LITERATURE
His novels are extensions of the lost paradise where the elegance of other times, the education and the longed-for beauty live.
This week literature has a white heart. Javier Marías has died, a writer who, apart from the cabal of the Nobel Prize –never interesting but interesting–, has managed to occupy the disputed position of the most transcendental Spanish writer of the last forty years. He dies early, without warning, to the surprise of misunderstandings, on a Sunday afternoon in which Spain was almost saying goodbye to summer. I thought of ‘Berta Isla’, her everyday heroine, when I read the news of her death on ‘ABC’. I imagined the eternal character looking out the window in the Plaza de la Paja in Madrid, surprised by such a sudden absence, adding an explanation to fate to the usual waiting. His creations claiming the balance of death from the author who has given them life.
So early? His death has been a surprise, just as in his novels the plot appeared, at the wrong time, when the reader was still settling in reading the first pages, with that dramatic twist that left the rest of the novel with a shadow of suspicion It seems that it is not true, fed up with other deaths, that now it is Javier Marías’ turn to the obituary pages. It can not be true. Now I think of the beginning of ‘Tomorrow in battle think of me’. His absence moves me to this place. The lover sneaking into the room, and she already, like a beautiful corpse, sprawled across the room, as the scene unfolds to the reader’s panic. Too soon, like a half novel. This is how her death has been. Too soon.
It is not unreasonable to affirm that Javier Marías will always live in a position of honor in high literature, thanks to a masterful combination of history and form. His books transcend writing itself. A novel by the Madrid author is more than fiction. It is both a reflection and a riddle. There is always something of a crossroads in the approach, like a provocation to the reader. Although it is his verb that has made Javier Marías a reference for readers around the world. One of his successes was the inclusion of a particular syntax, raised and lit, arranged like a labyrinth, with an English elegance that did not let the reader take anything for granted. His writing was pure style. Debugging and thinking. Philosophy made syntax, analytical and calculating, a writer tailored to his character.
He will always live in a position of honor in high literature, thanks to a masterful combination of history and form. His writing was pure style. Debugging and thinking. Philosophy made syntax
Now that I read the lyrics of his death I think of his soliloquies. Deep thought flowed from his narrative. His characters not only passed through the novels, but were also in the world. They were and thought, as extensions of a saving intelligence. And from the novel to the chronicle. Sunday after Sunday he fought in his ‘Ghost Zone’ against a politically correct society, defending good taste, high culture (increasingly unattainable), common sense, transmitting his love for the classics and without falling into the present demagoguery. A Spartan before modernity, he will be criticized by his detractors, lacking, without a doubt, myths to emulate.
Javier Marías turned out to be a fighter for writing, whose novels mean extensions of paradise lost. In them he lives the elegance of other times, the education and the beauty he longed for. A Tomás Nevinson who smokes on the landing while spying on his future lover. A Berta Isla that sews her loneliness in the autumn of Madrid. Her work, like a Shakespearean verse, lyrical and thoughtful. Tomorrow in battle think of me. An author of unforgettable titles. But the battle anticipated his appointment and it’s already tomorrow. The bad has already started.
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