Mist or Fog (Niebla)

 Author: Miguel de Unamuno 

Genre: Fiction

Original publication date: 1914

Book description: Augusto, a pampered, wealthy intellectual, still reeling two years after his mother's death, was bored with life. Bored, until the day he spotted a girl with beautiful eyes. He falls in love, or does he? This is a very obscure novel or Nivola following Don Augusto after his first encounter with the enigmatic Eugenia.

Thoughts:

This book I was supposed to read last month. I picked it up, read maybe half a page then put it down for a bit. End of the month, the start of the new year, etc. So I finally pick it up again. So fair warning this was written over 100 years ago. I am sure there is an English translation for this somewhere. The writing style like in many older works is a bit tedious at first.  But then you get into it and it flies through.

Fog (Niebla) is a term used plenty in this story. Don Augusto is a very unlikable character. He has a very convenient outtake in most aspects of life. He is pompous, self-centered, misogynist and the stupidest man in his veinity. But then again this is a very absurdist story. Don Augusto is a very "philosophical" man. He is always seeking the truth and philosophy of things. He comes across as an ass really. 

The principle of a novel as proposed in this literary work is: to let the novel write itself, without a plan. The plot is to unfold in a muddled and disorderly fashion, similarly to life. The characters will form themselves through their use of language, through what they say, but in a loose and pointless talk (or “hablar por hablar”), and oh do they really talk nonsense. They will speak a great deal even if they have nothing to say but this language will portray them. The ideas represented in the characters, in their foolish actions or beliefs either will make you angry or laugh. There is consequently a great deal of dialogue in this story.

There was not a single good character there. The women were described poorly. They were there only for Don Augusto to be delighted by and in love. We have a lot of monologues and in some parts the absurd ideas just make you laugh. But we do have Orfeo, a lovely loyal companion show up somewhere at the start of the story (a rescued dog). Orfeo is the only good character there.

The story itself starts to unravel with the falling in love, then playing around with a few women, pretending to want to understand women's psychology and much more absurd aspects of everyday life.

Unamuno describes the struggles of different people married couples who did not wish to marry but do nonetheless. Men destroyed by depression, men who see the world only as a fight, we see a few funny aspects of proper courtship as it is set in a very different time period than our own. But you see him poking fun at several social standards such as marriage, having or not children, marriage, what a wife should or should not be like, among other things. 

It was a very typical fiction story of a rich man falling for a woman in a difficult financial situation who is in love with a good-for-nothing man -until the ending. The plot twist that we see was what caught my attention once more and saved the story as a whole.

Don Augusto has a very unfortunate series of events happen to him and he decides to travel. On that trip, he makes a huge discovery. Something I cannot mention as it will ruin the whole story. Yet if you are reading the story and paying attention to the character's conversation they tell you what it is way in advance. But still, the way both parties involved react and the consequences of that interaction were very interesting indeed. 

I was very invested initially, then a good part of the middle I was very annoyed and disliked everything about the book, but the ending was what made me come out of this experience pretty content. I will read more works by the author for sure.

I gave this:

Has anyone ever read any of Unamuno's works? I don't want to appear ignorant but let's be honest, I am. I know very little about the author's, classic works even those of Spanish natives such as this one. This was advertised as the father of modern literature and yet I have never heard of him, not during my whole education or even when I was diving into reading. Why? Because it's hard to know where to start. I do hope to change that a bit in the upcoming months.