Puzzle - An Anthology of Spanish Stories of the XNUMXth Century", is the first of the planned three volumes with the aim of presenting a part of the rich literary world of the country that gave Cervantes. The editor, translator and editor of the translation is Dragana Bajić, and the other translators are: Anđela Delić, Srđa Sardelić, Dalibor Soldatić, Anđela Gašić, Jelena Rajić, Jasna Stojanović, Bojana Kovačević Petrović, Ljubica Trošić and Ivana Nikolić. This anthology was published by the Zrenjanin Agora.
Since the eighties of the XNUMXth century, when, after the boom in Spanish-American literature, more intensive translation of literature from this speaking area began, until today, incomparably more works have been translated than for the entire previous century. Nevertheless, in this entire translation endeavor, Hispanic American writers and their works are at the forefront, while the mother country Spain, with a heritage of nine centuries of written literature in the Castilian language, has remained somewhat neglected. It is noticeable that there are several anthologies of Hispanic American stories, but not a single Spanish one. And the country that gave Cervantes, the creator of the modern novel and storyteller par excellence, and that has a rich narrative tradition, so it is simply incredible that the Spanish short story in our speaking area, with only a few exceptions, is almost unknown to this day.
This first of three imagined volumes of an anthology of Spanish stories of the 1898th century should alleviate such a deficiency, introduce the reader to a real treasure and show him only a tiny part of a rich literary world. Just as nothing arises by itself or from nothing, so the creators in the historically and artistically turbulent XNUMXth century have their forerunners with whom they form part of an unbroken continuum in which they themselves become someone's forerunners. There are several of them in this selection, and they mainly belong to two directions of the second half of the XNUMXth century: realism (with a few glimpses of late romanticism), and the Generation of XNUMX, whose members are already becoming representatives of various artistic currents and turmoil in the XNUMXth century.
The breadth of the picture is reflected both in the choice of writers and their stories. Hence the title Puzzles for which, according to Dragana Bajić, the idea was given by Galdos's short story at the very beginning of the collection. This means that any chaotic or 'headlessness' is in fact intentional, and therefore apparent.
The anthology "Slagalica" provides a panorama of the story-telling scene in the first four decades of the XNUMXth century, as well as a predecessor made up of the greats of the second half of the XNUMXth century. The following authors are represented: Rosario de Acuña I Villanueva, Emilia Pardo Basan I de la Rua Figueroa, Leopoldo Alas Clarin, Armando Palacio Valdes, Julija de Asensi i Laiglesia, Miguel de Unamuno i Hugo, Ramon Maria del Valle Inclan i de la Peña, Vicente Blasco Ibanez, Carmen de Burgos Segi, Jose Maria Gabriel i Galan, Vincente Dies de Tejada, Jose Maria Salaveria Ipensa, Rehina Alcaide de Safra, Manuel Machado Ruiz, Ramiro de Maestu I Whitney, Gabriel Miro Ferrer, Alfonso Hernandez Kata, Manuel Chavez Nogales, Federico del Sagrado Crazon de Jesus García Lorca, Jose Díaz Fernandes, Samuel Ross Pardo and Andreas Caranque de Rios.
Writers of both genders are represented and come from all over Spain: from the Canary Islands in the west to the Mediterranean coast in the east and from Galicia, Austria and the Basque provinces in the north to Andalusia in the south. Also included are some of the forgotten writers who shouldn't be. The stories are very different, thematically, stylistically and linguistically, and they also recognizably reflect the aesthetic principles of their authors and their belonging to literary and ideological trends.
If one of the basic attributes of literature is its universality, the ability to be equally understood and accepted at different geographical latitudes and in different time periods, the reader will not be surprised that some stories seem incredibly contemporary and current even after a century. Such are, for example, Pardo Basan's "Apostasy", which reveals the eternal political opportunism, deceitfulness and venality or playing with other people's lives, as in Klarin's story "U vozo", then Valje Inklanova's "Beatris", which in a slow and modernist luxurious tone develops a dramatic plot around terrible priestly pedophiles, Gabriel and Galan's "White Poems" that portray the regret for past times in every human generation, Palacio Valdes' "Dream of a Death Sentence" with which he seems to visionarily predict the flood of today's reality shows, Unamuno's "Revolution in the Dead City Library" about bureaucratic stupidity , carelessness and laziness, Colombina's "Smell of Sin" about the hypocrisy of well-to-do social classes. Socially and politically engaged themes are most prominently represented in De Maestu's "Plantaza Consuelo", Dias Fernandes' "Red Magdalena" and Chaves Nogales' story "Slaughter, slaughter!"
Bonus video:
