     
|
Ramón Gómez de la Serna (Madrid, 1888 – Buenos Aires, 1963) practiced all the literary genres: he was a novelist, short-story writer, essayist, biographer, memoirs writer, playful playwright, and with professional pride, a writer of book flaps. He did not write poetry, but on the other hand, he invented the greguería, a humoristic invention as well conceived as the olive stuffed with anchovies which became his way of poetically describing the reality of things. In general, he always preferred brief and even the briefest forms; due to the necessity to write and publish with regularity and to rid his head as quickly as possible of its torrent of words and ideas. The micro short stories, which enjoy a new prestige today, fill many books of his extensive library. He called them trampantojos (false fronts), gollerías (delicacies), disparates (ridiculous remarks) and fantasmagorías (phantasmagorias). And the first greguerías were also stories. Although the name «caprichos» (whims) is prior to its use by Goya, who popularised it in his famous series of engravings, Ramón’s caprichos are inspired by the nightmarish dreams of the Aragon artist. The last edition of caprichos published in Ramón's lifetime contained 376 stories. For ours, we have selected 50, which we offer to our readers accompanied with illustrations by Alfredo (Agüeria, Asturias, 1933), a marvellous illustrator who has made his name universally known like Ramón. And, like Ramón, he is a castizo, and at the same time, cosmopolitan author; which is ideal for these stories that take place in a border territory, which as the biographer Ramón states in his book about Goya, whom he considers to be Spain’s first humorist, «humour is what mixes credulity and incredulity, the tragic and the comic, life and death, (...) all the contradictory poles». 
- -
|
||||
