Camilo José Cela, a half way between theatre and essay: Homenaje al Bosco II (1999)

Abstract

Cela’s theatre is a rarity in the spanish literature. It could be said that the galician writer elaborates a theatre with a very own stamp, markedly rupturist, experimental and innovative, that breathes of the european avant-gardes. At the same time he is ispired by the tradition of the “esperpento” and the spanish absurd theatre, adding its characteristically and crudely “tremendismo” as background. Homenaje al Bosco II (Seix Barral, 1999), his latest dramatic work, is a synthesis of the history of Spain since the loss of Cuba and the Philippines in 1898 until Franco's triumph in the Civil war, even though he insists that "this is not a treaty of history nor a handbook of good manners". It is, in fact, a great guignol “neoesperpéntico” driven by what the writer called "The four columns of the 98": Valley-Inclán, Unamuno, Baroja and Azorín. Cela again proves to be a great reader of the 98 and especially of the literature and the thought of these four figures.
Keywords: Cela, theatre, generation of 98, spanish literature, spanish theatre