#literature in Spanish

[thatscarletflycatcher]

What are your favorite books in Spanish?

hi! and sorry that this question has been sitting in my inbox, but that's mostly because I'm ashamed to confess I haven't read Literature in Spanish extensively outside of school. School can do that to you.

Most of the stuff I liked there was poetry; I read Quevedo and Rubén Darío and Martí (if you want a Martí recommendation, Ismaelillo, a book of poems dedicated to his son is quite endearing) and García Lorca, and Bécquer and Neruda and Quevedo and Lope de Vega... you get the gist.

I always particularly hated Neruda. And García Márquez. A lot.

Horacio Quiroga being a national author is someone I read a lot and liked his stuff; the Cuentos de la Selva are very sweet and I like them a lot as stories for children. After reading stories by Edgar Allan Poe this year for a book club (Quiroga is called the Modernist Edgar Allan Poe often in Spanish speaking literary circles), my appreciation for his horror stuff grew, specially his ability to create mood and set up stories in just a few lines. Like how, for example, El Almohadón de Plumas makes set up and mood in two lines:

Su luna de miel fue un largo escalofrío. Rubia, angelical y tímida, el carácter duro de su marido heló sus soñadas niñerías de novia.

Boom! That's what I call economy!

I also read a lot of minor national writers like Serafín J. García (Juan el Zorro) and Juan José Morosoli. Morosoli in particular has a story that fascinates me in its simplicity and hidden meaning, that I do recommend a lot: El Viaje Hacia el Mar. There's even a movie for it!

There are some books I have never fully finished, but they are so important and classic I do always recommend them:

Don Quijote de la Mancha, which I suspect most English speakers do think of as "so Cervantes is the Spanish Shakespeare, ergo, Don Quixote is like reading Shakespeare", but that's mostly true on the humorous side. This novel is mainly affectionate parody of chivalry novels, and some of the scenes are hilarious. It's like the Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey of chivalry novels.

El Gaucho Martín Fierro, because that epic is so classic terms coined in it became part of the slang of Rioplatense Spanish, and also, stuff like this:

"Los hermanos sean unidos porque esa es la ley primera. Tengan unión verdadera en cualquier tiempo que sea, porque si entre ellos se pelean, los devoran los de afuera"

El Poema del Cid. I don't think this one needs an explanation.

El Conde Lucanor. This one is less well known, but it is a collection of tales, where the count asks a question, and his adviser Patronio tells him a tale to present his advice. It's just that flavor of Spanish medieval literature.

Speaking of which, for the Catholics I do recommend Gonzalo de Berceo's Loores de Nuestra Señora, which is... basically that, tales of miracles and praise to the Virgin Mary.

Also, for the Catholics, and English speaking Catholics that are proficient in Spanish, I beg you to read St Teresa the Great, anything by her, because she was amazing and grounded and had such a zest and humor, and pretty much every English translation I have picked up turns it down a lot. Like, there's this one in the public domain that is not only horrifically Jesuitical, but it also turns the delightful "entre los pucheros anda el Señor" (the Lord ambles between the stews") into "the Lord goes with you in your duties, even to the kitchen", and considering how little known her absolute spot on description of life as "una mala noche en una mala posada" ("a bad night at a bad b&b") is, I fear it might have suffered a similar fate. But I think the matter of translating St Teresa should go into another post XD

So... what else? There must be more stuff, literature wise, but I'm blanking now.

When it comes to philosophy I also haven't read that much. I did read and found SUPER interesting Ortega y Gasset's Ideas y Creencias, in the way it highlights the closeness between scientific discovery and fantastic imagination. It was an eye opener.

Something I read last year, which is a classic of Uruguayan essay, is José Enrique Rodó's Ariel. It's an address to the youth of the Americas and I think it is very representative of the spirit of its time, some things are applicable today more than they were back in the day.

But the philosopher I have read the most in Spanish is Carlos Vaz Ferreira. Vaz Ferreira is a peculiar guy, because while most of his stuff isn't like, NEW or GROUNDBREAKING, his approach to philosophy in analytical ways that recognize the limitations of human thinking without despair is VERY refreshing, specially in terms of what is the late 1800s and early 1900s.

And this is all my brain is willing to provide today. I'm sorry I couldn't be more specific and varied in my response :(

[feral-ballad]

Rafael Alberti, tr. by Ben Belitt, from An Anthology of Spanish Poetry: From the Beginnings to the Present Day, Including Both Spain and Spanish America; "Paradise Lost"

[Text ID: “Across centuries / and the void of a world, / sleepless, I seek you.”]

[mournfulroses]

Clara Janés Nadal, tr. by Carol Thickstun & Louis Burne, from "I Don't Know,"

[joy-is-what-it-means]

Some days you have to study in bed as a compromise, because otherwise you wouldn’t study at all.

[trogo-auto-egocratico]

"Desde hace dos días lucho con mis ganas de dormir a toda hora. Jamás bebí tanto café, tanto té. Son estos mis pequeños suicidios silenciosos, sin escándalo, sin decir a nadie que no quiero vivir."

Alejandra Pizarnik.

[thoughtkick]

I hope that you never, not even for one second, become a secondary character in your own story.

spanish teacher

[tulip-jojo]

26th of april,

virginia woolf bewitched me with her writing and there is no going back 🫶🏼

[frenchiepal]

10.1.23🌷 did a short revision session and then watched my friend be productive for two hours :)

[lupusmaxima]

2024/01/21

[megairea]

and you were gazing at me, more than gazing — my gaze was dreaming you, and yours was dreaming me.

Pedro Salinas, from “Tell me”; To Live In Pronouns: Selected Love Poems (tr. by Edith Helman & Norma Farber)

[feral-ballad]

Antonio Machado, tr. by John A. Crow, from An Anthology of Spanish Poetry: From the Beginnings to the Present Day, Including Both Spain and Spanish America; "from The Road"

[Text ID: "flowering in silence,"]

[mournfulroses]

Federico García Lorca, from "3 Tragedies; Blood Wedding, Yerma, Bernarda Alta,"

[joy-is-what-it-means]

It’s time to start a new series and complain about exams.

Anyone else obsessing over EPIC: The Musical?

[trogo-auto-egocratico]

Te quise a pesar de saber que te iba a perder. Que cada día te perdía un poquito más, y yo seguía en el intento de llenarte el alma.

Daniel Glattauer.

[quotefeeling]

I hope that you never, not even for one second, become a secondary character in your own story.

spanish teacher

[icecreamwithjackdaniels]

I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

— Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, 1924