Group Of Novels Research Articles

The Concept of "Ataraxia" in the Later Novels of Baroja

Much remains to be written about the later novels of Baroja. With a few praiseworthy exceptions the tendency among critics, especially outside Spain, has been to regard him as having written himself out by the early 'twenties and thus to place exclusive emphasis on the novels of the first period. In these Baroja, hearkening to the siren-song of Zarathustra (“Thou canst, for thou wiliest”) had found for a time a source of confident assertion with which to fend off the awareness of the vital problem which he had revealed in his first published work: Vidas Sombrias (1900). The group of novels which begins with El Mayorazgo de Labraz (1903) and ends with Cesar o Nada (1910) contains a gallery of figures united by their ability to cope with life energetically and to find compensatory exhilaration in the struggle for existence. From the attachment shown by critics to these novels in marked preference to the later ones it follows that pride of place among critical half-truths about Baroja is held by Ortega's “La...