Don Vicente Blasco Ibáñez is today on his birthday. Just yesterday marked the 90th anniversary of his death, but without a doubt it is always much better to celebrate births. So today I remember this Valencian writer with a look at his work and a selection of some phrases that we find in it.

Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

He is one of the authors most popular of the late XNUMXth and early XNUMXth centuries. His work can be considered belonging to the naturalism, but it also has elements customs.

He studied law, but his career soon turned toward the writing and politics. He was a supporter and defender of the republic and he was in the Congress of Deputies on two occasions. He did not belong to any literary movement, but developed a current called blasquism which was the reason for his exile in countries like Italy or France.

Much of his work perfectly reflects the Valencian society of the time as The barrack o Canes and clay, but the great international success came with The four horsemen of the apocalypse. It was a work that was sold all over the world and made into film twice.

In addition to The four horsemen of the apocalypse, other works have been taken to the cinema as Blood and Sand, Mare Nostrum, The torrent o Between orangeAnd also The dead walk y The naked maja. And of course we must highlight the television adaptations of The barrack o Reeds and Mud in the years 70 and, more recently, Between orange o Rice and tartana.

Some phrases from his works

The barrack

• They were more alone than in the middle of the desert; the void of hatred was a thousand times worse than that of Nature.
• This room, dark and damp, gave off a vapor of alcohol, a perfume of must, which intoxicated the nose and disturbed the sight, making one think that the whole earth was going to be covered by a flood of wine.
• As she also found in his office, the poor huertana bravely entered the dirty alleys, which seemed dead at that hour. Always, upon entering, she felt a certain uneasiness, an instinctive disgust with a delicate stomach. But her spirit of an honest and sick woman knew how to overcome this impression, and she continued on with a certain vain haughtiness, with the pride of a chaste female, consoled herself to see that she, weak and overwhelmed by misery, was still superior to others.
• It tiled the orchard in the twilight. In the background, over the dark mountains, the clouds were colored with the glow of a distant fire; on the side of the sea the first stars trembled in infinity; the dogs barked sadly; with the monotonous song of frogs and crickets the screeching of invisible cars was confused, moving away along all the roads of the immense plain.

Canes and clay

• The forest seemed to recede towards the sea, leaving between it and the Albufera an extensive low plain covered with wild vegetation, torn at times by the smooth sheet of small lagoons.

The four horsemen of the apocalypse

• Where a man makes his fortune and constitutes his family, there is his true homeland.
• Hooray for peace, Frenchy, and the simple life! When a man can live comfortably and is not in danger of being killed by things he does not understand, there is his true homeland!

The Orange trees

• The orange trees, covered from trunk to top in white flowers with the sharpness of ivory, looked like spun glass trees.

The argonauts

• My god doesn't know me, he doesn't know anyone. He is blind and deaf to humans, as are the forces of nature.

Nibujon

• Blessed are the peoples who lack imagination! Their will be tranquility and vulgar virtues!
• When you travel, you leave cities, no matter how pleasant, with a feeling of joy. It is the curiosity that is reawakened, the ancestral instinct for change and movement, which we carry in us as an inheritance from our very remote grandparents, tireless nomads of the prehistoric world. What will there be beyond? What awaits us in the next stage?