La maja y el torero | Théophile Gautier | book new | sale

Théophile Gautier

Barataria : Bárbaros | 2010

176 | 4h 15m

spanish | softcover | new | sale

20cm x 15,5cm | 285gr

In 1840, Théophile Gautier traveled to Spain as a correspondent. He is almost thirty years old. He finds in Madrid a divided city: the wealthy, rent-seeking and parasitic bourgeoisie walks through the Prado hall, imitates Parisian or English fashion and goes to the theaters to see translated works. Everything in their lives is colorless, counterfeit, false, mediocre and very boring. In the popular neighborhoods, on the other hand, men and women work, create their own colorful, sensual and motley fashions, dance and sing their own music, and attend their own shows, in which passions, life and death are protagonists. Gautier, who arrives from Paris, is amazed, and laughs, at all this "third-rate" luxury. With his painter's eye he describes to us what he despises and what he admires about that strange society for him in this tragicomic novel. A loving entanglement between those above and those below that is also a revelation, that of Militona, a "real woman." This speed in solving every problem of style and composition makes one think of the severe maxim that Gautier once dropped before me in the course of conversation, and of which he has undoubtedly made a constant duty: "Every man who finds an idea, however subtle and unexpected it may be, without resources, is not a writer. The inexpressible does not exist. Charles Baudelaire