Concepción del paisaje e influencia pictórica en La romería de Manuel Ciges Aparicio

This essay analyzes the constant "visual exercise" imposed on the reader of Manuel Ciges Aparicio's novel La romería (The procession), as well as the representation of the landscape as a "window to the soul." Ciges Aparicio, generally considered a lesser-known member of the Spanish Literary Generation of 1898, shared with other noventayochistas, like Miguel de Unamuno and Azorín, a heightened awareness or sensibility in respect to the countryside. The landscape, specifically the barren Castilian landscape, became a blank canvas on which these authors projected their metaphysical angst and their yearning for transcendence. In Ciges Aparicio's novel, the lush Andalusian landscape, in diametric opposition to the barren Castilian one, is filtered by the sensibility of certain characters, very much like in the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich. Furthermore, we find a pantheistic conception of nature, which links this novel to some of the ideas expounded by Ralph Waldo Emerson, especially the concept of the poet as a privileged being with creative powers.