Call number
Genres
Collections
Publication
Barcelona: Laia, 1989, 1a ed., 193 p. (El Gran Nus; 3)
Description
The protagonist, Father Llatzer, a priest banished for doctrinal heresy to an isolated, backward mountain parish, struggles to achieve personal redemption by bringing salvation to his primitive, taciturn, rural flock. Their mute atavism is disturbed only by the local whore, Footloose, embodying all the forces against which the priestâe(tm)s reforming mission is directed. Ambiguity surrounds the denouement of that conflict.Dark Vales is as as compelling today as when it was first written.
User reviews
LibraryThing member bluepiano
It's hard to imagine a novel bleaker than this. The setting is harsh and claustrophobic; the weather is oppressive and destructive; the peasants are unreasoning and brutish; the protagonist finds himself falling from brisk optimism into anguish and thence into despair.
Father Llatzar has offended
My thoughts about the novel are scattered ones, most likely because I'm still rather overpowered by its atmosphere. In any case, restoring of life is a recurring theme in it--the revival of the teachings of an unnamed philosopher, the restoration of the dilapidated church, the various attempts to bring the peasants back to true Christianity. In the end there is indeed a sort of resurrection but it's a ghastly one. Something that disturbed me much less, and in a different way, was that in portraying his characters Casellas stacked the deck a bit too much for my taste; I doubt it was his intention to lend them great depth--given that the book was written at the turn of the last century it's quite possible that they were symbols only--but the depictions of the peasants' surly silence, their joylessness, their complete lack of fellow-feeling were unrelieved and demand a tauter than usual suspension of disbelief. As indeed does the prostitute who settles in the parish and who seems as much Pied Piper as the Decadents' femme fatale. (Fr Llatzar and his servants are a bit less one-dimensional, and that a reader can't determine the extent to which the former's efforts are the result of vanity rather than spirituality is a nice touch.)
Ever since reading The Yellow Rain and, especially, C.-F. Ramuz I've been on the lookout for fiction dealing with isolated mountain settlements. I'm terribly pleased that I learned about this one and I certainly recommend it but be warned that it's a sojourn in Hell and not a visit to Heidi.
Father Llatzar has offended
Show More
his superiors and is transferred to an isolated parish in the Pyrenees, where he does his utmost to bring to its inhabitants spiritual sustenance but is thwarted repeatedly by nearly mute stubbornness and a numb indifference alleviated only occasionally by flashes of greed, envy, and malevolence. My thoughts about the novel are scattered ones, most likely because I'm still rather overpowered by its atmosphere. In any case, restoring of life is a recurring theme in it--the revival of the teachings of an unnamed philosopher, the restoration of the dilapidated church, the various attempts to bring the peasants back to true Christianity. In the end there is indeed a sort of resurrection but it's a ghastly one. Something that disturbed me much less, and in a different way, was that in portraying his characters Casellas stacked the deck a bit too much for my taste; I doubt it was his intention to lend them great depth--given that the book was written at the turn of the last century it's quite possible that they were symbols only--but the depictions of the peasants' surly silence, their joylessness, their complete lack of fellow-feeling were unrelieved and demand a tauter than usual suspension of disbelief. As indeed does the prostitute who settles in the parish and who seems as much Pied Piper as the Decadents' femme fatale. (Fr Llatzar and his servants are a bit less one-dimensional, and that a reader can't determine the extent to which the former's efforts are the result of vanity rather than spirituality is a nice touch.)
Ever since reading The Yellow Rain and, especially, C.-F. Ramuz I've been on the lookout for fiction dealing with isolated mountain settlements. I'm terribly pleased that I learned about this one and I certainly recommend it but be warned that it's a sojourn in Hell and not a visit to Heidi.
Show Less
Language
Original publication date
1901
Physical description
192 p.; 22 cm
ISBN
8476682999 / 9788476682999
Similar in this library
El mar by Blai Bonet