Esperpento in Bohemian Lights: Features and Reflection

Features and Reflection of Esperpento in Bohemian Lights

The birth of absurdity occurs in 1920 with the publication of Bohemian Lights, which is the culmination of Valle-Inclán's art, encompassing themes, characters, settings, and style. The author defines his aesthetic through three texts derived from Bohemian Lights and an interview. The essence of this art lies in the point of view; the basis of the 'esperpentizador' process is distance, the strangeness of vision that is scornful, merciless, and inhuman. Absurdity does not try to reproduce the real world but rather presents a grotesque distortion of reality that cannot be reflected rationally. In Valle-Inclán's case, the goal is to present a distorted reality to characterize the distortion, inequity, and imbalance of reality. Valle-Inclán reacts against the Spanish reality to satirize it through a marginal world.

Characteristic Features of Esperpento

The characteristic features of the genre are:

• The travesty of art: Dedicated to humorously deforming all forms of literature that interest the author.
• Comico-grotesque form of expression:
• The systematic distortion of reality: Considered characteristic of the grotesque.
• The dual-code: Apparent mockery and caricature of reality alongside a meaning of history that is often encoded and represents the real moral lesson.
• Violent contrasts: Leading to the absurd.

Achieving Esperpento

These features are achieved through the following:

• Most of the absurd characters are individuals outside of ordinary human reality, yet their true identities resonate with other human beings, referencing concrete and identifiable individuals.
• Presence of death as a theme.
• Process of 'animalization' or 'commodification' of men.
• The degradation of gullible human characters with human-like qualities, yet insensitive like objects.
• The book constantly mixes the cultured and the popular, which identifies and characterizes some characters.
• Many literary quotations and references appear, such as Calderón, Rubén Darío, etc.

The absurdity transforms a Spanish tradition into something grotesque, and through all these elements, Valle-Inclán imbues his work with great originality, showcasing a portrait of Spanish society through the technique of deformation.