Azorín (José Martínez Ruiz) by Kathleen Glenn (review)

62ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW the Thirty Years' War — could destroy the very idea of a personal self. While there is a historical sketch in Chapter Two, using, aside from two fairly recent literary histories, no histories written after 1967, the author does not really explore Raabe's work in light of a general crisis in culture. While Raabe may "not adhere to any particular doctrine of history" (p. 93), meaning Schopenhauer, who appears only in a footnote, Schopenhauerian pessimism certainly is evident in Daemmrich's reading of Raabe. Raabe's view of man in a fragmenting society, that Daemmrich chooses to discuss as a nineteenth century view, seems more a midway point to the twentieth. Despite Raabe's emphasis on the role of self-realization, albeit a limited and modest one compared to Goethe's, the ground is trembling underfoot; the sensibilities even in their positivistic masks, emerge in Daemmrich's own descriptions as ushering in twentieth-century skepticism and relativism. It is Daemmrich's own reading of Raabe that suggests a view of him as a pivotal literary expression of the shift from Goethe to Thomas Mann. Daemmrich sees the tensions in Raabe clearly enough, "Raabe counterbalances his historical skepticism with a powerful existential challenge " (p. 56); but the question of just how original Raabe was remains implicit or at the level of a summarizing cliché. At times the translations are not fortuitous, such as "joyful porcupine" for the character of Wunnigel, whose name, "joyful hedgehog," indicates his behavior in response to society. In the mass of plot detail, it can happen that names are mentioned without being connected to their character and that awkward styleor confusing syntax obscures the argument. Nonetheless, Daemmrich's book provides an overview of Raabe's work, not otherwise available to readers in English. PENNY SCHOONOVER, Boise State University Kathleen Glenn. Azorín (José Martínez Ruiz). Boston: Twayne G.K. Hall, 1981. 164 p. Addressing herself to Peter Dunn's study of Fernando de Rojas (MLN, 94 [1979], 416), Dorothy Severin comments that "the Twayne World Authors Series on Spain is rather like the little girl with the curl." Within the prescribed life and works format of the series, Kathleen Glenn's volume on Azorín is, in fact, very, very good. Azorín would seem to provide difficulties for a critical study aimed at the student or generalist, by virtue of the author's prodigiousness and longevity (some 140 titles spanning more than fifty years), his cultivation ofseveral genres (novel, essay, short story, drama), and his constantly shifting political stance. Glenn uses these potential problems as focal points, offering a sustained vision of the art against the backdrop of the artist'slife andmilieu, and emphasis on progression illuminates the presentation of the literary corpus. Like his contemporary Unamuno, Azorín is a conspicuous presence in his works, works which reflect a subjective and impressionistic reality and an obsession with time. If Azorín the anarchist is transformed into Azorín the archconservative — and if the views on Spain and on art are conditioned by the political volte-face — there remains a thematic constant: a fascination with the profundity of the commonplace, with temporal intricacies, with eternal recurrence. Creative self-consciousness blends with a dominant need to respond to both art and environment, resulting in a stylized and intentionally enigmatic form of soulsearching . In his fictional works and in his criticism, Azorin explores aesthetic possibilities. Uninspired by nineteenth-century realism, he seeks new means of creating averbal reality, through experiments in structural discontinuity and surrealism. Anticipating Borges, he spins intratextual threads and retells tales; anticipating reader- BOOK REVIEWS63 response theory, he stresses the dynamic flexibility of the literary object. With Don Quijote and Unamuno's Niebla — which unite the novel and theory ofthe novel — as implicit models, works such as Ei caballero inactual (1928) synthesize process and product, creation and self-examination, objective and subjective realities. In the later fiction, Azorín confronts the "eternally unknowable" to assert that nothing is more life-sustaining than belief and that dreams and illusions constitute the superior reality. Glenn's study is most impressive in its elaboration ofAzorin's literary orientation and development. Biographical material and commentary...