A book a day: Alejandro Sawa: Declaration of a defeated

Year of publication: 1886

Valoración: Between recommended and okay

Alejandro Sawa, bohemian writer of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century strongly influenced by decadentism and naturalism, conceived the short novel entitled Declaration of an defeated.

Written as an autobiography, Declaration of an defeated It follows the steps of Carlos Alvarado, who leaves both his city, Cádiz, as well as his comprehensive and wealthy parents, to go to Madrid when he is barely eighteen years old. There he hopes to find an optimal environment to develop his literary vocation. However, it is quickly disenchanted. Once in “The Court of Spain” he discovers that he dislikes the place, that the journalist’s work is incompatible with his honesty and that selling his novels and plays is extremely difficult. Likewise, he falls in love with a neighbor greater than him, who already has two daughters, and insists the few value things he possesses to keep them all. But his beloved abandons him when he discovers how poor he is, and then he gives himself to alcohol and prostitutes a girl who loves him and deposits his hopes in him. Finally, with twenty years, he decides to commit suicide, but not before writing his story, his “chronicle of misadventures”, to point to “social herd.”

Carlos Alvarado, the protagonist of Declaration of an defeatedHe is a fascinating character. Although briefly assumes their own mistakes (for example, hiding their parents the precariousness of their situation), fault in general of their misfortune, misery, hardship and degradation to humanity and “the universal dishonor” “of the great populations.”

Not in bucket, Declaration of an defeated It is intended to be an “accusation piece the day (…) in which a formal process to contemporary society is entitled.” And the truth is that, despite how obvious the mistakes, self -pity and victimism of our protagonist are, it is difficult not to grant him some reason. After all, «the hypocrites will say that I have had to accept with pleasure the oppression of my misfortunes, for the sacred love of our Lord Jesus Christ and his Blessed Mother; The Mojigatos, which I have had to make my misery rotately, like who covers a wart; The prudent, which I have due, at least, await more time before killing me. But I am answered that they speak of misfortune, like an undocumented man who had never left Madrid, it would occur to him to talk about China: by the mamarrachos he has seen painted in the vitels of the fans; Because otherwise, having truly suffered, they would not be hypocrites, or mojigatos, or prudent. It would be, or fools, or rebels. To choose. “

As you can intuit, Declaration of an defeated It is an extremely tragic and bitter pessimistic novel. It is also a novel of (of) formation, which portrays a man -cornered man to the extreme in which suicide is the only way to end the horror of existence, preserve his latest embers of dignity and raise a “protest against life.” It is also a thesis novel, which describes how it affects the moral and political degradation of an era, and the neglect of humans to their peers, an individual. And finally, it is a novel that aims to serve as alert, so that “some young man corroded by the passion of glory, adventure gain”, take “other paths and other paths than those I have followed.”

While I have enjoyed Declaration of an defeatedI find the same defects as other works by Sawa. On the one hand, that although it is narrated with a rich and expressive style, it seems repetitive and grandiloquent. On the other, which suffers from a dim argument and some barely outlined characters, which are rather an excuse to display the author’s ideas. But these ideas … what ideas! His background is not always objective, and the intensity of his presentation is decidedly exaggerated, but precisely for that reason they work so well. And, in the end, we must not take them as anything other than the author’s ideas and his fictional transcript, envouls in all his subjective and passionate splendor.

So, Declaration of an defeated It is a classic that should be rescued from oblivion. Novel as irregular as effective, as outdated as it is in force, I recommend reading it or that it is for the vigor of Sawa prose or its powerful ultimate third (the one that portrays the debasement of Carlos Alvarado). But be careful, because more than one can reinforce his fatalistic vision of the world, or convince him that “since society was my enemy, my most imperative duty was to revolt me against her.”