On July 23, 1962, Josep M. Castellet sent Camilo José Cela a brief letter in which he indicated that the work the Catalan critic was going to publish a few months later was about to be completed: “I would appreciate it if you could indicate, by return mail, the corrections you pointed out to me in Formentor regarding the work I did on your work for the Revista Hispánica Moderna. I have not asked you before because, according to Susana Redondo de Feldman, the original has not yet gone to print and there is plenty of time to make them.”
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This is the study Initiation to the narrative work of Camilo José Cela, which opens the biographical-critical monograph (with bibliography and succinct anthology) of the Revista Hispánica Moderna, published by the Hispanic Institute in the United States (New York, 1962). The monograph joined the series inaugurated by that of Federico García Lorca and which included, among others, issues dedicated to Giner de los Ríos, Valle-Inclán, Neruda, Salinas, Antonio Machado, Juan Ramón, César Vallejo, Miguel Hernández, and Alfonso Reyes. Accompanying Castellet’s work were essays by Guillermo de Torre, Arturo Torres-Rioseco, and Leopoldo de Luis, a “relative curriculum vitae” penned by Cela himself, a meticulous bibliography by Fernando Huarte, and an anthology prepared by Redondo de Feldman.
Scholars of narrative and literary criticism of the period knew this final point of the intense relationship that Cela and Castellet maintained during the decade from the founding of Laye (March 1950) to the last article Castellet published in Papeles de Son Armadans (founded by Cela in April 1956) in the December 1962 issue. However, the long journey of Castellet’s study, which wanted to be but was not a book – the first – about the narrator whom both he and Antonio Vilanova (the most intelligent peninsular critics of the 1950s) considered the most prominent literary personality of the early postwar period, is not known.
Although before the spring of ’52, Laye had contacted Cela to see if he wanted to collaborate in the magazine (a collaboration that never happened), what is certain is that his relationship with Castellet has as its gateway the publication in Laye of the article ‘La colmena (Notas con estrambote)’ (March-April, 1952). It was not the first article in the immediate reception of La colmena: previous ones include those by Fernández Almagro in ABC and La Vanguardia, Vilanova in Destino, Torrente Ballester in Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos and Ricardo Gullón in Ínsula , among others. However, upon receiving the copy of Laye sent by Castellet, Cela wrote him (18-V): “I want to tell you that your essay is, by a hundred elbows, the most important and insightful thing said about my poor La colmena to date.” The praise is immense and I believe it spurs Castellet’s curiosity about the activities of the Galician novelist. Not in vain, by letter of November 20, he reiterates the invitation to collaborate in the magazine, “punctually paid.”
Upon returning from his trip, at the end of the fall of ’52, to Argentina and Chile, Cela confesses to being an avid reader of Laye and offers him the first and third chapters of Nuevas andanzas y desventuras de Lazarillo de Tormes (1944, 1948, 1952) with the complete text, “painfully killed by censorship, that institution which, although Franco does not believe it, is sabotaging its own regime with the worst and most painful sabotage: that of stupidity” (1/3/1953).
The spring of 1953 is key for Cela’s relations with Barcelona, with Vilanova, and with Castellet. Both had reviewed Del Miño al Bidasoa (Notas de un vagabundaje) (1952) in Destino and Laye , and both were to meet the Galician writer personally at the end of March, when he traveled to Barcelona to close (3/26) the course on American novel at the University of Barcelona. The one who formally mediated for his invitation to the course was Castellet, who had communicated on February 23: “The lecturers will be Antonio Vilanova – the critic from Destino-, Agustín de Sanz and I. We [referring to him and Ramón Carnicer] suggested to Castro and Calvo [dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters] that no one better than you to close the course.” Castellet’s connection with Cela would have a notable appendix that spring: during Antoni Tàpies’ exhibition at the Biosca Gallery in Madrid (April-May), Cela personally met Tàpies, who in his Memòria personal. Fragments per una autobiografia (1977) reports that Barral, Costafreda, and Castellet introduced him to the author of La colmena.
For Cela, Castellet wrote “the most important and insightful thing said about my poor La colmena”
In July 1954, already director of the Boscán Seminar of the Institute of Hispanic Studies, he asked Cela for information because he was “about to prepare my lectures on the well-known novelist CJC,” which he would give in the fall. Cela was pleased with the success of the lectures, explained the genesis of La catira (1955) and encouraged him to advance in “your projected – and longed-for – Celian pamphlet. Cheer up and go for it, it’s a monkey!” (10/24). This is the seminal core of the unborn book. Castellet meticulously followed Celian paths. His review of La catira (Revista , 4/7/1955) attests to this: “It is the definitive consecration of his literary genius, that is, of his fertile imagination and his prodigious verbal power.” On the other hand, in May ’55, Notas sobre literatura española contemporánea, which includes the review of La colmena and an article from the magazine Alcalá (11/20/1952), ‘Notice and praise of Salvador Espríu’, was published, in which it can be read: “They are perhaps the only current Spanish writers who have achieved the fusion of their people’s cultural tradition with the broadest universalism.”
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The praises are mutual when Cela is launching his splendid monthly magazine Papeles de Son Armadans. Castellet will collaborate in the first issue with an article on Italo Svevo. Cela publishes Judíos, moros y cristianos (1956) in Destino and asks Castellet to analyze the book in Papeles, a review that appears in the August issue: “Philology, geography, and history through Ávila, Segovia, and their lands.” In this text, it can be seen that the Barcelona critic has taken an interest in Cela’s travel books (the mentions of Cela’s ‘Notas’ to the second and third editions of Viaje a la Alcarria attest to this), and even more, in a letter dated June 18, justifying the slight delay of the article, he writes: “I have been rereading your travel books and have taken a mountain of notes in view of the essay I want to write about your entire work. I have slightly changed the previous plan and will soon be able to announce the outline of the thing,” which until then was based solely on the novelist.
The book is being managed. On May 8, Cela told him: “Looking for – and finding – a publisher, I don’t think it would be difficult and, in principle, I would propose Noguer; before telling him anything, let me know. We could also publish it in the editions of Papeles, which will soon be born.” At the beginning of summer, Castellet repeatedly asks him “if you have made any arrangements regarding my book about your work near Noguer, in whose essay collection it could be published.” Taking advantage of a trip to Barcelona, Cela met with Pepiño Pardo (director of Noguer) and was not convinced: Pardo does not want to publish the book. Cela communicated this grumpily to Castellet on July 15.
However, Castellet remained determined to write an “entertaining and interesting” book. He consulted French series such as ‘L’écrivain pour lui même’, sought help from Charo Conde and Caballero Bonald, because – he wrote to Cela on September 4 – “I think it would be advisable for my book to be as complete as possible and that it would be advisable, consequently, that at the end of it a bibliographic appendix be given, limited not only to books, but also including translations and the main articles written about your works, as well as serious interviews dealing with literary topics or your literary theory.” Indeed, it would have been a reference book.
During the years 57 to 59, news about the book was scarce. Various tasks, which are many, kept them both busy. However, the fall of ’58 saw two relevant publications almost simultaneously. The French version of La colmena, La Ruche, with a prologue by Castellet, at the proposal of Juan Goytisolo, and in which the influence of La hora del lector (1957) is evident. And the publication, as a prologue to the lecture Cela gave on Pío Baroja at the Spanish Association of University Women in Madrid on November 15, 1956, of Castellet’s old article on La colmena. It was the little book Don Pío Baroja (Mexico, Los Presentes, Ediciones de Andrea, 1958).
In the summer of ’60, Castellet’s book on Cela was revived, who traveled to Palma “to take a look that could be definitive or the first of others that I will give once the work is structured.” And it was revived because Professor Ángel del Río, on behalf of the Revista Hispánica Moderna had contacted Cela about the monograph in which Castellet’s essay would eventually see the light. On December 28, 1961, the Barcelona critic wrote to Cela: “For the first time after more than a year, I see that this is serious and I am going to fulfill it.” Indeed, he would fulfill it, and it would be the prestigious New York magazine that would support the excellent synthesis – deserving of a reissue – of the book that was never born.
For Castellet, Cela and Espriu “are the only ones today who achieve the fusion of cultural tradition with universalism”
The outline of the essay starts from the travel books, moves through novels of realistic illusion or objectivity, crosses the carpetovetonic notes, and ends in novels of lyrical intention or subjectivity. Explicitly agreeing frequently with Vilanova’s critical analyses in Destino, Castellet defines that time of reading, rereading, and meticulous review of Cela’s works with “the intention of relating his books and the reality they try to describe.” The first major study on Cela’s work was coming to light.
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