Childhood is a mythical territory to which a writer always returns. He never tires; he has infinite reminiscences, unexpected tentacles emerge every time. Near the sea or in the mountains, in a palace or in a humble apartment, the solitary child with the soul of a poet finds a door to the universe of dreams. And it remains there; it is his cross and his miracle. María Luz Morales (La Coruña, 1889 – Barcelona, 1980) knew this well, who, although she only lived in her hometown until she was six years old, immortalized it in the most beautiful way in one of her best novels, Balcony with view of the Atlantic (1955), retrieved by Amarillo Editora.
He calls her Marineda, like Emilia Pardo Bazán; a wink, a tribute, a tablet in the distinguished lineage of female writers from the North. Morales made his life in Barcelona, but he didn’t feel like he fit in anywhere. As María Ángeles Cabré (Barcelona, 1968), an expert on his work and author of the prologue, explains, he was nourished by the sea and the Celtic imagination, more than by his particular roots in Galicia or elsewhere. This is not surprising: myth, like the coast or any natural landscape, encourages the possible, the fantasy, which at first fascinates and then turns out to be cruel. Like childhood.
When you read Morales’ biography, you wouldn’t imagine that he could write a book like that: he belonged to the generation of intellectuals who played an active role during the interwar period. She devoted herself to journalism, distinguished herself as a cultural critic and in 1936 became the first Spanish woman to direct a national newspaper, La Vanguardia, a step that she paid for first with repression – she was in Les Corts prison – and then with disqualification. : for years he survived thanks to editorial collaborations. When she resumed her practice, she worked for the Diario de Barcelona, but she was a literary worker who carried out many jobs related to books, such as translating and editing anthologies, and rubbed shoulders with illustrious contemporaries, such as her friend Elisabeth Mulder. (Barcelona, 1904 – 1987), with whom he wrote the play midnight romancelost today.
He devoted himself so much to the words of others that he barely cultivated his own, the one that did not correspond to the profession of nutritionist; that is why he wrote his story especially in his maturity. At least literature is not in a hurry, it even benefits from the experience and calm that, let us hope, accompanies it. Balcony with view of the Atlantic There are many. Far from the chronicle and immediate reality, Morales moves away from the neutral style and the urgency of the press to look at the past. And who says looking, says dreaming. Another place, another time, another age. Another voice, intimate and evocative.
That of Lupe, a woman with a composed life who returns to her native Marineda to contemplate a balcony that takes her back to her childhood, in the last decades of the 19th century. The middle of a family of five siblings is part of a fallen lineage that takes care of the economy because of the excesses of the father. The mother, Andalusian, never acclimatized, complains about the storm and you keep your distance. The eldest daughter, nicknamed the Princess, resembles her, with her feminine, beautiful and delicate allure; although he will have to face a setback that will completely change his relationships and expectations.
He devoted himself so much to the words of others that he barely cultivated his own; that is why he wrote his story especially in his maturity. Far from the chronicle and immediate reality, María Luz Morales stands out from the neutral style and the urgency of the press to look at the past
Lupe, always self-centered, is considered clumsy and scattered; a girl who neither stands out nor pretends to. Only her father sees in this skinny little girl the potential for something more; he treats her with kindness and stimulates her curiosity for books and history. He, the hero of her childhood, promises her exciting journeys from the dining room table. Lupe is enchanted by 19th-century literature, especially by Edgar Allan Poe. He studies with a teacher and fictional characters become his first platonic loves. Stories populate his childhood and stimulate his imagination, both those he reads and those he hears at home or in the street.
With the wonder of a child’s gaze, Lupe broadens her horizons from the calm of Galicia: through street games and the revelation of art, she feels satisfied, intoxicated. She has an artistic sensitivity: the discovery of the circus and the theater marked her – the author wanted to be an actress – and gave rise to some of the most beautiful episodes. For her, who feels out of place, the performing arts open a path, a belonging (“all theater was my school; the language, the customs, the morals and the fashion, the lyrical initiation, the passion”). He does not leave Galicia, but his mind is far, very far away.
This fantasy also feeds on everyday life, through observation and listening. Lupe is not only formed by what she experiences, but above all by external stimuli, by the stories and lives of others; Reality is nothing more than an amalgam of stories that each mind shapes in a unique way. Some parts take place in the father’s city, where he moves with her for a few seasons to work; It is too rustic a place for the mother and the princess. The father, Lupe’s reference, takes on new nuances when she meets him outside the home.
Lupe awaits him among the villagers, who reveal a world with their secrets. Unlike his family, he speaks Galician, even his father speaks it. The village brings Lupe closer to nature, to oral language, with its musicality. Far from maternal severity, she finds tenderness in these women with rough manners, those who weave and take care of the house and children. The narrator paints a beautiful interior portrait of this network that keeps the community alive while the men go from work to vice.
The city, a counterpoint to Marineda, completes Lupe’s identity. This village has a different meaning for each member of the family: the mother and the princess do not fit into its harshness; For the father, it means freedom, removing the corset; The brother found there that legendary place that encourages a boy’s dreams. For Lupe, it is above all the country of women, of the feminine universe without masks, of the body, of bonds and of the voice in chorus. In Marineda, she also captures a society of women who maintain the home, but among the humblest, she finds an honesty that was unknown to her. Without uttering combative speeches or rebelling in her attitude – Lupe is above all a “good girl” of her time -, she puts this space so often invisible at the center, redeeming it in the face of the hypocrisy of high society, of moral values. or the double life of the father.
Her calm, conformist nature, if you will, makes her vulnerable; and since she was little, Lupe risks living more through the things of others – the experiences of others, the stories of theater and novels – than through herself. What is expected of a girl, no matter what she has read, is marriage, the passage from father to husband, from the care of her younger brothers and sisters to that of the children. Some take the reins, like her sister, but Lupe is incapable of it. She is not stupid, as some call her, just innocent. See, know, understand; but he does not get up, he limits himself to following the course of events.
Balcony with view of the Atlantic It is made of silences, what is not said acquires if possible more meaning than what is explicit. Silence of the environment and of what the narrator keeps to herself. Each house, like each human being, is not only defined by its actions, but is imbued with an intimate and universal mystery that is the eternal search for creation, its ultimate essence. The modesty of the subtitle, Another novel without a heromarks the distance with the great novel of the 19th century. The heroine, here, is neither glorious nor tragic; just one more in another family. One more, and yet unique, because her vision of the world is.
The modesty of the subtitle, Another Novel Without a Hero, marks the distance from the great novel of the 19th century. The heroine, here, is neither glorious nor tragic; just one more in another family. One more, and yet unique, because her vision of the world is
And the sea. With this point of view of a fascinated girl, the coast, Marineda, all of Galicia, becomes another character; The individual does not develop outside the environment, but is formed with it, in its affinities and oppositions, in the customs it imposes, in its lexicon, in its comings and goings beyond the ocean. For Lupe, it is a territory of anchoring. In her maturity, she finds a place to which she belonged and therefore herself, with the symbolism of the views from the balcony as a link with the past. The evocative and meticulous style, in which each sentence seems like a caress, captures the smells, the flavors, the winds; Although, more than moving the reader, it expresses this space from the inside; It is there, in her subjectivity, that the protagonist unites with each human being.
Because Balcony with view of the Atlantic This is a beautiful, intimate novel about childhood and initiation into adulthood. Suggestive, tender, from the point of view of a captivated young girl, Morales x-rays family relationships with depth and a taste for detail. The characters, lively, complex, navigate between the trivial earthly life and the immense inner life of the narrator. A lyrical voice, with a psychological insight that captures the mystery of human nature and the wonder felt in the world. And even with the melancholy due to deep-rooted losses, love is written, with encouragement; or, at least, that is what its pages breathe. A novel of discoveries to discover a great author.
