by Johannes Stradanus (Jan Van Der Straet) (1523-1605, Belgium)

The Spanish novelist and essayist Pío Baroja y Nessi is considered one of the signifIcant writers of the Spanish Literary movement: The Generation of 1898. His works consistently explore self-criticism with pessimistic views of life.

Pío was born in San Sebastián, Spain on Dec. 28, 1872. In 1879 his family moved to Madrid, where at 15, he studied medicine. Receiving his doctorate in medicine at the University of Madrid in 1893, he spent the next year as a country doctor in Cestona. Dismayed by the hardships and petty intrigues of country life, Baroja renounced his medical post in 1895. The shock of the Spanish-American War in 1898 provoked in him, as in many of his contemporaries, resentment against Spain's social abuses and the influence of the post-Inquisition Catholic Church. By 1898, he began contributing articles to the journal Revista Nueva and made the first of many trips to Paris. Baroja grouped most of his novels into cycles or trilogies. By 1902, Baroja devoted himself entirely to writing, turning out two or more books almost every year until his death, having published more than 100 books, including over 60 novels as well as volumes of memoirs, collections of short stories, essays, and poems.

His techniques to depict action in his novels include sacrificing structure to a practically haphazard flow of people, places, plots, and subplots, with style marked by short, choppy paragraphs. Baroja enjoyed considerable fame within Spain and abroad, and many of his novels were translated into English. In 1935 he was admitted to the Spanish Royal Academy. His works influenced many younger writers, notably Ernest Hemingway, who visited Baroja in Madrid in 1956 to declare his debt to him. Baroja died that same year on Oct. 30, 1956, at the age of 83.

"Allow me to pay this small tribute to you who taught so much to those of us who wanted to be writers when we were young. I deplore the fact that you have not yet received a Nobel Prize, especially when it was given to so many who deserved it less, like me, who am only an adventurer."

- Ernest Hemingway, 1956.

Characters of a reprehensible nature; the likes of which include vagabonds, adventurers, prostitutes, and anarchists, whose cynicism and rebellious spirit symbolized the author's ideal of a life of action, are regular features of a Baroja protagonist. His characters are committed only to a life of action, who, lacking constructive purpose, find themselves condemned to final ruin. He believed that only action has any positive value in a hostile and absurd world. Personal failure is the dominant theme of a typical Baroja novel.

Literary Spotlight: The Quest (1904)

The Quest, the first of the La Lucha Por la Vida (The Struggle for Life) trilogy, presents a gritty, often brutal picture of urban life in working-class Madrid, as the protagonist, Manuel Alcazar, is pummelled by socio-economic forces beyond his control. While the novel concentrates on the social contrasts and difficulties of working-class life in Madrid, vital clues show the larger context in which Baroja, who became deeply influenced by the shock of the Spanish-American War, wrote. The war demoralized Spain, leaving in its wake the self-image of a weak and backward nation; for many Spaniards, their country’s perceived stagnation and backwardness was a dramatic contrast to America’s forward-looking energy and drive.

The period’s politics are less prominent in The Quest’s content than Baroja’s graphic elicitation of the sights, sounds, and smells of daily life in Madrid. Evocatively capturing the changes of the nineteenth century as urban populations, not just in Madrid but other cities rose considerably. Like Manuel, peasants flocked to urban centers, hoping for economic opportunity but often found only slums, hardships, and petty intrigues instead. The Quest is a worthwhile starter for anyone looking to explore one of Spain’s most celebrated writers.

Danya C. Rockwell

Danya is a professional writing student at Algonquin College and writer for Spine Online’s Bookstore page. Also, the writer of weird mysteries when not writing for marks or income.