The Tree of Knowledge: summary

Title page of The Tree of Knowledge by Pio Baroja, translated by Aubrey F. G. Bell (Alfred A. Knopf, 1928)

Posts on the novel:

(Part 1) The nose of a cockatoo and more years than the oldest of parrots

(Parts 2 – 3) Charity seemed to have fled from the world

(Part 4) Interlude

(Parts 5 – 7) Nature has resources which are unknown to us

In The Tree of Knowledge Baroja presents different philosophical ways of looking at the world. The main character, Andrés Hurtado, complicates matters further with a skewed perception of the reality around him. Andrés can see things shrewdly but his desire to remain detached from the world he sees as deeply flawed proves to be an ineffectual way to live. His disillusionment with the Spain he inhabits leads him to adopt a rationalist approach to life. Yet this approach constantly fails him—while some presumptions turn out to be correct, many do not. Society is flawed but not to the extent he views it. By withdrawing completely from the world, he fails to recognize the problem that resides within him until the very end of the book.

It may be reading too much into the novel to say that it seems to trace the development of Baroja, from the beliefs of Andrés to those of his uncle Iturrioz. The central part follows a discussion between the two men as Andrés argues for the primacy of science (knowledge). His uncle, however, promotes a practical approach for life. He does not say to abandon the search for knowledge but to recognize its limits. Andrés ignores this advice, practically and symbolically throughout most of the book. This being Baroja, things do not progress linearly but take on many incongruities and present several paradoxes.

As I said in the previous post, I found it very enjoyable and highly recommend it if you can find it. I'd also love to hear from those that are familiar with Baroja and their impression of him and his work...

The Tree of Knowledge: Nature has resources which are unknown to us

This post follows the final three parts of The Tree of Knowledge: Part Five (“A Provincial Experiment”), Part Six (”Experiences at Madrid”), and Part Seven (“A Son”). All quotes from the text use The Tree of Knowledge by Pio Baroja, translated by Aubrey F. G. Bell (Alfred A. Knopf, 1928). I’ll copy the summary of this part from the Wikipedia entry since it does a good job without giving too much away:

The second half of the novel tells the stay of Hurtado (now a doctor) in Alcolea, a fictitious town in Castilla-La Mancha (where the author shows the dreadful conditions the peasant had to endure such as caciquism, ignorance, apathy or resignation), his return to Madrid (where he works as a hygiene doctor — emphasizing the description that Baroja makes of prostitution in the 19th century Madrid) and, finally, his unfortunate marriage to Lulú, a young woman he met when he was a student.

Note that I will talk about the ending and give more away than the Wikipedia entry.

Andrés Hurtado, the doctor, ends up withdrawing as much as possible from life because of his disgust for most of the people around him. These people include his patients, not described as noble poor but a superstitious people unwilling to better their lot, and his friends, who use their money to exempt themselves from morality. There are a few exceptions but they make the depravity of everyone else stand out even more. I had mentioned at the end of Part Two that his uncle believed that man has only “two practical courses open, either to abstain from action and contemplate everything with indifference, or to limit his action to a small area” (124). Andrés chooses abstention and (the tree of) knowledge over (the tree of) life.

Eventually Andrés does expand his boundaries some to include his friendship and eventual marriage with Lulu. She comforts him and provides a bridge to the world. It is when he accedes to Lulu’s wishes to have a child that his immersion back into life goes horribly wrong. Lulu dies in childbirth and their son is stillborn. During his grief, Andrés overhears an unknown doctor state “Nature has resources which are unknown to us.” Andrés commits suicide, perversely proving the unknown doctor right. It isn’t that his belief in science over life proves to be wrong as much as the loss of Lulu shows it to be inadequate.

A wonderful novel, highly recommended (if you can find a copy), albeit difficult to classify. Baroja has definitely grown on me. I'm glad I went out of my way to find this book.

The Tree of Knowledge: interlude

Baroja abruptly halts the storyline at Part Four (“Inquiries”) in order to have a brief philosophical interlude. Andrés Hurtado and his uncle Iturrioz discuss different approaches on how to view life. All quotes are from The Tree of Knowledge by Pio Baroja, translated by Aubrey F. G. Bell (Alfred A. Knopf, 1928).

To date, Andrés has shown a curious mixture of concern for the poor and sick in combination with distance or aloofness from their plight. In this section Andrés makes a strong defense for science and knowledge, arguing that “Science is humanity’s one strong edifice.” (172) The two characters discuss The Tree of Knowledge and The Tree of Life, for the most part ignoring the source of this language. Andrés hopes that science will “cure” the need for religion:

”Kant is the great destroyer of the Greco-Semitic lie [essentially religion]. He found those two trees that you mentioned and drew aside the branches of the tree of life which were stifling the tree of knowledge. After Kant there is but one path in the world of ideas, a narrow and difficult one, that of science. After him, although perhaps without his strength and greatness, comes another destroyer, another Northern bear, Schopenhauer, who cut away the pretences which the master had lovingly maintained through lack of courage to destroy them. Kant begs that the mighty tree of life, which is called liberty and responsibility and right, should be allowed to stand next to the tree of knowledge in order to delight man’s eyes. Schopenhauer, more austere and honest in his thought, cuts away those branches, and life appears dark and blind, full of strength and substance, without justice, without goodness, without aim; a current borne along by an unknown force, which he calls will, and which from time to time, in the midst of organic matter, produces a secondary phenomenon, a phosphorescence of the brain, a reflection, which is intelligence. One can now see these two principles clearly, life and truth, will and intelligence.” (177)

What is Andrés looking for? “What is one to do with one’s life, what direction to give it?” (166) Iturrioz’s response to Andrés echoes some of the nagging thoughts Andrés has expressed to this point. I found Andrés’ forcefulness inconsistent with his earlier doubts about science and knowledge. Iturrioz proves to be both a humanist and a pragmatist, echoing Andrés’ earlier belief that science, even with advancements to come, does not provide an approach to life. In blunter terms, science has failed Andrés to date. Because of this, the dialogue feels somewhat contrived but still very enjoyable (except for the racist turns). Iturrioz agrees that when leaving the sphere of science and entering the sphere of life things become confusing, but maintains that both trees, knowledge and life, are necessary. In addition to knowledge, man must have faith, even if it is illusionary.

The two men agree to disagree and Andrés announces he will return to his medical post in the countryside. There are some interesting parallels and differences with the earlier discussion between the two men at the end of Part Two. Both discussions take place on the rooftop of Iturrioz’s house, literally and symbolically removed from the rest of Madrid. At the end of the first discussion, Andrés feels he is divorced from reality. As both men tire of the discussion int this part, though, they sit back and enjoy the setting of the sun and the scent of plants. Even though they are far apart, there seems reason for hope. We'll see if that hope is supported...

The Tree of Knowledge: Charity seemed to have fled from the world

Parts Two (“The Minglanillas”) and Three (“Sadness and Sorrow”) round out the medical student days of Andrés Hurtado. We follow him through his fourth and final year at medical school, his first (temporary) position in the country, and the care and death of his younger brother. All quotes are from The Tree of Knowledge by Pio Baroja, translated by Aubrey F. G. Bell (Alfred A. Knopf, 1928).

We meet many characters in Part Two, most from the lower classes. Baroja does not pull any punches on these characters—he paints their flaws as well as their attributes, if they have any. So many of these characters seem to be searching for happiness but it isn’t available. A woman (Nini) and her mother deceive themselves about a well-to-do student’s intentions. A journalist attempts to get something from every woman he meets before she finds out how poor he is. The exception is Lulu, the woman Andrés meets (but doesn’t try to seduce). Described as having plenty of charm but worn out at the age of eighteen, she has never had anything enjoyable and does not even try to find a pleasant life.

Like Antoñito Casares the journalist mentioned earlier, there are plenty of people willing to prey on those futilely searching for happiness. Virginia Garciá bills herself as a midwife but what goes on in her house horrifies Andrés: inducing miscarriages, providing abortions, and procuring sexual services for rich men. Virginia’s services are needed since these women have no one else to turn to in their time of need. As Andrés sees it, “Charity seemed to have fled from the world.” (93) Many of the poor seem resigned to their status, believing “the rich, and especially the aristocracy, belonged to a higher order than other men. To an aristocrat everything was permissible—vice, immorality, egoism; he was as it were above common morality.” (109) Andrés found such a philosophy strange that those that “have” have additional rights and privileges over those who “have not”.

So many people seem ill-used, not just by other people but by institutions that are supposed to protect them. The priests described so far have little interest outside their own personal pleasure. Baroja has little good to say about the government, whether through prosecuting those that break the law or in protecting those infringed. People like Victorio, a money-lender’s nephew who takes advantage of others, will more than likely become rich and prosper by preying on others. “In spite of his exploiting the poor and playing Don Juan among the girls, the people of the neighbourhood did not hate Victorio; they all thought what he did very natural and logical.” (119)

The last chapter of Part Two provides a preview to further philosophical discussion between Andrés and his Uncle Iturrioz. His uncle takes a utilitarian view of justice—essentially what suits us is justice, what doesn’t isn’t. He makes it clearer on the macro level: “Justice is a human illusion” (126). Iturrioz believes that man has only “two practical courses open, either to abstain from action and contemplate everything with indifference, or to limit his action to a small area” (124). This doesn’t immediately help Andrés, who is looking for a "possible plan to live with a certain decency” (127). He looks to order his life so that he can improve himself and help those around him. Andrés holds to what he has read in Schopenhauer: suffering is basic to life and our influence for good is minimal.

Even though Andrés has studied medicine, gets his license and is about to get his doctorate, he finds himself powerless from protecting his younger brother, Luisito, from death. Part of that had to do with his taking a temporary position away from Valencia where his brother was recovering. Another reason was his inability to convince those around him to help his brother convalesce. His family wants to stay in a setting not conducive to Luisito’s recovery. Despite Andrés’ attempt to educate the servants as to what his brother needs, their ignorance and superstition keep them from assisting the invalid in the manner needed. Even worse, Andrés feels indifference, an absence of sorrow upon reading of Luisito’s death.

The Tree of Knowledge: the nose of a cockatoo and more years than the oldest of parrots

Bronze statue of Pío Baroja (1872–1956)
Picture source

In looking at my sidebar on books I have reviewed, I see a disproportionate number by Pío Baroja and this post begins another book by him. Part of the reason has to do with limited information in English on Baroja and I have wanted to find out more about his work. Sins commonly attributed to his writing (see his Wikipedia entry for some examples—I’d add repetitiveness, in language and story lines) are present in his work but I have enjoyed them even so.

Although widely considered as his best work, I have been unable to find a copy of The Tree of Knowledge (El árbol de la ciencia) that I could afford. I finely took advantage of our little library’s interlibrary system with local colleges and universities and obtained a copy. So here we go with Part One ("The Life of a Student at Madrid"). All quotes are from The Tree of Knowledge by Pio Baroja, translated by Aubrey F. G. Bell (Alfred A. Knopf, 1928).

Part One follows the study of medicine by Andrés Hurtado in Madrid in the late 1880s and early 1890s. Baroja paints a bleak picture of Madrid, Spain, and the students of the time:

Madrid was living in a fictitious atmosphere formed by an old and unrenovated pragmatism.

The Madrid student, especially if he came from the provinces, arrived with the intention to copy Don Juan and amuse himself, to gamble and make love to women, in fact, as the professor of chemistry said with his usual solemnity, to burn himself out in an atmosphere too full of oxygen.

Except for a religious feeling which most of the students, careless about such matters, did not possess, the students at the end of the nineteenth century came to Madrid with the mentality of those of the seventeenth, and were determined to imitate Don Juan Tenorio to the best of their ability, in a life of
Duels and love affairs
In fierce assault.

The cultured student, however much he might wish to see things as they were and acquire a clear idea of his country and the part it played in the world, was unable to do so. The influence of European culture in Spain was in fact confirmed to technical matters; the newspapers gave an imperfect idea of everything; and the general tendency was to induce the belief that what was great in Spain might be small outside it, and vice versa, in a kind of international bad faith.

If France and Germany never mentioned Spain of spoke of her only in jest, that was because they hated us; our great men, it was solemnly averred, Castelar, Cánovas, Echegaray, were the envy of other nations. The whole of Spain, and especially Madrid, lived in an atmosphere of absurd optimism, and whatever was Spanish was best.

This natural tendency to falsehood and illusion on the part of a country isolated by its poverty, contributed to the stagnation and fossilization of thought. (9-10)

Baroja savages all parts of Spanish society. The priests care nothing for religion. Politicians are vain, corrupt, and inactive. The students are insolent and the professors absurd. People believe that having money gives license for any behavior, excusing all sins.

In this setting we meet Andrés, the medical student who finds sickness sad and depressing. He shows little enthusiasm for medicine, wanting to become a doctor more out of practicality (money, society, etc.) than any desire to help people. Andrés is drawn more to literature and eventually philosophy, of which I’m sure we’ll see more of as the book moves along (let’s just say that Schopenhauer seems to be winning at this point). Interestingly, the only time life seems pleasant to Andrés revolves around the time spent telling his invalid friend about his doings and not in living the actual activities. Andrés wants to study life for something more than the mechanical nature of how things happen, wishing to find the source and, by implication, a meaning. Andrés finds himself admiring certain men in medicine and politics but becomes disillusioned with them as he experiences and learns more about life.

His tendency was toward a spiritual anarchism based on sympathy and pity, without any practical solution.

The fierce and revolutionary logic of such men as Saint Just no longer aroused his enthusiasm: it seemed to him artificial and unnatural. He considered that in life justice did not and could not exist. Life was a vague, tumultuous stream, and the actors in it played a comedy which they were unable to understand, while men who had reached an intellectual outlook contemplated the scene with pity and compassion.

These desultory ideas, this lack of plan and of a restraining purpose made Hurtado’s life very aimless and continually and uselessly agitated his mind. (64)

Baroja, originally trained in medicine, critically looks at the Spain of that time. The patients at the hospital for the poor are treated as something less than human. The dead, of course, are treated worse—corpses used for dissection are dragged through the halls of the university, skulls thumping on steps as they are taken to classrooms. Those practicing medicine don't escape his judgment. When Andrés’ younger brother contracts typhus, the family physician ignored all remedies, instead choosing to outwait the illness. Baroja adds anecdotes that I think have to be on purpose in order to question the meaning of life and how we interpret it. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but the story of the human brain delivered to a professor's home for him to study but accidentally served as part of dinner seems to serve several purposes, not the least of which highlights the fragility of life—the brain comprehending this story could just as well served as a meal.

I don’t mean to imply this section is all doom and gloom. Baroja introduces many interesting characters and I’ll mention two. Antonio Lamela is described as an elderly, backward student. He takes several years to go through one year of study at the university. Lamela turns out to be a Quixote-like character, describing a love for “an aristocrat, a titled lady who drove about in a carriage and had a box at the opera.” (54) When Andrés actually sees the lady of Lamela’s heart, he is amazed to find “she was an ugly dark-complexioned spinster with the nose of a cockatoo and more years than the oldest of parrots. Apart from her unattractiveness, she took no notice of the Galician student and merely gave him a sour and unpleasant look of contempt.” (55) Brother Juan, described as a “strange mysterious character” (70), works at the general hospital, focusing on providing comfort to the contagious cases. His monk-like behavior, always available to those in need and giving away his money when he received it, stands apart from the crude self-centered behavior of most of the others in the hospital.

The Lord of Labraz: final thoughts

The Lord of Labraz by Pío Baroja, translated by Aubrey F. G. Bell, Alfred A. Knopf, 1926 (originally released in 1903 in Spanish)

I mentioned in an earlier post that decay was a central theme in this book. Labraz, an imaginary town set in the Cantabria region of Spain, fought progress tooth and nail and won (?) the battle. They shunned a railroad line allowing a nearby city, originally poorer than Labraz, to grow and prosper. “Labraz was a terrible town, a town of the Middle Ages. It had not a single level street, and the houses all had stone escutcheons. Nearly all of them were austere and silent; many were almost or completely in ruins.” The abbot spoke for much of the town when commenting on degeneration and the progressive young men pushing for regeneration:

”It is the revolutionary spirit,” he said. “Who is to blame that these young men will be the ruin of Spain? Their parents, their elders, all those who teach them to forget the practice of religion. So the Liberal spirit spreads like a weed; it penetrates into distant corners; and those madmen do not see it, those madmen do not perceive that the Church is threatened and society in danger.”

The irony drips from Baroja’s pen since he makes it clear that the Church and society are already corrupt and not worth saving, at least as represented by the abbot. Baroja’s Spain (in the few books I’ve read) has plenty of good and industrious people but misery and exploitation continually weigh them down. Much of the time characters simply struggle for life in a world caught between clashing principles. No wonder the English Mr. Bothwell loved Labraz enough to settle in it. In answer to a young idealist’s question as to whether or not they should search for the truth, Mr. Bothwell replies in the negative, wishing to stay happy in his agreeable dream, even if it’s an illusion:

”No, because if we found it, we should not know whether it were absolute or not; for me there are only agreeable truths and disagreeable truths: the agreeable truths we must always accept, the disagreeable ones we must reject. I cannot paint, it is true, but I have the illusion that I can, and so I live. Why should I convince myself that I cannot paint?”

“You wish, then,” answered Bengoa, “that we should sleep wrapped in our illusions as in a continual dream.”

“Exactly, but an agreeable dream.”

The blind nobleman at the center of the story suffers more than his share of tribulation but never completely sinks beneath the weight. He proves to be resilient, possessing a strength that occasionally reveals its full power. Ah, but it’s all supposedly a tale from the mind of Mr. Bothwell we’re reading. The narrator from the preface has seen the blind nobleman around town so he never renounced Labraz, nor did he leave for a trek across the heart of Spain. So have we been had or is Baroja using irony and paradox in the story to make a point? I’m not sure since he may be trying to have it both ways, which is fine by me. As I’ve said in previous posts the book feels a little frivolous and frothy at times but I enjoyed it.

My earlier posts on the book can be found at these links:

Baptizing the wine

Leaving no stone unturned

He was a stomach rather than a man

The Lord of Labraz: he was a stomach rather than a man

The Lord of Labraz by Pío Baroja, translated by Aubrey F. G. Bell, Alfred A. Knopf, 1926 (originally released in 1903 in Spanish)

Labraz is a much simpler story than his Struggle for Life trilogy but that doesn’t make it less pleasurable to read. Structured (so far) like a romance, it’s fun to watch him work on techniques that I saw more polished in the trilogy. For example, Baroja loves to “introduce” a character without providing much information about them, letting the reader fill in the gaps or guess as to the character’s context with the rest of the story. Eventually he gets around to revealing how the character fits into the story, which the reader has probably guessed by that point. In later books this technique appears effortless while in Labraz it stands out (although to some extent maybe it had to given the romance nature of the book).

Themes from the trilogy also show up here, such as the general decay of society and the struggles of the underclasses. His feelings toward much of religion aren’t hidden or softened as this extended quote makes clear:

All had a certain air of mourning to suit the occasion: only the abbot who presided, without considering whether it was a wedding or a funeral feast, set the bad example of devouring with a barbarous voracity and without even listening to the conversation. The lord abbot, president of the collegiate church of Labraz, deserves to be described. He was a stomach rather than a man; he was now all stomach. His father had been coachman to a marquis, and his mother was the marquesa’s maid.

The coachman and his wife had intended their son for the priesthood, although his real vocation was the art of digestion. The following answer he gave as a boy proves his capacity in this respect: “What would you like to be?” he was asked.

“I? A pig.”

“Why?”

“In order to eat my hands.”

This Napoleon of digestion became a priest; owing to the influence of the marquis he became a canon, and as he was out of pace among men of higher culture they sent him to Labraz and made him abbot of the collegiate church there. He was a man of scarecely any culture at all, rather coarse, rather disgusting and extremely dirty. Don Diego de Beamonte used to relate how once in the Botanical Gardens at Madrid he had met a young man of exceptional talent called Miguel de los Santos Alvarez. They were walking up and down talking and looking at the scientific names of the trees and plants on the white labels, when a priest chanced to pass; his expression was dense, his cassock unbrushed and his hat greasy. Miguel de los Santos pointed him out to Don Diego, and if his cassock had a label attached to it like the plants and trees, said:”Clericus catolicus hispanicus.” Of this species of clericus the abbot was a magnificent specimen, but as the species comprises many types it should be said that he belonged to the manducatorius or digestivus class. He seemed to be determined to be perpetually dirty. His mantles and cassocks were a kind of atlas, in which the islands straightway became archipelagos and the archipelagos continents; his hat, of huge size, seemed rather than silk over felt to be grime over grease; not the shard with which Job scraped his flesh could have been dirtier; but he had a biretta which far outshone even his hat in this respect. The abbot was of enormous size, with protruding belly, thin legs, large strong hands, while his huge feet, flat and deformed, issued from beneath his cassock like two boats. His eyes, dull beneath the half-closed lids, were on the surface of the flesh, as though they were sewn on to it; his nose was long, thick and rubicund, his face was narrow, his jaw prominent, and his large yellow teeth resembled those of an old horse. The good priest had a mortal hatred of water; he shaved very occasionally and never washed, so as not to waste his time. Although his brain was deranged by the nitrogen of his rich food and his head was as empty as his stomach was full, he had a certain success as a preacher. His oratory was on a level with the meanest intelligence and could be heard by the deafest ear, for if he did not possess the brain of a St. Augustine or of an Origen he had a throat which might vie with all the Fathers of the Church. He would spend three or four hours shouting and vociferating, for the most part of the time crying out insults against the Liberals and Freemasons. His style was the most picturesque and absurd that one could imagine. He cultivated the burlesque manner with eminent success, and sometimes his strange remarks would cause shouts of laughter among the congregation. He was fond of comparing Espatero with God, only to draw the moral that he was not worthy so much as to unloose his shoe-latchet.

The Lord of Labraz: leaving no stone unturned

The Lord of Labraz by Pío Baroja, translated by Aubrey F. G. Bell, Alfred A. Knopf, 1926 (originally released in 1903 in Spanish)

From TIME.com’s August 30, 1926 book reviews:

The Spanish hail Señor Baroja as their most popular living talespinner. He writes a little like Dickens, a little like Stevenson, always like a Spaniard—that is, with bold light, harsh shading. His story here is quite simple—a blind nobleman in a priest-ridden hill town quixotically shoulders his brother's misdeeds, earning only calumny and spite from the populace, renouncing society and going to wander, Lear-like, over the bleak table-lands with a wronged barmaid for his Cordelia, a Basque beggar for Poor Tom. It is fiction with strong bones.

Today we have an even better shorthand available for the this book, which would be to imagine Shakespeare and Dickens combining to write telenovelas.

Baroja can be deft in his descriptions—all you need to know about the “priest-ridden” description can be supported in one sentence:

This church was endowed with forty-eight benefices, but as the salaries were very small, those favoured were naturally men of limited education; according to the chronicler Alizaga, they were simple modest persons who spent their time gambling and drinking, courting and coursing.

There are many more episodes that help describe the town, such as the madam of a brothel threatening to post a list of the priests that visit her house. The town seems to attract its share of eccentric or flawed characters that blend in with the locals. An exiled roué returns to Labraz and picks up right where the reader imagines he left off. The Englishman Samuel Bothwell Crawford, whose novel we are supposedly reading here, absurdly (but effectively) defends the honor of his innkeeper’s daughters. Life in Labraz…well, let’s see another example:

A single occurrence paints the town. Once during Holy Week, while the procession was going through the streets, a strolling gipsy with a monkey arrived and begged for alms. He avoided the streets through which the procession passed, and made the monkey dance to the sound of a drum. Suddenly the sky became overcast and presently it began to rain. The people, those who were returning in the robes with which they had played a part in the procession, those who had carried the canopy, the standards and the image on its platform, were of opinion that the gipsy’s ape was responsible for the rain. A canon, with the face of a pig, sad that for the gipsy to have gone about the streets on that day was in very truth an insult to the Divine Majesty, and forthwith all those bullies of the procession hurled themselves on the monkey and stabbed it all over. The gipsy ran away and was pursued with stones till he was lost to sight. All these things Perico, the Liberal of the town, explained by the following poem, which he had probably invented:

In Labraz you must not expect
Many Liberals to collect,
Labraz where nine of ten at least
Are sons of canon, monk or priest.

While the story continues to be established Baroja weaves in more literature:

One day Micaela, turning over and sorting things in the upper rooms, found in a closed case, wrapped up in cloths, a patined harp lavishly adorned. In the same box were some books yellow with time; there were French novels, Matilde, and Sir Walter Scott’s Rokeby and The lady of the Lake, Lamartine’s Graziellta, and other novels; the rest were devotional works with images and certificates of confession in their pages. Micaela had the harp brought down to her room, and read the novels. Despite her natural calm and aristocratic coldness, all that mass of languid love affairs and tender complaints made an impression o her, and her mind fell a pretty to the poison of romanticism.

The young man hired to teach Micaela how to play the harp, Raimundo, falls hopelessly in love with her. As the nephew of the organist of the church and himself the back-up organist, his timidity and respect, not to mention his vows, lead him to remain quiet of his desire although he tries (and succeeds) in expressing himself through playing the organ.

The visiting roué, Ramiro, focuses his skill to seduce Micaela. “Don Ramiro left no stone unturned: he lent her Faublas and the Liasons Dangereuses in hopes that they might influence her; but Micaela read these books and returned them with the comment that she had found them dull and silly.” Subtle, isn't he? I’m sure we’ll find out if the effort pays off or not in the next book titled “The Sacrilege.”

The Lord of Labraz: baptizing the wine

The Lord of Labraz by Pío Baroja, translated by Aubrey F. G. Bell, Alfred A. Knopf, 1926 (originally released in 1903 in Spanish)

I’ve discovered Pío Baroja recently and have enjoyed what I’ve read. To say he’s inconsistent in many areas would be an understatement but part of his writing has appealed to me. So until I find The Tree of Knowledge in translation for less than several hundred dollars I’ll be content to read his other (I hate to say lesser) works. Hopefully I can capture some of the better aspects of this book with a few extended quotes for anyone interested in Baroja.

In the preface of The Lord of Labraz, a nameless narrator meets an Englishman in Labraz, “a terrible town, a town of the Middle Ages”. The Englishman, Samuel Bothwell Crawford, tells of his enjoyments and preferences:

”And now, as Swiveller says, let us drink the rosy wine of friendship and sing the old melody “Begone, dull care.’”

I remembered that this Swiveller is a character in Dickens, in The Old Curiosity Shop, and I asked the Englishman if he did not consider the author of Pickwick an admirable novelist.

“Yes,” he answered, very seriously, “he was a good fellow. Let us drink his health.”

“The health of one who no longer exists?” I inquired.

“Does he not exist in his books far more than the majority of living persons, more than so many an insignificant wight?”

So we drank Dickens’ health in the rosy wine of friendship.

The narrator takes a copy of a novel that Bothwell Crawford has written, copying it unchanged for us to read…which makes up the novel that follows.

At the inn of Goya in Labraz, we’re introduced to a former worker at the inn who married the owner’s daughter:

Ten years after his marriage Domingo Chiqui died, possibly from having lived too well, and left the Goya with two daughters. There was no memory in the town of an illness and death so gay as those of the hostess’ husband. His friends would go to visit him in the room where he lay in bed, and his illness seemed to have sharpened his wits and added to his facetiousness, for at every instant he made some witty remark in his intricate language, so that laughter filled his bedroom instead of lamentation and where one would have expected sad long faces were only cheerful looks and gleaming merry eyes. In his last moments his wit made even the priest who had gone to confess him laugh; he consoled his friends with a grotesque account of the road of purgatory he would have to tread and how he would tell St. Peter that, although a tavernkeeper, he had not often baptized his wine.

Literature seems to play an enhanced role in the book, not just in allusions but with characters in it as well:

The Goya [the hostess of the Goya Inn] raised her head and, pointing with her finger to the greasy book that she was reading, exclaimed, as though she were speaking to someone who was not present:

“This scene fills me with greater enthusiasm each time I read it. The Duke Rodolfo is about to enter the room of the dressmaker. I think he is her lover; yes, he must be her lover, I have no doubt of it.”

The muleteer seated in the dark, bent forward towards the old man and said: “I say, Preacher, perhaps the book reminds her of some of her own past, eh?”

The old man whom the muleteer had addressed as Preacher exclaimed in a fine bass voice: “What a brute he is! Yet the wretch speaks sooth!” The Goya, who had half heard the muleteer’s remark, asked dryly: “What did he say?”

Blanca, who had also understood their allusions, murmured, looking severely at the Goya: “I don’t know why you read these novels, Mother: they are nothing but lies.”

“Lies? Yes, a strange kind of lies.”

While Baroja can be sublime, he can also be sloppy. Bothwell Crawford leaves the inn at one point, magically reappearing unannounced just a few lines later. Another feature I’ve enjoyed with Baroja lies in his development of supporting characters, such as the Captain of the Keys:

The Captain watched the arrival of the late-comers, and would say in the kindly tone of one set in authority: “Come along; it is time to close.” He then shut the smaller door, and after that a palisaded double-winged door facing the town; he then went up a staircase to a wooden balcony ensconced in the recess of the gate, above a large crucifix. That was where the Captain of the Keys lived. Often in the middle of the night he would have to get up, much against his well, to open for some townsman or for the doctor. The Captain of the Keys was a very important personage in the house of the Goya. According to his own account he represented for the whole town the family and the tranquility of the home. In his hands was the key in which securely rested the whole life of the town. The Captain could never understand, and one can well believe it, that there should be towns mad and imprudent enough to pull down their walls. This seemed to him the greatest absurdity.

Sloppy or not, Baroja makes it enjoyable…

Red Dawn discussion

Red Dawn by Pío Baroja
Translated by Isaac Goldberg
Alfred A. Knopf, 1924, 347 pages

This would be the dawn of a new day, the dawn of justice, the cry of an entire people, which for so many years had been downtrodden, martyred, exploited, reduced to the wretched plight of a beast of burden. It would be a bloody dawn in which, by the light of the universal conflagration, the old social edifice that had been sustained by ignominy and special privilege would crumble and vanish, without leaving behind so much as a mound of ruins or a heap of ashes. (page 310)

“Let us keep in our hearts the memory of the friend whom we have just interred. He was a man, a strong man with the soul of a child…. He could have attained to the glory of an artist—a great artist—yet he preferred the glory of a human being. He might have dazzled humanity with his accomplishments; he preferred to help it…. Of us all, dispirited and discouraged as we were, he was the only man who was filled with great hopes. He had the serenity of those who are born to wage battle with great tempests. He was a great, a noble, a loyal heart…. He was a rebel, because he wished to be just. Let us all preserve in our memory the recollection of the friend whom we have just buried…and that is all.” (page 347, ellipses in original)

Originally published in 1904, Red Dawn can be a difficult read in many areas, especially involving the integral part that politics plays in the novel. The book transcends its time and place (and politics) thanks to Baroja’s focus, looking beneath what the characters believe in order to understand the forces driving their beliefs. This final book in The Struggle for Life trilogy departs from the detached view of the first two volumes as Baroja interjects himself with passionate language and direct judgment. As with Weeds, I will point to the online resources for The Quest since I can find no additional resources on this book. I cannot find an English translation available online so I will spend more time than usual on the story.

One of the issues raised by Baroja in The Struggle for Life trilogy centers on the emptiness of idealism when not backed up by action. The quotes by Manuel at the end of The Quest promise an attempt for self-improvement, something he constantly fails to do in Weeds. In Red Dawn, Jesús undermines his vision (from the end of Weeds) of man’s potential superior state by doing nothing productive (unless stealing from cemeteries or trying to seduce his sister’s friends counts in that area). Red Dawn, through the character of Juan, takes a deeper look at what happens when such idealism is backed up by certain types of action.

Prologue
The prologue takes place at about the same time as the end of Weeds. The reader is introduced to Juan Alcázar, Manuel’s brother, as he leaves the seminary for good. Introduced to what he views as real life through reading forbidden books, he intends to strike out on his own in order to live and work for something he believes. He doesn’t know what that is yet, other than it has nothing to do with religion. Despite hardships and rough encounters, his motto for travel and life is “Forward ever!”

Part One
The story picks up a few years after the end of Weeds and the prologue. Manuel now lives with his sister Ignacia as well as Salvadora and Enrique. Salvadora and Engrique are the brother and sister urchins that La Fea had brought into her home in Weeds. Manuel has matured quite a bit in the intervening years. He realizes his own limitations and tries to avoid temptation, such as moving away from Jesús or by staying home at night instead of going out. Unfortunately he still has some distance to go in the maturation process. One stumbling blocks revolves around Salvadora and his inability to recognize or profess his love for her.

Juan appears in Madrid and stays with Manuel, filling him in on his life and ramblings. Juan wants to become an artist and begins to make waves in the Madrid art scene. One night at the theater with Juan, Manuel runs into an old friend who details what has happened with many friends from his golfo days, a depressing reminder of the direction his life could have taken. Juan later sees Roberto, who has married and has a child. Roberto’s trial was resolved in his favor so he is now wealthy. Impressed with Manuel applying himself in work, Roberto lends money to Manuel so he can buy his own print shop. Manuel is a little hesitant at this step but his sister and Salvadora pressure him to take the offer. In moving the press and setting up his own shop Manuel’s funds are depleted by seedy businessmen. With no business on the horizon, Manuel becomes ill from the overwhelming pressure. Salvadora nurses him back to health, opening his eyes slightly to his feelings for her. Unfortunately he hires Jesús to help him at the print shop during his illness. The conflict between his former carefree life and his current responsibilities cause an irreparable break with his old friend who calls him a “filthy bourgeois who thinks only of money.”

Part Two
This section may seem tedious to some readers but there resides a method behind Barjoa’s insistence on delving into the political scene. At a local tavern called The Dawn, a group of anarchists begin meeting each week. Calling themselves The Red Dawn, Baroja gently pokes fun at the group and their wide range of anarchistic flavors. Juan represents the idealist in the group, seeing the struggle between the have-nots and the haves as a necessity while describing actions in semi-religious tones. Other members participate simply for the violence. Most of the participants fall somewhere between the extremes, each certain of the superiority of his beliefs. The one thing theyall have in common is the lack of any positive results. Even though Manuel is constantly put down as bourgeois, he combines some of the sillier parts of the anarchists’ speeches with his distaste for the group:

“Anarchism’s all right enough for me if it only comes at once and assures everybody the means of having his own home, a little garden and three or four hours of work per day; but this for ever talking and talking, without anything else, the way you fellows carry on, and this calling yourselves Comrades, and greeting one another with ‘Salud!’—it’s so sickening that I prefer to remain a mere printer.” (page 110)

Juan acts as one of the leaders of the group, believing “The deeds of Anarchists are all the more valuable because they are born of one’s own conscience and not of an outside mandate.” While initially eschewing violence, he ultimately embraces it as necessary when he sinks into physical and mental exhaustion. Having always been sickly, the toll his idealism extracts continues to mount throughout the book. While treating Juan relatively gently, Baroja takes aim at the other anarchists. Many of these characters are caricatures, with Baroja’s disdain staying close to the surface. He describes one character (Malonado) as “a presumptuous fellow, puffed up with that Jacobin pride which knows how to conceal base passions beneath pompous phrases.” (page 114) After one vacuous meeting, Baroja drily notes ” one might discern in all of them a certain pleasure in playing at revolutionaries.” (page 116)

Up to this point in the trilogy, Baroja has provided heartbreaking examples of cruelty with the disparity in Spanish society at the time, yet he also doesn’t pull any punches in showing how many characters sabotage their chances through their own actions (or usually inaction). The older Rebolledo, owner of a shop beneath Manuel’s residence, presents the only lucid argument at one meeting in his insistence that happiness is not a universal right. Roberto provides the counterpoint to the arachists for Manuel. Roberto has worked hard and become a self-made man in addition to helping Manuel succeed. His viewpoints on anarchism (“It’s pleasanter for a child to play truant than to go to school”) and society (“To live in society means to be either a creditor or debtor. There’s no middle course”) provide part of his overall philosophy that underlies his success.

Baroja doesn’t hold back on artists in Spain at the time, either. The first section of Weeds portrayed artists playing at being bohemian while not achieving anything. In all of Juan’s tramping across Europe, he has lived apart from artists until he came to Madrid. “Juan had met with intense disappointment upon closer acquaintance with artists” while in Spain. “[I]n Madrid he became somewhat intimate with painters and sculptors, and was astonished to discover a petty, brutal crowd—a clique of schemers, hot in pursuit of crosses and medals, utterly devoid of any noble feelings, filled with the same evil passions harboured by the rest of the bourgeoisie.” (pages 107-108)

The rest of this section outlines some of the meetings held by the anarchists as well as provides updates some of the characters from the first two books of the trilogy. During meetings, exploits by anarchists are detailed and celebrated by the group even though nothing productive has come from their performance. I found Alex Butterworth’s book on 19th-century anarchists timely in reading Red Dawn.

Part Three
The final section shows Baroja at his most scathing and prescient while continuing to show Manuel's development. His independence of thought, bolstered now by a love of reading, still needs some work. He loves reading revolutionary works without considering the outcomes of their actions. Manuel does reach a key insight about the group around him: “There’s a touch of madness in all of them,” said Manuel to himself. “I’ll have to break loose from these fellows.” (page 250)

While Baroja acknowledges that conditions in Spain foster an anarchistic mindset, he eviscerates the vocal poseurs. During one extended walk where several anarchists expound their political ideas, they stop to watch a farmer seed his field. The farmer accomplishes more with his simple action than all the empty talk of the boasters.

The Anarchistic dogma, with its network of principles, was headed for bankruptcy, and in the same measure that its dogma fell into disrepute, so did its defenders and propagandists. After the Quixotes of Anarchisms—the Nihilist philosophers, the learned men, the sociologists, the dynamite brigade, came the Anarchist editors—the Sancho Panzas of Anarchism, who battered on the dogma and exploited their comrades through insignificant sheets in whose columns they paraded as moralists of vast importance.

These good Sanchos filled their diatribes with the platitudes of pedestrian sociology; they spoke of aboulia, of bourgeois degeneration, of amorality, of profiteering; instead of quoting saint Thomas, they quoted Kropotkin or Jean Grave; they defined what was permitted and what not to the Anarchist; they were the exclusive proprietors of the holy doctrine; they alone sold the genuine Anarchist cloth in their shops; all the others were vile imposters who had sold out to the government. They had a mania for proclaiming that they were strong, smiling, and that they lived beyond all worriment, when in truth the greater part were poor domestic animals who spent their lives scribbling articles, bundling packages of their papers for the mails, and wheedling money out of subscribers in arrears.

Every one of these fakirs had a public of dolts who admired him, and before whom he would strut through his paces like a peacock. (pages 229-230)

Juan’s health, mental and physical, continues to deteriorate. He manages to convene a symposium for various strands of anarchists to present their arguments, giving a stirring speech outlining some of his ideals. He believes man is essentially good and free. Society should focus on human dignity instead of wages, with anarchism as the answer. Some of his outlook is shattered when he mingles with some homeless kids, failing to find anything redeeming about them. Herein lies the difference between Manuel and Juan. Manuel has already lived that life, seeing mankind when grappling for survival. He does not share Juan’s illusions that man is necessarily good by nature. To some extent, Manuel’s previous experiences highlighted that a type of anarchy already exists and it failed to resemble any pompous pronouncement of The Red Dawn group.

An upcoming coronation provides an opportunity for the anarchists to make themselves felt. Juan allows himself to be manipulated, allowing a bomber stay in Manuel’s house. Manuel and Salvadora discover the bomb and, with help, are able to destroy all traces of it.

Manuel felt all his Anarchistic ideas crumbling to bits and his instincts of normal humanity returning. The thought of such an apparatus being put together in cold blood incensed him. Nothing could condone the death and destruction which that could wreak. … There was no force compelling them to commit the crime. On the contrary, everything conspired against their committing it…. And yet, they were impelled by a barbaric fanaticism, overcoming all obstacles, to scatter death among unfortunate victims.(pages 305-306, second ellipses in original)

Juan has changed, his physical sickness mirroring his adoption of violent methods. The quote at the top of this post shows his fanaticism driving him to desire a “bloody dawn” in order to bring about revolution. Yet he is gloomier than ever, realizing his sacrifice has brought about nothing. The coronation occurs without a hitch while many of the anarchists get drunk. Their impotence shows how feeble they really are, all posture and talk with no substance.

Roberto makes one last appearance, signing the printing shop over to Manuel. Roberto provides a counterpoint to Juan, recognizing that society cannot be radically changed for the better. “One prejudice is destroyed; at once, another is born. You can’t live without them.” (page 319) While the trilogy highlights conflicts between rich and poor, the tension isn’t always where you expect it. Manuel, in running his business, barely scratches by while the printer’s union dictates to him what he can and cannot do, usually undermining his business.

Manuel and Salvadora marry, thanks to some prodding by Roberto. Juan’s health worsens and he dies. The moving speech given by a friend (the second quote at the top of this post) conceals Juan’s meager contributions. The irony couched in the statement that Juan could “have dazzled humanity with his accomplishments” as an artist resides in the fact that his contributions would have been vastly greater if he had pursued his art. Manuel’s lament, prior to the funeral, justly calls Juan’s quest an illusion. Nothing will change. There is hope to be found among the hardship and privation but not from Juan’s idealism, but rather from characters like Manuel and Roberto.

The Struggle for Life

The only thing I've written lately has been notes on the books I'm reading, but I haven't felt like organizing and posting discussions. The normal blather should return soon.

There's no other purpose for this post except to enjoy the look of the books that make up Baroja's The Struggle for Life trilogy. Posts related to the books can be found at the following links:

Online resources, which includes links to online texts for The Quest and Weeds

The Quest

Weeds

Red Dawn

Red Dawn, from the library of Beat poet John Thomas (Idlet)

Weeds discussion

Weeds by Pío Baroja
Translated by Isaac Goldberg
Alfred A. Knopf, 1923, 344 pages

With Weeds I will link to the online resources for The Quest since I can't find additional information that seems relevant or helpful. Fortunately the text can be found online here.

Weeds came out in 1904 shortly after The Quest was released. We find many of the same characters from the initial volume of The Struggle for Life trilogy struggling for survival in turn-of-the-century Madrid. Baroja's colorful characters, whether central or peripheral, spice up his work. He often introduces them with a minimum of description but they are able to leap off the page. The Quest ended on a hopeful note as Manuel decides he should live with the working class in the sun and not with the shadowy figures haunting Madrid at night. Alas, not only is this easier said than done, Manuel lacks a will of his own. His inability to follow through on productive ideas results mostly from his nature but it doesn’t help that the cards are stacked against him. Baroja accentuates the deprivation of the lower classes in both The Quest and Weeds, but the reader is given a view of additional layers of society in this volume. In The Quest discussion I mentioned Manuel was more a spectator of life than a participant, but part of that was due to his age. The first volume of the trilogy takes Manuel up to the age of seventeen. Weeds covers parts of his life from age seventeen to twenty-one as Manuel tries to figure out his place in a sordid and vicious world. Because each of the three parts of the book have a distinctive flavor (as did each part in The Quest, something I falied to mention), I think a synopsis of each section along with some extended quotes offers a good introduction to the work.

Part One
Picking up immediately where The Quest ends, Roberto Hasting takes Manuel under his wing. Roberto’s tenaciousness in trying to succeed contrasts with almost every other character so far in the trilogy. At the start of the book Roberto resides with some artist friends, but his disdain for them is clear. He pulls no punches when talking to Manuel:

“But when a man can't get a real grasp upon anything, when he lacks will power, heart, lofty sentiments, all ideas of justice and equity, then he's capable of anything. If these fellows had any exceptional talent, they might be of some use and make a career for themselves. But they haven't. On the other hand, they've lost the moral notions of the bourgeois, the pillars that sustain the life of the ordinary man. They live as men who possess the ailments and the vices of genius, but neither the genius's talent nor soul; they vegetate in an atmosphere of petty intrigues, of base trivialities. They are incapable of carrying anything to completion. There may be a touch of genius in those monsters of Alex's, in Santillana's poetry; I don't say there isn't. But that's not enough. A man must carry out what he's thought up, what he's felt, and that takes hard, constant, daily toil. It's just like an infant at birth, and although that comparison is hackneyed, it is exact; the mother bears it in pain, then feeds it from her own breast and tends it until it grows up sound and strong. These fellows want to create a beautiful work of art at a single stroke and all they do is talk and talk." …

“Today you're nothing more than a loafer who has yet to become a workingman: a fellow like me, like all the rest of us who toil for a living. At present, activity is a genuine effort for you; do something; repeat what you do until activity becomes a habit. Convert your static life into a dynamic one. Don't you understand? I want to impress upon you the need of will power." (pages 20 - 22)

Manuel listens but rarely takes Roberto’s advice to heart. He will work hard for a while but the minute he has a little bit of money or an impediment is placed in his way his natural indolence takes control. The bulk of this section revolves around a hoax to pass Manuel off as the son of a Baroness so she can extract money from her suitor. Manuel is more than happy to participate in the scheme: “Little work, little to eat and clean clothes: these were the conditions that Manuel found in the home of the baroness, and they were unsurpassable.” (page 54) The plan fails and Manuel is once again on his own.

Part Two
Roberto assists Manuel again, this time getting him an apprenticeship in a print shop. Manuel performs well for several months, receiving a promotion and achieving something approaching security. Learning this trade would also help him out of some tough spots later in the book. Among the interesting characters at work, Manuel makes the mistake of spending the most time with Jesús. Jesús has an even weaker will than Manuel and, after the incest incident described below, they end up on “general strike”, skipping work and drinking their way across Madrid. During their month-long binge, they hit bottom and Manuel ends up briefly in jail. He happens to meet his cousin Vidal, who provides him with a clean place to sleep.

I have mentioned before that Baroja avoids the “noble poor” trope but he does show the destitute in a humane light. Urchins and beggars that chance upon some money are usually happy to share it with their friends. Those with little assist those with even less. There is a tension between rich and poor bubbling just below the surface, surfacing every now and then. Groups or people that provide charity are usually berated and criticized by those they are trying to help. One example—Jesuits visit the hostelry where Manuel lives and the residents roundly curse their generosity, some because it isn't enough while others mock their condescension. Baroja provides no comments on this behavior when it happens.

Jesús provides a diatribe on how he feels civilization has made the gap between the wealthy and the poor worse:

“Formerly, the rich man and the poor got their light alike from the same sort of lamp; today the poor man continues with his humble lamp and the rich man lights his house with electricity; before, if the poor man went on foot, the rich man went on horseback; today the poor man continues to go on foot, and the rich man rides in an automobile; before, the rich man had to dwell among the poor; today, he lives apart; he's raised a wall of cotton and can hear nothing. Let the poor howl; he can't hear. Let them die of hunger; he'll never learn of it.” (page 217)

Unfortunately the same sentiments in not caring can be said to exist among some of the poor. For every ragpicker or apprentice trying to make an honest living, there is a scoundrel trying to perpetrate some hoax or scheme to cheat people out of their money. In addition, Baroja highlights the plight of returning veterans of the war of 1898, ignored by the government and society. A soldier back from Cuba tells Manuel horrible stories about atrocities committed there. While stealing jewelry from a soldier that has committed suicide (in a Madrid suburb), he drives home the point on how he views the situation for the poor in the city: “In war times, war methods.” (page 231)

I have mentioned the appearance of incest in Spanish-language literature (The Maias and Baroja’s The Restlessness of Shanti Andia are just two examples). Often (but not always) this theme is raised in conjunction with thieving and plundering among a close-knit group and the object can be money or spouses. Jesús and his sister La Sinforosa sleep with each other, taking money and the bed from their pregnant, sickly sister Joaquina (called La Fea, or “ugly”). Yet La Fea is the one who provides not just for her own family but for other urchins she brings into her house. Baroja seems to add his imprint to this motif, showing that the literal act is as damaging as the symbolic exploitation of others in poverty.

Manuel meets colorful characters scrambling to make a living, but one of the most lively has to be Alonso de Guzmán Calderón y Téllez. Alonso goes by several nicknames, most relating to his previous occupation as circus proprietor/owner. I enjoyed this passage that reminded me of one way smut used to be peddled:

"What are you doing now?"
"I've been selling smutty books. I ought to have one here," he added, showing Manuel a pamphlet, the title of which read: The Wiles of Women on The First Night.
"Is that a good one?" asked Manuel.
"Oh, so so. Let me warn you beforehand that you're supposed to read only every other line. To think of me, fallen to such things!”

Part Three
The final section begins with Manuel’s initiation into an upscale gang that includes his cousin Vidal. Manuel runs into Justa, the ragpicker’s daughter he fell in love with at the end of The Quest. After an engagement to a butcher’s son, she is now a ruined woman, abandoned by her father. Her fall and subsequent turn to prostitution provides only the first of several intense dramas in this section. Manuel and some of his friends attend the public spectacle of a soldier’s execution. Vidal is murdered, probably by a ruffian with whom he had an acrimonious split in The Quest. Justa abandons Manuel just before he is arrested for questioning about Vidal’s murder. His despair, which has been building, reaches a critical point:

Manuel sat down upon the bed and pondered. How many excellent projects, how many plans cherished in his mind had come to nought In his soul! Here he was, only at the beginning of life, and already he felt himself without the strength to fight the battle. Not a hope, not an illusion smiled at him. Work? What for? Set up one column after another of type, walk to work and then back to the house, day in and day out, sleep,—all for what? He was bereft of plan, idea, inspiration. (page 299)

Because Manuel started to provide information to the judge about his gang, which is well connected, the judge is pressured to drop the investigation. Manuel is released to Ortiz, the one honest policeman (it seems) in Madrid, provided he helps the cop track down Vidal’s killer. The reader has seen the seamy side of Madrid many times during Manuel’s ragamuffin days and the depressing scenes continue as he tags along with Ortiz:

“It was a mild afternoon and the sun was glorious. They took chairs just outside La Blasa's tavern. In a lane opposite to them the men were sprawling in the doorways of their houses; the women, with their ragged skirts gathered about them, were skipping from one side to the other, their feet splashing in the stinking sewage that ran like a black stream through the middle of the street. Here and there a woman had a cigarette in her mouth. Big grey rats darted about over the mud, pursued by a number of gamins with sticks and stones.” (page 333)

Manuel, by threatening the leaders of the gang, is able to extract himself from the search for Vidal’s killer, but he has reached a breaking point. The extended quotes that follow, which end the book, seem to encapsulate some of Baroja’s outlook and philosophy (ellipses in original):

Manuel was filled with a gnawing irritation against the whole world,—a hatred that up to then had lain dormant was now awaking in his soul against society, against mankind. . . .
"Let me tell you," he concluded, "and I mean it. I wish it would rain dynamite for a whole week and that then the Eternal Father himself would fall from heaven, a heap of ashes." In his fury he invoked every destructive power, that this miserable society of ours might be reduced to a mound of smouldering ruins.
Jesús listened attentively to his diatribe. "You're an anarchist," he said.
"I?"
"Yes. I'm one, too."
"You?"
"Yes."
"Since when?"
"Ever since I've seen the infamies committed in the world; ever since I've seen how coldly a piece of humanity is given over to death; ever since I've seen how men die friendless on the streets and in the hospital," answered Jesús with a certain solemnity. (pages 342-343)

Jesús did not answer the question. Then, in a calm voice he spoke of a vision of an idyllic humanity,—a sweet, pious, noble and childishly simple vision. In this dream, Man, guided by a new idea, attained to a superior state.
No more hatred, no more rancour. No more judges, nor policemen, nor soldiers, nor authority, nor fatherland. In the vast prairies of the world, free men laboured in the sunlight. The law of love has surplanted the law of duty, and the horizon of humanity becomes ever wider, ever a softer blue. . . .
And Jesús continued speaking of a vague ideal of love and justice, of industry and piety. These words of his, chaotic, incoherent as they were, fell like a solacing balm upon Manuel's lacerated heart. (pages 343-344)

The Quest discussion

The Quest by Pío Baroja
Translated by Isaac Goldberg
Alfred A. Knopf, 1922, 289 pages

Online resources for Baroja and The Quest, including links to the text, can be found here.

La Corrala was a seething, feverish world in little, as busy as an anthill. There people toiled, idled, guzzled, ate and died of hunger; there furniture was made, antiques were counterfeited, old embroideries were fashioned, buns cooked, broken porcelain mended, robberies planned and women's favours traded.

La Corrala was a microcosm; it was said that if all the denizens were placed in line they would reach from Embajadores lane to the Plaza del Progreso; it harboured men who were everything and yet nothing: half scholars, half smiths, half carpenters, half masons, half business men, half thieves.

In general, everybody who lived here was disoriented, dwelling in that unending abjection produced by everlasting, irremediable poverty; many sloughed their occupations as a reptile its skin; others had none; some carpenters' or masons' helpers, because of their lack of initiative, understanding and skill, could never graduate from their apprenticeship. There were also gypsies, mule and dog clippers, nor was there a dearth of porters, itinerant barbers and mountebanks. Almost all of them, if opportunity offered, stole what they could; they all presented the same pauperized, emaciated look. And all harboured a constant rage that vented itself in furious imprecations and blasphemies.

They lived as if sunk in the shades of a deep slumber, unable to form any clear notion of their lives, without aspirations, aims, projects or anything. …

From time to time, like a gentle sunbeam amidst the gloom, the souls of these stultified, bestial men,—of these women embittered by harsh lives that held neither solace nor illusion,—would be penetrated by a romantic, disinterested feeling of tenderness that made them live like human beings for a while; but when the gust of sentimentalism had blown over, they would return to their moral inertia, as resigned and passive as ever.

(pages 78 – 80)

At one point in The Quest Pío Baroja plays with what his novel should look like, musing that elevating his language will get him elected to the Spanish Academy. Thank goodness he didn't go that route. The Quest’s language is anything but pedestrian as he explores Madrid’s coarser side. The Quest follows Manuel, the son of a boardinghouse maid, as he bumbles through adolescence and poverty. The colorful characters that Manuel meets make the book a pleasure to read. At times Baroja paints an ugly picture, but because he avoids the “noble poor” trope the examples of kindness and integrity shine all the brighter.

Manuel survives various changes in status, starting with his uncle sending him to Madrid and his mother (Petra) in order to learn a trade. The summary from The Nation (at the resources link) lists Manuel’s different jobs: “He is the servant in a boarding-house, a shoemaker's apprentice, a ragpicker's assistant and the associate of thieves, passing through the strangest scenes and constant fluctuations of good fortune.” The good fortune, such that it is, occurs infrequently or on a limited basis for all the characters. Good luck can involve earning, finding or stealing a couple of céntimos. Or in the case of the student Roberto Hastings, making progress on restoring his family fortune (worth millions) buoys and sustains him.

Manuel, a shy and sensitive teen, is more a spectator of life than a participant. He views much of the action around him, whether that of the urchins or polite society, with detachment and disgust. The malevolence of the urchins repulses him and keeps him on the sidelines of many schemes. The plots he participates in are done half-heartedly. Branded a loafer several times, honest work does not scare Manuel although the mindlessness of some tasks or the disproportionate share he is required to perform drives him to shirk his duties at some point. His dreams are limited: “Manuel thought that if in time he should become the owner of a little house like Señor Custodio’s, and of a cart and donkeys, and hens and a dog, and find in addition a woman to love him, he would be one of the almost happy men in this world.” (page 259)

Manuel’s burgeoning sexual desires, causing feelings he can’t control the same as others, frustrate and distract him. “It was during these libidinous spells that dark, sinister thoughts assailed him,--the notion of how useless his life was, the certainty of an adverse fate,--and as he considered the vagabond, abandoned existence that awaited him, his soul walked with bitterness and sobs rose in his throat….” (page 270) His normal melancholy transforms into despair as he realizes he cannot obtain his heart’s desire, Justa. The examples of love he has seen have usually been perverse or violent, adding to his confusion and frustration. Manuel finds love, just like the rest of life, inscrutable.

A word about the title The Quest (La Busca). Plenty of characters, including Manuel, search throughout the novel for food, shelter, pleasure, or love. Manuel’s search goes deeper, examining society and his life, looking for meaning and his place within it. Near the end of the book, Manuel passes a worker commenting on all the urchins, “There’s no good left in any of them”. This remark bothers Manuel. “Why wasn’t he good? Why? He examined his life. He wasn’t bad, he had harmed nobody. … Then contradicting himself, he imagined that perhaps he was bad after all, and in this case the most he could do was to reform and become better.” (page 287) Considering all that life had dealt him, this would be easier said than done. Yet the book ends on a positive note as Manuel watches people thronging the streets at night, sliding in and out of cafes, gambling dens, and brothels. “He understood that the existence of the nightowls and that of the working folk were parallel lives that never for an instant met. For the ones, pleasure, vice, the night; for the others, labour, fatigue, the sun. And it seemed to him, too, that he should belong to the second class, to the folk who toil in the sun, not to those who dally in the shadows.” (page 289)

Baroja takes the reader through the coarser side of Madrid and its suburbs, providing laughs in addition to heartbreak. While following Manuel along these paths, there is an undercurrent that the current situation of disparity cannot hold. Baroja’s portrays all of his characters with the vitality and dignity of experience, providing what feels like a record of Madrid 100 years ago. I look forward to reading the next two volumes in the trilogy.

The Quest online resources

The Quest by Pío Baroja
Translated by Isaac Goldberg
(Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1922)

"Before [1898], in the period of adventures, Spain was led by Don Quixote. From now on, it would be directed by Sancho Panza." - Pío Baroja

I am duplicating the online resources for Baroja that I listed in The Restlessness of Shanti Andía resources since there is not much information in English available online.

Pío Baroja

The Wikipedia entry for Baroja

More on the Generation of 1898 at Wikipedia


H. L. Mencken on Baroja, in the introduction of Youth and Egolatry

Baroja, then, stands for the modern Spanish mind at its most enlightened. He is the Spaniard of education and worldly wisdom, detached from the mediaeval imbecilities of the old regime and yet aloof from the worse follies of the demagogues who now rage in the country. Vastly less picturesque than Blasco Ibanez, he is nearer the normal Spaniard--the Spaniard who, in the long run, must erect a new structure of society upon the half archaic and half Utopian chaos now reigning in the peninsula.

From the biographical sketch at the The University of Texas’ Baroja collection

Baroja lived a fairly quiet and sedentary life in Spain, but would occasionally travel through Europe, especially to France, England, and Italy. During his travels he met other literary luminaries like Oscar Wilde and Spanish poet Antonio Machado, and he accumulated an impressive library of books about witchcraft and the occult. In July 1936, at the start of the Spanish Civil War, Baroja was imprisoned as "an enemy of tradition." Even though a member of the army recognized Baroja as a famous author and released him after a single night in jail, Baroja was outraged and moved to France. He didn't return until the end of the war in 1939.

Here is an excerpt of one of Baroja’s stories, The Labyrinth of the Sirens. The influence on Hemingway can be seen just from this short passage, translated by V. Stevenson.


Chapter 5 of Rosinante: To The Road Again by John Dos Passos, titled “A Novelist of Revolution”. Excerpt:

From the first Spanish discoveries in America till the time of our own New England clipper ships, the Basque coast was the backbone of Spanish trade. The three provinces were the only ones which kept their privileges and their municipal liberties all through the process of the centralizing of the Spanish monarchy with cross and faggot, which historians call the great period of Spain. The rocky inlets in the mountains were full of shipyards that turned out privateers and merchantmen manned by lanky broad-shouldered men with hard red-beaked faces and huge hands coarsened by generations of straining on heavy oars and halyards,--men who feared only God and the sea-spirits of their strange mythology and were a law unto themselves, adventurers and bigots.

It was not till the Nineteenth century that the Carlist wars and the passing of sailing ships broke the prosperous independence of the Basque provinces and threw them once for all into the main current of Spanish life. Now papermills take the place of shipyards, and instead of the great fleet that went off every year to fish the Newfoundland and Iceland banks, a few steam trawlers harry the sardines in the Bay of Biscay. The world war, too, did much to make Bilboa one of the industrial centers of Spain, even restoring in some measure the ancient prosperity of its shipping. …

"I have never hidden my admirations in literature. They have been and are Dickens, Balzac, Poe, Dostoievski and, now, Stendhal . . ." writes Baroja in the preface to the Nelson edition of La Dama Errante ("The Wandering Lady"). He follows particularly in the footprints of Balzac in that he is primarily a historian of morals, who has made a fairly consistent attempt to cover the world he lived in. With Dostoievski there is a kinship in the passionate hatred of cruelty and stupidity that crops out everywhere in his work. I have never found any trace of influence of the other three. To be sure there are a few early sketches in the manner of Poe, but in respect to form he is much more in the purely chaotic tradition of the picaresque novel he despises than in that of the American theorist.

At the blog Oreneta is a “translation of the chapter in Pío Baroja’s serialised novel The adventures, inventions and mystifications of Silvester Paradox / Aventuras, inventos y mixtificaciones de Silvestre Paradox (1901) in which Silvester takes up with an English conman, quack, amateur pugilist and exponent of inventions such as the translatoscope called Macbeth.”

The opening lines of Camilo José Cela’s Nobel prize acceptance speech:

“My old friend and mentor Pío Baroja - who did not receive the Nobel Prize because the bright light of success does not always fall on the righteous - had a clock on his wall. Around the face of that clock there were words of enlightenment, a saying that made you tremble as the hands of the clock moved round. It said ‘Each hour wounds; the last hour kills’.”

The Quest

The Quest (La Busca) is the first volume in the trilogy The Struggle for Life (La lucha por la vida ).
The second volume is Weeds (Mala hierba) and the third volume is Red Dawn (Aurora roja).

The text for The Quest can be found at either
        Project Gutenberg, or
        Wattpad, or
        the Internet Archive

John Dos Passos' thoughts on the trilogy, continuing the above excerpt:

Baroja's most important work lies in the four series of novels of the Spanish life he lived, in Madrid, in the provincial towns where he practiced medicine, and in the Basque country where he had been brought up. The foundation of these was laid by El Arbol de la Ciencia ("The Tree of Knowledge"), a novel half autobiographical describing the life and death of a doctor, giving a picture of existence in Madrid and then in two Spanish provincial towns. Its tremendously vivid painting of inertia and the deadening under its weight of intellectual effort made a very profound impression in Spain. Two novels about the anarchist movement followed it, La Dama Errante, which describes the state of mind of forward-looking Spaniards at the time of the famous anarchist attempt on the lives of the king and queen the day of their marriage, and La Ciudad de la Niebla, about the Spanish colony in London. Then came the series called La Busca ("The Search"), which to me is Baroja's best work, and one of the most interesting things published in Europe in the last decade. It deals with the lowest and most miserable life in Madrid and is written with a cold acidity which Maupassant would have envied and is permeated by a human vividness that I do not think Maupassant could have achieved. All three novels, La Busca, Mala Hierba, and Aurora Roja, deal with the drifting of a typical uneducated Spanish boy, son of a maid of all work in a boarding house, through different strata of Madrid life. They give a sense of unadorned reality very rare in any literature, and besides their power as novels are immensely interesting as sheer natural history. The type of the golfo is a literary discovery comparable with that of Sancho Panza by Cervántes.

The December 27, 1922 edition of The Nation has a review of the book, but it is a for-purchase item. Here is the description of the article, which at least gives a rough idea about the book:

Manuel, the central character of "The Quest" and the two subsequent novels, moves through the story in the traditional manner of such heroes [Note: the golfo, or vagabond/rogue/loafer]. He is the servant in a boarding-house, a shoemaker's apprentice, a ragpicker's assistant and the associate of thieves, passing through the strangest scenes and constant fluctuations of good fortune. But the career of a vagabond nowadays has little of the lighthearted freedom of olden times, his revolt is somber and tinged with a philosophy undreamed of by Gil Blas and his companions.

Unfortunately that is about all the useful information on the novel I could find (in English). Hopefully my discussion will add something useful and stimulate some interest for the novel and the author.

Update: I'm expanding the resources to include the rest of The Struggle for Life, but that only means an additional link for Weeds. Baroja has evidently dropped off the radar for English readers and/or press.

Weeds text online

The Restlessness of Shanti Andía discussion

Sketches by Pío Baroja
(Characters from The Restlessness of Shanti Andía)

At sea I lost the notion of time. Aboard ship the days are long, and yet the years, sum of the days, are short, and they fly by and are gone. Time has sped for me. The thought of the past, once youth has been left behind, is like a wound in the soul, a wound which flows continually and floods one with sadness. The enter route traversed seems like an Appian Way sown with tombs. … I do not know why it is that the past is flooded with a magical melancholy—it is hard to understand why it should be. One recalls clearly that one was not happy in those days, that one was possessed by restlessness and sorrows, and nevertheless, one has the impression that the sun then shone brighter and that the blue of the sky was purer and more splendid.

- from Book 3, Chapter 1 of The Restlessness of Shanti Andía


From John Dos Passos: “Nothing that Baroja has written since is quite on the same level. … Las Inquietudes de Shanti Andía (The Anxieties of Shanti Andía), a story of Basque seamen which contains a charming picture of a childhood in a seaside village in Guipuzcoa, delightful as it is to read, is too muddled in romantic claptrap to add much to his fame.”

The first three books are enchanted. Baroja’s “wounds” are on display, the magical melancholy making it easy for a reader to recall his own wounds. Fortunately the author is correct, not just for himself but for me as well—distance makes everything seem brighter and sunnier than it felt at the time. Baroja paints a picture of the Basque coast that sticks with me, from the sound of the women (whose screeches mimic the seagulls) to the lure and danger of the ocean. Little happens in this section, or rather little action is detailed. The languid descriptions of his hometown and the characters found there, each unique but all sharing an “off” quality, provide the “charming picture” that John Dos Passos noted. There are few characters well off in this seaside town. Most work hard to survive while others laze about, choosing to barely exist but on their own terms. While this section follows Santiago de Andía (Shanti) until he is twenty-eight years old, it isn’t a coming-of-age story as much as an exploration into the places and events that shaped who he is.

The remaining books, four through seven, follow the exploits of Shanti’s uncle, Juan de Aguirre. The quote from TIME in the resources post covers the elements: “There is a duel, a mutiny, piracy, the slave trade, an escape from prison, changed identities, a kidnapping, even buried treasure.” I didn’t see it as “romantic claptrap” as John Dos Passos described it. This section felt like a Walter Scott story, several of which are specifically mentioned in these chapters. The mystery of his uncle unfolds, second-hand initially and then in the form of a memoir, providing a “happily ever after” ending. While the storyline is fun to follow, the details of life at sea—life on a slave ship in particular—were fascinating.

A quick note: I’m struck by the number of family ties involving lovers in Spanish literature from the late-19th/early-20th century that I’ve happened to read recently. Shanti falls in love with his first cousin Mary. Galdos’ Fortunata and Jacinta have cousins marrying as well. And then there is the “are they or are they not siblings” question running through Eça de Queirós’ The Maias. I’m assuming it’s just the luck of the draw in what I’ve chosen to read since it isn’t an uncommon theme, but still it seems a little strange that such a high percentage of what I’ve picked has this device in it.

I thoroughly enjoyed the first half of the book and it has me wanting to read more of Baroja’s work. Unfortunately English translations of his highly regarded works are hard to come by. It looks like I’ll be exploring some of a nearby university’s library policy for non-students.

Some online resources for the book, as well as Baroja, can be found here.

The Restlessness of Shanti Andía online resources

The Restlessness of Shanti Andía and Other Writings by Pío Baroja
Translated and with an introduction by Anthony Kerrigan
(The University of Michigan Press, 1959)
Picture source

Text on the back:

HEMINGWAY: 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.

BAROJA: Caramba!

- as quoted in TIME

"Before [1898], in the period of adventures, Spain was led by Don Quixote. From now on, it would be directed by Sancho Panza." - Pío Baroja

This will be a different type of resources post since there is little available (in English) on Baroja and The Restlessness of Shanti Andía. I included more excerpts than usual from a variety of sources. Hopefully this will help introduce the author and some of his works.


Pío Baroja

The Wikipedia entry for Baroja

More on the Generation of 1898 at Wikipedia


H. L. Mencken on Baroja, in the introduction of Youth and Egolatry

Baroja, then, stands for the modern Spanish mind at its most enlightened. He is the Spaniard of education and worldly wisdom, detached from the mediaeval imbecilities of the old regime and yet aloof from the worse follies of the demagogues who now rage in the country. Vastly less picturesque than Blasco Ibanez, he is nearer the normal Spaniard--the Spaniard who, in the long run, must erect a new structure of society upon the half archaic and half Utopian chaos now reigning in the peninsula.

From the biographical sketch at the The University of Texas’ Baroja collection

Baroja lived a fairly quiet and sedentary life in Spain, but would occasionally travel through Europe, especially to France, England, and Italy. During his travels he met other literary luminaries like Oscar Wilde and Spanish poet Antonio Machado, and he accumulated an impressive library of books about witchcraft and the occult. In July 1936, at the start of the Spanish Civil War, Baroja was imprisoned as "an enemy of tradition." Even though a member of the army recognized Baroja as a famous author and released him after a single night in jail, Baroja was outraged and moved to France. He didn't return until the end of the war in 1939.

Here is an excerpt of one of Barojo’s stories, The Labyrinth of the Sirens. The influence on Hemingway can be seen just from this short passage, translated by V. Stevenson.


Chapter 5 of Rosinante: To The Road Again by John Dos Passos, titled “A Novelist of Revolution”. Excerpt:

From the first Spanish discoveries in America till the time of our own New England clipper ships, the Basque coast was the backbone of Spanish trade. The three provinces were the only ones which kept their privileges and their municipal liberties all through the process of the centralizing of the Spanish monarchy with cross and faggot, which historians call the great period of Spain. The rocky inlets in the mountains were full of shipyards that turned out privateers and merchantmen manned by lanky broad-shouldered men with hard red-beaked faces and huge hands coarsened by generations of straining on heavy oars and halyards,--men who feared only God and the sea-spirits of their strange mythology and were a law unto themselves, adventurers and bigots.

It was not till the Nineteenth century that the Carlist wars and the passing of sailing ships broke the prosperous independence of the Basque provinces and threw them once for all into the main current of Spanish life. Now papermills take the place of shipyards, and instead of the great fleet that went off every year to fish the Newfoundland and Iceland banks, a few steam trawlers harry the sardines in the Bay of Biscay. The world war, too, did much to make Bilboa one of the industrial centers of Spain, even restoring in some measure the ancient prosperity of its shipping. …

"I have never hidden my admirations in literature. They have been and are Dickens, Balzac, Poe, Dostoievski and, now, Stendhal . . ." writes Baroja in the preface to the Nelson edition of La Dama Errante ("The Wandering Lady"). He follows particularly in the footprints of Balzac in that he is primarily a historian of morals, who has made a fairly consistent attempt to cover the world he lived in. With Dostoievski there is a kinship in the passionate hatred of cruelty and stupidity that crops out everywhere in his work. I have never found any trace of influence of the other three. To be sure there are a few early sketches in the manner of Poe, but in respect to form he is much more in the purely chaotic tradition of the picaresque novel he despises than in that of the American theorist.

Baroja's most important work lies in the four series of novels of the Spanish life he lived, in Madrid, in the provincial towns where he practiced medicine, and in the Basque country where he had been brought up. The foundation of these was laid by El Arbol de la Ciencia ("The Tree of Knowledge"), a novel half autobiographical describing the life and death of a doctor, giving a picture of existence in Madrid and then in two Spanish provincial towns. Its tremendously vivid painting of inertia and the deadening under its weight of intellectual effort made a very profound impression in Spain. Two novels about the anarchist movement followed it, La Dama Errante, which describes the state of mind of forward-looking Spaniards at the time of the famous anarchist attempt on the lives of the king and queen the day of their marriage, and La Ciudad de la Niebla, about the Spanish colony in London. Then came the series called La Busca ("The Search"), which to me is Baroja's best work, and one of the most interesting things published in Europe in the last decade. It deals with the lowest and most miserable life in Madrid and is written with a cold acidity which Maupassant would have envied and is permeated by a human vividness that I do not think Maupassant could have achieved. All three novels, La Busca, Mala Hierba, and Aurora Roja, deal with the drifting of a typical uneducated Spanish boy, son of a maid of all work in a boarding house, through different strata of Madrid life. They give a sense of unadorned reality very rare in any literature, and besides their power as novels are immensely interesting as sheer natural history. The type of the golfo is a literary discovery comparable with that of Sancho Panza by Cervántes.

At the blog Oreneta is a “translation of the chapter in Pío Baroja’s serialised novel The adventures, inventions and mystifications of Silvester Paradox / Aventuras, inventos y mixtificaciones de Silvestre Paradox (1901) in which Silvester takes up with an English conman, quack, amateur pugilist and exponent of inventions such as the translatoscope called Macbeth.”

The opening lines of Camilo José Cela’s Nobel prize acceptance speech:

“My old friend and mentor Pío Baroja - who did not receive the Nobel Prize because the bright light of success does not always fall on the righteous - had a clock on his wall. Around the face of that clock there were words of enlightenment, a saying that made you tremble as the hands of the clock moved round. It said ‘Each hour wounds; the last hour kills’.”

The Restlessness of Shanti Andía

TIME magazine’s article on the book (from 1959):

Don Pio is one of Spain's greatest 20th century novelists; yet many of the elements of Shanti Andia have an old-fashioned ring. The story is laid along the Basque seacoast of the eigth [sic--should be nineteenth] century. There is a duel, a mutiny, piracy, the slave trade, an escape from prison, changed identities, a kidnaping, even buried treasure. The high adventure is made believable by the style—dry, direct, understated. But the excitement is only incidental to the story's main theme, which is Shanti's lifelong pursuit of truth and his stoic acceptance of whatever roadblocks fate may put in his path.

From an article by Julio Caro Baroja, 1972, found at Ute Körner, Literary Agent, S.L.:

As a result, reviving his images of the small ports of Guipúzcoa and Vizcaya, and fitting certain elements in with others, he composed this sea novel all in one breath of inspiration, leaving us a work which is not the classic adventure novel but one which contains different and loftier values.

Book contents:
     Book 1: Childhood
     Book 2: Youth
     Book 3: The Return Home
     Book 4: A Dutch Hooker called the "Dragon"
     Book 5: Juan Machín, Miner
     Book 6: La Shele
     Book 7: Juan de Aguirre's Manuscript