Pío Baroja
Encyclopedia
Pío Baroja y Nessi was a Spanish Basque writer, one of the key novelists of the Generation of '98
Generation of '98
The Generation of '98 was a group of novelists, poets, essayists, and philosophers active in Spain at the time of the Spanish-American War ....

. He was a member of an illustrious family, his brother Ricardo
Ricardo Baroja
Ricardo Baroja y Nessi was a Spanish Basque painter, writer and engraver. As an engraver, he is considered the successor of Goya. He was the brother of the novelist Pío Baroja and writer/ethnologist Carmen Baroja...

 was a painter, writer and engraver, and his nephew Julio Caro Baroja
Julio Caro Baroja
Julio Caro Baroja was a world-renowned Basque Spanish anthropologist, historian, linguist and essayist. He was known for his special interest in Basque culture, history and society. Of Basque ancestry, he was the nephew of the renowned writer Pio Baroja; and his brother, painter, writer and...

, son of his younger sister Carmen
Carmen Baroja
Carmen Baroja Nessi , Spanish writer and ethnologist who wrote under the pseudonym Vera Alzate. She was the sister of the writers Ricardo and Pio Baroja, and mother of the anthropologist Julio Caro Baroja and film director Pio Caro Baroja.-Early life:Carmen was the youngest child of Serafin Baroja,...

, was a well known anthropologist.

Biography

The son of Serafin Baroja
Serafin Baroja
Serafín Baroja was a Basque writer and mining engineer who wrote popular Basque poetry and lyrics. He was the father of a trio of illustrious children who left a deep mark on the art and literature of twentieth century Spain...

, a Basque
Basque people
The Basques as an ethnic group, primarily inhabit an area traditionally known as the Basque Country , a region that is located around the western end of the Pyrenees on the coast of the Bay of Biscay and straddles parts of north-central Spain and south-western France.The Basques are known in the...

 writer and mining engineer, Pío was born in San Sebastian, Spain. Although educated as a physician, Baroja only practised this trade briefly. As a matter of fact, he would use his student's memories - some of them he would consider terrible - as the raw material for his novel "The Tree of Knowledge". He also managed the family bakery for a short time and ran unsuccessfully on two occasions for a seat at the Cortes
Cortes Generales
The Cortes Generales is the legislature of Spain. It is a bicameral parliament, composed of the Congress of Deputies and the Senate . The Cortes has power to enact any law and to amend the constitution...

 (Spanish parliament) as a Radical Republican
Radical Republican Party
The Radical Republican Party , sometimes shortened to the Radical Party was a Spanish political party founded in 1908 by Alejandro Lerroux in Santander, Cantabria by a split from the historical Republican Union party led by Nicolás Salmerón....

. Baroja's true calling, however, was always writing, which he began seriously at the age of 13.

His first novel --La casa de Aizgorri (The House of Aizgorri, 1900)-- is part of a trilogy called La Tierra Vasca (The Basque Country, 1900–1909). This trilogy also includes El Mayorazgo de Labraz (The Lord of Labraz, 1903) which became one of his most popular novels in Spain.

However, he is best known internationally by another trilogy entitled La lucha por la vida (The Struggle for Life, 1922–1924) which offers a vivid depiction of life in Madrid's slums. John Dos Passos
John Dos Passos
John Roderigo Dos Passos was an American novelist and artist.-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Dos Passos was the illegitimate son of John Randolph Dos Passos , a distinguished lawyer of Madeiran Portuguese descent, and Lucy Addison Sprigg Madison of Petersburg, Virginia. The elder Dos Passos...

 greatly admired these works and wrote about them.

Another major work --Memorias de un Hombre de Acción (Memories of a Man of Action, 1913–1931)-- offers a depiction of one of his ancestors who lived in the Basque region during the Carlist uprising in the 19th century.

Another of his trilogies is called La mar (The sea) and comprises La estrella del capitán Tximista, Los Pilotos de altura, and Los mercaderes de esclavos. Baroja also wrote the biography of Juan Manuel Antonio Julian Van Halen, a mariner who lived in the late 18th century.

However, some believe his masterpiece to be El árbol de la ciencia (1911) (translated as The Tree of Knowledge), a pessimistic Bildungsroman
Bildungsroman
In literary criticism, bildungsroman or coming-of-age story is a literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood , and in which character change is thus extremely important...

 that depicts the futility of the pursuit of knowledge and of life in general. The title is ironically symbolic: The more the chief protagonist Andres Hurtado learns about and experiences life, the more pessimistic he feels and the more futile his life seems.

In keeping with Spanish literary tradition, Baroja often wrote in a pessimistic, picaresque style. His deft portrayal of the characters and settings brought the Basque
Basque Country (autonomous community)
The Basque Country is an autonomous community of northern Spain. It includes the Basque provinces of Álava, Biscay and Gipuzkoa, also called Historical Territories....

 region to life much as Benito Pérez Galdós
Benito Pérez Galdós
Benito Pérez Galdós was a Spanish realist novelist. Considered second only to Cervantes in stature, he was the leading Spanish realist novelist....

' works offered an insight into Madrid. Baroja's works were often lively, but could be lacking in plot and are written in an abrupt, vivid, yet impersonal style. Sometimes he is even accused of grammatical errors, which he never denied.

Baroja as a young man believed loosely in anarchistic ideals, as other members of the '98 Generation. However, later he would derive into simple admiration of men of action, somehow similar to Nietzsche's superman. His vitalistic vision of life -although pessimistic- led his novels, his ideas and his figure to be considered somehow a precursor of a kind of Spanish fascism. In any case, he was not loved by Catholic and traditionalist ideologists and his life was at risk during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39).

Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...

 was greatly influenced by Baroja, and told him when he visited him in October 1956, "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"

Works available in English

  • The City of the Discreet (1917). A.A. Knopf
  • The Quest (1922) A.A. Knopf
  • Weeds (1923). A.A. Knopf
  • Red Dawn (1924). A.A. Knopf
  • The Lord of Labraz (1926). A.A. Knopf
  • The Restlessness of Shanti Andía, and other writings (1959). University of Michigan Press
  • The Tree of Knowledge (1974). Howard Fertig: ISBN 0865273162
  • Caesar or Nothing (1976). Howard Fertig: ISBN 0865272247
  • Zalacain the Adventurer (1998). Lost Coast Press: ISBN 1882897137
  • Youth And Egolatry (2004). Kessinger Publishing: ISBN 1419195409
  • Road to Perfection (2008). Oxbow Books: ISBN 9780856687914 (pbk.)

External links

  • Short Biographies: Pio Baroja
  • Pio Baroja Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
    University of Texas at Austin
    The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...

     (English and Español)
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK