Belarmino y Apolonio

Published in 1921, "Belarmino y Apolonio" probably is the best novel written by the Spanish Asturias-born writer Ramon Perez de Ayala, and certainly a most significant one among those published during the so-called Spanish culture Silver Age (1898-1936). According to the French hispanist critic Jean Cassou "Belarmino y Apolonio" should be considered one of the most important novels in Spanish literature, second only to "El Quijote." The novel appears at first sight to be a story that could be classified as "costumbrismo" or even romantic pulp fiction: the forbidden love between a young seminarist and a beautiful girl, son and daughter respectively of two shoemakers who happen to hate each other. But in truth the work constitutes a singular mechanism of mirrors and retelling, and a continuous pondering upon human behavior, up to the point that the reader soon realizes that one of the cobblers is a philosopher who happens to have invented a new language, and the other one considers himself to be a playwright and normally speaks in verse. With this novel Perez de Ayala presents a fictional research on the point of view, the contrast and, finally, the relativeness and contingency of human opinion, and how do these affect the precious good called "happiness," in a text that combines cultural references and an essay-like style with a precise narrative structure, all encompassed in a playful and ironic tone of voice.