Miguel de Unamuno is one of the most important authors of Spanish literature, born in Bilbao in 1864 and died in Salamanca in 1936. Today, his name resonates as one of the great names of Hispanic letters and one of the representatives of the generation. In 1914 she published a very particular novel that she preferred to categorize as “Nivola”, rather than romance, thus preventing critics from comparing her to other works. This novel is nothing but Mist, a work we will explore in this article.
In this book he gathers many ideas present in his earlier texts, but does so through the life of a character, Augusto Pérez, a rich man trained in law. The story itself doesn’t have many twists and turns, but the writer tried to give it another dimension.
- A new reading that he himself called “nivola”.
- And not a novel as conventionally described.
- In this article.
- We’ll reveal some of Mist’s keys in the hope that when you read it.
- You’ll get carried away with his genius.
One thing that will immediately attract the reader’s attention is the prologue signed by Victor Goti, one of the characters in the book, and the author makes a post-prologue in which he argues that we will not read a novel, but a “nivola”.
To complicate things further, the epilogue consists of a narrative of the facts of the book, but from the point of view of Orpheus, the dog of Augusto Pérez, who is the protagonist.
The action begins when Augustus sees a woman he ends up falling madly in love with, will try, with his limited resources, to convince her, but will only receive rejection, as the woman has a partner, however, over time, he will. He agreed to have some dates, but to enjoy the protagonist. Finally, on her wedding day, she wrote to her explaining that it was all a scam.
From this moment on, we are witnessing a real revolution from a narrative point of view, Augustus is so sad that he plans to commit suicide. However, Augustus is only the character of a novel and, as such, needs free will, and it is Unamuno, the author, who can make the final decision.
At this point, the so-called fourth wall of cinema breaks down and Augustus decides to start a conversation with the author; that is, he speaks directly to Unamuno.
The character eventually rebels against the author, exposing his intentions, so the question arises in the author: is he himself a character of another fiction ?, to what extent do you have free will?The idea is that when Unamuno begins to doubt his own freedom and reality, the reader also wonders about his own existence What if we only exist in a dream?What if we were part of someone’s dream?
The breadth of the novel lies not only in the plot, but in its ability to dialogue with the reality of the reader and, in this case, also of the author, which is why Unamuno decides that the work should be included in another generic classification, in a category full of paratexts, and prefers to call the novel “nivola”. In this way, the critic will not be able to classify it or compare it with other works.
Does Unamuno’s work have something to do with life, a dream? From Calderón de la Barca. In a way, the fiction is more real than the authors themselves. For Unamuno, the characters have a life of their own, the reader makes them live and what matters is how literature is revived.
All this is closely related to the problem of immortality: if we are what we dream of and we call reality the dream of all in common, then we cannot know what is real.
Miguel de Unamuno read Descartes, but also Calderón de la Barca, and that is precisely where the inspiration for his “nivola” lies. We see a reflection of Descartes’ rationalism, because we have no reason in principle to believe that what surrounds us is more than a dream.
Unamuno, though a believer, cannot reasonably infer the existence of God as Descartes; so you have no reason to believe that everything around you is a dream or a mistake. How do we know when our senses are wrong?
Unamuno brings together all this complexity in Nevoa by drawing different regions: that of fiction, in which we find the characters; around fiction, we find the reality of fiction, where the author of fiction is; Finally, on the outside, within the limits, there is another reality, that of the reader himself.
With Nevoa, the author describes several intertwined plans, ending up being a character when he meets Augustus, that is, we face a reality of reality that would be that of the world around us and, in turn, a reality of fiction. in which Unamuno is located. Finally, a fictional fiction, where the characters are located.
Another of Nevoa’s fundamental questions is, as we have already said, that of free will, which is placed from two angles: the first is in the character and the second when asked if it is free.
We see an Augustus who wants to kill himself, but discovers that Unamuno does not allow it; he can’t do it because he’s just a character. And at this point, the same doubt is reflected in the reader.
The characters are born of a language, an inheritance, so we are not free to think what we think and these two possibilities are presented again: God does not exist and reality is nothing more than the dream that we all dream. together, or God exists and we are God’s dream.
Augustus fights for his life, for his fictional life, but this is his life after all. In his desperation, Augustus’ character tells readers that they too will die and that the novel is ultimately a metaphor for human existence itself.
What is nivola? It is a novel in which the characters are not previously defined, but are formed as they move; the writer does not have a plan outlined for what will happen, as is the case with life itself.
The purpose of nivola is to confuse critics who tend to compare everything with previous works; in this way, an unprecedented new genre emerges with which to compare.
For Miguel de Unamuno there is some trap in the realistic novel, it makes us believe that everything is real and that he is the kind of man who does not see that his reality is a dream, Nivola, however, would be a way of understanding any novel; a novel that only exists when you think, activate and read. It is an awkward novel, in which the prologue is also a novel and where reality and metafiction are mixed into the text.