La edición de textos con redacciones múltiples: La lucha por la vida, de Pío Baroja

Abstract

In 1903 the Madrid newspaper El Globo published Pío Baroja's novel La busca in serial form. The text was divided into six parts and 38 chapters. A year later, the novel La busca was published again, this time in book format. After this, two more novels, Mala hierba and Aurora roja, would follow to complete the trilogy La lucha por la vida. But whereas Aurora roja was written almost exclusively ex novo, the other two novels carne from the newspaper text. Since its publication, the second version the only one to h ave circulated, either in separate form or within the author's Obras completas (this latter edition with stylistic corrections and censorship cuts); the 1903 text has never been reissued. Moreover, the changes that were introduced in the 1904 text are so extensive that we cannot strictly speak of "variants", but of two différent versions. The alterations affect the very structure of the novel: new characters are introduced, the order of a few episodes is altered, and several narrative éléments are modified, some of them substantially. This article aims to explain which would be the criteria that would be used to critically edit the text, thus showing a sample of editorial strategies regarding multiple versions. The articles has three parts. The first part presents examples of the different types of alterations introduced in the text, so that the peculiarities of each version are emphasized and the difficulties of edition underlined. The second part studies the history ofthe transmission of the trilogy. The third part analyzes, with resource to the textual theory, different methodological approaches which might be adequate for the edition of multiple-version texts.