Nada (Laforet)
Nada (German: Nothing ) is a Spanish-language novel by Carmen Laforet , written in 1944. In the same year, its Spanish author won the coveted Nadal literary prize at the age of just 23 . In 1948 she also received the Fastenrath Literature Prize . The work has received exceptional praise because it represents the circumstances of the Spanish post-war period ( Spanish Civil War ) in an excellent manner. In addition, it very well describes the company in Barcelona of that era . The work is said to have autobiographical features.
content
Nada is about a young woman named Andrea, who goes to Barcelona as an 18-year-old orphan to study literature at the university and to start a new life (in freedom). There she moves into her grandmother's house, which she has not seen in years, and where the rest of the family lives. But that is exactly where all her dreams perish, because in this house on Aribau Street she experiences only oppression and the strictest control in the midst of a huge, long-lasting family conflict. An event in the past (marked by the civil war ) tore the family apart. Andrea finds herself between the battlefield at home and the pleasant and free life at university with her fellow students.
The novel is divided into three parts, the first corresponds to the “ initiation ” of the protagonist, her relationship with Aunt Angustias, who portrays Barcelona as “hell”. When she goes to the monastery at the end of this part, Andrea feels relieved. At the beginning, two completely separate worlds face each other: the confining one of the house and the liberating one of student life and the free wandering through the alleys, but through the relationship between friend Ena and Uncle Román, these two worlds come into contact. This leads to Andreas' disillusionment that she could keep one of these worlds "pure", uncontaminated. At the end of the 2nd part Andrea realizes that she is part of the whole. Despite a great effort and fatigue, she gained a lot of self-knowledge. Almost "nothing" happened, but ...
title
The title is a quote from a poem by Juan Ramón Jiménez , which reads as follows:
NADA
A tu abandono opongo la elevada
torre de mi divino pensamiento;
subido a ella, the corazón sangriento
verá la mar, por él empurpurada.
Fabricaré en mi sombra la alborada,
mi lira guardaré del vano viento,
buscaré en mis entrañas mi sustento ...
Mas ¡ay !, ¿y si esta paz no fuera nada?
¡Nada, sí, nada, nada! ... –O que cayera
mi corazón al agua, y de este modo
fuese el mundo un castillo hueco y frío ...
Que tú eres tú, la humana primavera,
la tierra, el aire , el agua, el fuego, ¡todo !,
... ¡y soy yo sólo el pensamiento mío!
(from: Pájinas escojidas , Sonetos espirituales 1917, p. 119)
Possibilities of interpretation
The house on Calle Aribau presents an eerie atmosphere, similar to that in the English Gothic Novels . It could be interpreted as a symbol of the human soul, but also of Spain as a whole, a world in miniature. It is about the collapse of ideals, about the disillusionment after the disaster of war; Nada is also a document of a collective state of mind and reflects the misery, hunger and desolation of a society lying in ruins. Because of its "antitriunfalismo" it ran counter to the victorious mood of the Frankist fraction. Above all, the concept of the inviolable, ideal family was downright disenchanted, since the family in particular forms a nightmare-like scenario in the novel, with absurd scenes, violence, bigotry , fear, betrayal and fraternal quarrels (the latter possibly a symbol of the division of the country into two irreconcilable Camp).
style
In many cases, this work has been classified in the style of the so-called tremendismo , which shaped the Spanish literary scene for a short time in the period after the civil war. However, it does not have quite as many crude details as, for example, La familia de Pascual Duarte by Camilo José Cela , which was published three years earlier. After all, the abstruse, claustrophobic ambience in the shabby, petty bourgeois apartment contrasts with the cheerful lightheartedness of the student milieu in the streets of Barcelona and during trips to the countryside. Even if written in traditional technique, Nada manages without rhetoric and verbosity; At first glance, it looks very simple and exudes authenticity .
Autobiographical elements
Even if the author has repeatedly denied it, there is a high proportion of autobiographical background in the novel.