page_title: Carlism in literature
section_title: Other writers
hierarchical_section_title: Carlism in literature / Modernism / Other writers
caption_attribution_description: English: Maria VV
context_page_description: On March 21, 1890, at a conference dedicated to the siege of Bilbao during the last civil war, Miguel de Unamuno delivered a lecture titled La última guerra carlista como materia poética. It was probably the first ever attempt to examine the Carlist motive in literature, as for the previous 57 years the subject had been increasingly present in poetry, drama and novel. However, it remains paradoxical that when Unamuno was offering his analysis, the period of great Carlist role in letters was just about to begin. It lasted for some quarter of a century, as until the late 1910s Carlism remained a key theme of numerous monumental works of Spanish literature. Afterwards it lost its appeal as a literary motive, still later reduced to instrumental role during Francoism. Today it enjoys some popularity, though no longer as catalyst of paramount cultural or political discourse; its role is mostly to provide exotic, historical, romantic and sometimes mysterious setting.
context_section_description: Baroja, Valle-Inclán and Unamuno made Carlism the key protagonist of the greatest Modernist works; another of the noventayochistas, Vicente Blasco Ibañez, preferred to fight the Carlists on the streets and only marginally allowed them presence in his novels. The most explicit case is La catedral (1903); the work is resemblant of an old-style militant assault rather than of the Modernist ambiguous discourse, as the Carlists are portrayed typically as hypocrites, who in the name of God engage in most ungodly atrocities or simply indulge in most earthly pleasures. Other personalities of Generación de 1898 did not feature Carlism or Carlists in their works; Azorín confronted them a number of times in his press contributions, yet they are not considered here.
  The genuine Carlist literary voice was hardly heard during the Modernist era. In prose the most popular author was Antonio de Valbuena, who developed a genre dubbed "novela de edificación"; perhaps its samples, first of all Aqua turbiente, should rather be viewed as part of the late Realist literature. Historical novel is represented by Ramón Esparza Iturralde. Ciro Bayo released Dorregaray. Una correría por el Maestrazgo (1912), half-way between historical novel, adventure story and a memoir. Novels of a Carlist zealot Domingo Cirici Ventalló fall into a political fantasy genre; advancing a Carlist perspective they  assault the Liberal outlook; his best known works are La República española en 1.91... (1911) and La tragedia del diputado Anfrúns (1917). In Catalan a very particular position is held by Marian Vayreda i Vila. As author of heterogeneous short pieces Recorts de la darrera carlinada (1898) he is compared to such authors of war stories as Hemingway or Babel, while his novel La Punyalada (1904) is counted among masterpieces of Catalan literature of all time. Both are set in the Carlist milieu, yet their message remains ambiguous; some consider La Punyalada a veiled discourse on the very nature of Carlism.
  Perhaps the best-known Carlist rhymes were born in 1908, when Ignacio Baleztena wrote Spanish lyrics to the originally Basque Carlist anthem Oriamendi. The first attempts at Carlism-flavored written Basque poetry were recorded by Ramos Azacarate Otegui. Two Carlist poets somewhat popular at the time were Enrique de Olea and Florentino Soria López; especially the latter was rather unambiguous in his political sympathies, on display in the Cantos a la Tradición volume (1911). Joan Bardina during his Carlist phase in the 1890s fathered militant and exalted poems and satires. In case of drama, not exactly Catalan but rather Valencian was the language that Eduard Genovès i Olmos, "un Jaumiste de pura sang", used when writing his drama  Comandant per capità (1915). Juan Ortea Fernandez fathered a one-act comedy Requeté (1912). The "comico y costumbrista" Carlos Arniches, author of vastly popular comical theatrical pieces who ran at the Carlist ticket to the Cortes, steered clear of political topics. Among foreign authors there were four Britons, who fathered fast-paced adventurous novels: Henry Seton Merriman, Arthur W. Marchmont, G. A. Henty, and Heber Daniels. A history of its own is a very short story Ego te absolvo (1905), by some attributed to Oscar Wilde. Authentic or not, it demonstrates that the prevailing Spanish image of a Carlist crossed the Pyrenees: a Carlist was brutal, wild, and loose about his religious principles; however, there were also opposite stereotypes held. In France, Comte de Saint-Aulaire released a conventional historical novel Carlistes et Christinos (1895).
caption: Vayreda
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