“The heroic city slept a siesta & rdquor ;. The immortal phrase with which ‘La Regent’ startsindisputable masterpiece of universal literature written by Leopoldo Alas Clarín, vshines again in all its splendor in a new exquisite edition of Alba Editorial within its ‘Alba Clásica Maior’ collection, presented and annotated by the prestigious critic Ignacio Echevarría.
‘La Regent’ is the great novel reference –along with ¡Fortunata y Jacinta¡, by Benito Pérez Galdós– from the Spanish 19th century, fueled by the sagacious and bristling passion of an author with a sharp gaze and controversial instinct who illustrated the Spain of the Restoration with a “deep and scathing & rdquor; vision, in the words of Echevarría.
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Compared to Gustave Flaubert’s ‘Mrs. Bovary’ for both sharing the status of “adultery novel”, ‘La Regenta’ (1884-1885) is a total and encyclopedic piece of literary goldsmithing, a critical mosaic of the culture of its time . Her resounding gallery of characters includes an entire city: Vetusta, an obvious transcript of Oviedo. Clarín the x-ray exposing its estates, its government, its economy, its landscape and its morality, with intense power struggles and a dominant clergy presence. Hypocrisy and false virtue are intertwined in a relentless portrait full of scrutinizing looks that leave the protagonist, Ana Ozores, a “sanctimonious in mortal sin” neither in the sun nor in the shadows & rdquor; because she chooses to stand up to her temptation –or let herself be carried away by it– rather than fight “the daily battle with boredom, ridicule, prose & rdquor ;.