Baltasar Gracián y Morales

Baltasar Gracián y Morales (January 8, 1601 - December 6, 1658), Spanish prose writer, was born in Belmonte, near Calatayud (Aragon).

The Criticón

The three parts of the Criticón, published in 1651, 1653, and 1657, achieved fame in Europe, especially in the German-speaking countries. It is, without a doubt, the author's masterpiece and one of the great works of the Siglo de Oro. It is a lengthy allegorical novel with philosophical overtones. It recalls the Byzantine style of novel in its many vicissitudes and in the numerous adventures through which the characters are subjected, as well as the picaresque novel in its satirical take on society, as evidenced in the long pilgrimage undertaken by the main characters, Critilo, the "critical man" who personifies disillusionment, and Andrenio, the "natural man" who represents innocence and primitive impulses. The author constantly exhibits a perspectivist technique that unfolds according to the criteria or points of view of both characters, but in an antithetical rather than plural way as in Miguel de Cervantes. The novel reveals a philosophy, pessimism, with which one of his best readers and admirers, the 19th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, identified.

Related Topics:
Siglo de Oro - Byzantine style of novel - Picaresque novel - Miguel de Cervantes - Pessimism - Arthur Schopenhauer

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The following is a summary of the Criticón, reduced almost to the point of a sketch, of a complex work that demands detailed study.

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Critilo, man of the world, is shipwrecked on the coast of the island of Santa Elena, where he meets Andrenio, the natural man, who has grown up completely ignorant of civilization. Together they undertake a long voyage to the Isle of Immortality, travelling the long and prickly road of life. In the first part, "En la primavera de la niñez" ("In the Spring of Youth"), they join the royal court, where they suffer all manner of disappointments; in the second part, "En el otoño de la varonil edad" ("In the Autumn of the Age of Manliness"), they pass through Aragon, where they visit the house of Salastano (an anagram of the name of Gracián's friend Lastanosa), and travel to France, which the author calls the "wasteland of Hipocrinda", populated entirely by hypocrites and dunces, ending with a visit to a house of lunatics. In the third part, "En el invierno de la vejez" ("In the Winter of Old Age"), they arrive in Rome, where they encounter an academy where they meet the most inventive of men, arriving finally at the Isle of Immortality.

Related Topics:
Aragon - Anagram - Rome

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Gracián's style, generically called conceptism, is characterized by ellipsis and the concentration of a maximum of significance in a minimum of form, an approach referred to in Spanish as agudeza, (wit), and which is brought to its extreme in the Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia (The Oracle, a Manual of the Art of Discretion), composed entirely of almost three hundred maxims with commentary. He constantly plays with words: each phrase becomes a puzzle, using the most diverse rhetorical devices.

Related Topics:
Conceptism - Ellipsis

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