The Esperpento and Aesthetics of Commitment

Ortega y Gasset's early observation that Valle-Inclan wrote well but that he was wasting his talents was also a forecast because the change from the decadent refinements of the Sonatas to the disconcerting realities of the esperpento signaled a new literary orientation.' The world of the esperpentos is an unsettling world: there is tragedy and there is travesty, side by side, while man's anguish and man's blundering are constantly played off against each other. Compared with traditional tragedies and comedies, the esperpentos are neither a purging remedy nor a laughing matter. A harsh and playful tone in them yokes dread with amusement, despair with inanity, and hilarity with consternation; traditional certainties are disparaged while injustices and blunders are simultaneously flayed and burlesqued. And all this is done with an incredible, stupendous style which enhances the view of life as a grotesque panorama. In short, the issues of the absurd and social criticism which determined in great part this change of perspective are not always evident in Valle-Inclin's earlier writings.2

Absurdism · Aesthetics · Anguish · Art · Criticism · Literature · Visual arts · Latin American Literature Studies · Philosophy · Spanish Literature and Culture Studies · Spanish Philosophy and Literature

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