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51 Chapter 3 Andalusia–Madrid–Africa Lo eterno (1907) Despite (or perhaps because of) the success of El doctor Wolski, it would be thirteen years before Sofía Casanova published her second novel, Lo eterno (1907).1 The need to avoid overt controversy—in life as well as literature—was particularly pertinent to Casanova at the time of Lo eterno’s publication, as she struggled to reestablish herself in Madrid after an absence of nearly two decades. In the years between the publication of Wolski and the publication of Lo eterno, she had continued to write in a variety of genres and had published not only a number of short stories and articles (in periodicals as diverse as Revista Gallega, Galicia Moderna, Revista Contemporánea, and España Artística) but also the travelogue Sobre el Volga helado, which appeared in book form in 1903. In addition, she had published some forty individual poems in Galician, Spanish, and Latin-American periodicals and the poetry anthology Fugaces (1898). During the previous decade, her personal life had been particularly traumatic, with the death of her five-year-old daughter, Jadwiga, in September 1895. The Lutosławskis returned to Galicia for Christmas in 1895, to allow Casanova to recuperate with her family. They remained there until April 1898, after their fourth daughter, Halina, was born. During this time, Casanova took the opportunity to renew contact with the world of Galician culture. She attended meetings of the Cova Céltica group of Galician intellectuals, published in Galician journals, and rekindled her friendships with eminent Galician writers and politicians, such as Manuel Murguía and Manuel Lugrís Freire. In November 1899 the family returned to Kraków, where Wincenty Lutosławski had a post at the university. Thanks to the relative freedom afforded by the government in the Austrian partition of Poland, turn-of-thecentury Kraków was the hub of Polish art and culture, and Casanova became friends with many of Poland’s most prominent writers and artists, including 52 A Stranger in My Own Land members of the avant-garde Młoda Polska [Young Poland] movement. By the time the Lutosławskis relocated their family to Warsaw in early 1907, however , their marriage was all but over. Lo eterno, which was published while Casanova spent the summer of 1907 in Madrid, marks the start of her determined reentry into the world of Spanish letters. The following year, she would return for what she intended to be a permanent stay in Madrid, taking her own house and leaving only at the outbreak of war in 1914. Ofelia Alayeto claims that “during this period [1907–1914] she produced two different types of work. Her journalism focused on Eastern Europe. But her creative poetry and fiction were deeply personal expressions, and resonated with the nationalism that had emerged with Spanish literature as a reaction to the crises and bitter realisations of 1898” (1992, 56). This claim is something of a misrepresentation. Although it is true that Casanova’s fiction in this period is engaged with questions of Spain and Spanishness to a greater extent than either her earlier or her later work, that engagement consists of problematization—not celebration—of the dominant national discourse. Where Wolski provides a cautious, deliberately distanced examination of national identities, Lo eterno is far bolder and looks much closer to home. Set in Casanova’s native Spain, it replaces Wolski’s critique of the positivist response to fears about the fin de siglo breakdown of national, racial, and sexual boundaries with an exploration of the dogmatic Catholic response to those fears. Where Enrique Wolski is secure in his privileged position as an educated, white male, Lo eterno’s Juan struggles to define himself against familiar models of priesthood and masculinity; where Wolski’s overriding concern is with racial purity, Juan is himself a racial hybrid (an Andalusian Moor). The contemporary anxieties embodied in the church’s fears about the perceived threat of Juan’s racial heritage coupled with the author’s very real concerns about getting published produce a double-layered narrative in which the reader must navigate between orthodox and subversive readings of Juan and his story. Modern readers, however, do not seem to have discerned the complex nature of the narrative. The limited critical attention that the novel has received falls in line with Casanova’s own (largely unfounded) reputation as a rightwing conservative, whereas its apparent adherence to the norms of romantic fiction has led critics to...

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