The thoughts that drive us crazy with the worst of follies, those of sadness, always arrive little by little without feeling, like fog invades the fields or consumption the chest. It advances fatal, tireless, but slow and regular like a pulse. Today we do not notice it; maybe neither tomorrow, nor the day after tomorrow, nor in one whole month. But that month passes, and we begin to feel the food bitter like painful memories. We are already vexed. As the days and nights go by, we become sullen and aloof; in our head, the ideas are cooked, ideas that will cause our head to be cut off where they were cooked; who knows if so that it does not continue working so atrociously. Maybe we spend up to whole weeks unchanged. Those around us have already become accustomed to our rudeness and no longer even miss our strange being. But one day, evil grows like trees, and it gets fat, and we no longer greet people; and they feel as if we were weird or in love again. We get thinner and thinner, and our hirsute beard gets increasingly limp. We begin to feel the hatred that kills us; we can no longer stand to look; our conscience hurts, but it doesn’t matter; it’d better hurt! Our eyes burn, filled with poisonous water, when we look hard. The enemy notices our longing, but he is confident; instinct does not lie. The misfortune is cheerful, welcoming, and we enjoy the most tender feeling when we drag him on the immense square of glass shards that is already our soul.
From “The Family of Pascual Duarte,” by Camilo José Cela.
Translated by Louis Villalba
This was the Spanish Nobel Laureate Camilo Jose Cela’s first novel. It is a painful portrait of the rural Spain’s after the Spanish Civil War. The prose is beautiful and the analogies accurate and poignant: “As the days and nights go by, we become sullen and lonely; in our head, the ideas are cooked, ideas that will cause our head to be cut off where they were cooked; who knows if so that it does not continue working so atrociously. Maybe we spend up to whole weeks unchanged; those around us have already become accustomed to our rudeness and no longer even miss our strange being. But one day, evil grows like trees, and it gets fat, and we no longer greet people; and they feel as if we were weirdos or in love again.”
The Family of Pascual Duarte is an excellent work of art. If you have not read it, I recommend that you do so.
Original text:
Los pensamientos que nos enloquecen con la peor de las locuras, la de la tristeza, siempre llegan poco a poco y como sin sentir, como sin sentir invade la niebla los campos, o la tisis los pechos. Avanza, fatal, incansable, pero lenta, despaciosa, regular como el pulso. Hoy no la notamos; a lo mejor mañana tampoco, ni pasado mañana, ni en un mes entero. Pero pasa ese mes y empezamos a sentir amarga la comida, como doloroso el recordar; ya estamos picados. Al correr de los días y las noches nos vamos volviendo huraños, solitarios; en nuestra cabeza se cuecen las ideas, las ideas que han de ocasionar el que nos corten la cabeza donde se cocieron, quién sabe si para que no siga trabajando tan atrozmente. Pasamos a lo mejor hasta semanas enteras sin variar; los que nos rodean se acostumbraron ya a nuestra adustez y ya ni extrañan siquiera nuestro extraño ser. Pero un día el mal crece, como los árboles, y engorda, y ya no saludamos a la gente; y vuelven a sentirnos como raros y como enamorados. Vamos enflaqueciendo, enflaqueciendo, y nuestra barba hirsuta es cada vez más lacia. Empezamos a sentir el odio que nos mata; ya no aguantamos el mirar; nos duele la conciencia, pero, ¡no importa!, ¡más vale que duela! Nos escuecen los ojos, que se llenan de un agua venenosa cuando miramos fuerte. El enemigo nota nuestro anhelo, pero está confiado; el instinto no miente. La desgracia es alegre, acogedora, y el más tierno sentir gozamos en hacerlo arrastrar sobre la plaza inmensa de vidrios que va siendo ya nuestra alma.
