Escenas Montañesas is a series of vignettes
by José María de Pereda about life, particularly some of the dying customs, in
Santander and the mountain villages, in his time. I imagine the speech is
authentic, although it sounds like nothing I heard. It is probably dead now.
And the characters are mostly meant to be real. Dramatised perhaps, but people
he really met and situations he really lived. They are irregular, a couple are
dull, but most are very good. You feel as though you were there, you take
sides, you feel along with them their sufferings, happinesses and motivations,
they are real people living real lives, and they are fun to read about.
Pereda was a Cantabrian who wrote
in the second half of the 19thC. He belongs to the tradition of
‘costumbristas’, writing novels and stories about the people and places that
were part of the life of the area they knew, linking realism and romanticism
Many works of Emilia Pardo Bazán and Blasco Ibañez, and some periods of Pérez
Galdós, are similarly inspired.
The longest story is not set in Santander,
but between a farm in the mountain, and Madrid. It’s a version of the town
mouse and the country mouse but with at least three other, equally important, narratives
woven into it and an immense amount of humour and detail.
Another tale, of a very different
feel, is told in several parts over the course of the book. It describes the
world of the Cabildo, the Fishermen’s Guild, two of which operated in Santander
until the end of the 19th C, constantly fighting, and the centre of
life and the world for the people who lived from the sea. Pereda tells of the
sudden end of these Guilds, through his own eyes, via a series of connected
incidents in the lives of men and women who were clearly real, and known to the
author, as they struggle with their daily problems, winning and losing, surviving,
or sometimes not.
The stories end with the closure of
the Guilds and the death of the most iconic character on the docks. Pereda
claims to have been present, and he clearly felt very deeply the loss of this
man.*
Despite all this, Pereda was not
one of them, except as an observer. He lived a comfortable life in a four-storey
stone house on the fashionable port front**, and watched all of this from his
windows. He never had to put to sea in a tiny fishing boat, or worry about hoe
to feed his children, or what to do when his boots finally fell to pieces, or
how to defend his trade from the other Guild, and the town council. Nevertheless,
he understood the lives of the people who did live that way, and had great
affection for them.
*For a longer dramatized telling of life in the Cabildos, I
recommend his novel ‘Sotileza’.
**His family still lives in that house. I was friendly with
his great-great-nephew and visited it regularly at one time.
No comments:
Post a Comment