In Pursuit of the Natural Sign

Azorín and the Poetics of Ekphrasis

Gayana Jurkevich

1999
ISBN 0838754139

Essayist, writer of short fiction, plays, and novels, José Martínez Ruiz (Azorín) (1873-1967) was a key member of the Generation of 1898 in Spain. His importance in the literary canon as a master stylist and precursor of the nouveau roman was affirmed recently by the Peruvian Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa who chose Azorín as the subject of his investiture speech at the Spanish Royal Academy on 16 January 1996.

In Pursuit of the Natural Sign is divided into two parts. The first examines heretofore unstudied parallels between the cultural milieu that evolved in France following the Franco-Prussian War and the loss of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany (1870-1871), and an extrordinarily similar unfolding of ideas, art, and culture in Spain after the loss of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Phillippines to the United States after the Spanish-American War in 1898. Analogous to the semanticization of the national terrain that accompanied the rise of landscape Impressionism in France, Spanish writers and painters of the Generation of 1898 embarked upon a similar project of national reconstruction through a celebration of the Castilian landscape. Of all the '98 writers Azorín was the most deeply involved with landscape painting, and it is his work that constitutes the fulcrum around which Part 1 organizes its analysis of the evolution of landscape painting and writing in Spain from the mid-nineteenth to the first decades of the twentieth century. Part 2 examines how Azorín parlayed his interest in landscape painting into a lifelong passion for the visual arts, and the critical role they played in his creative work.

About the author:

Gayana Jurkevich is Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at Baruch College, CUNY.