This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting, preserving and promoting the world's literature.

This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting, preserving and promoting the world's literature.

Published in 1921, "Belarmino y Apolonio" probably is the best novel written by the Spanish Asturias-born writer Ramon Perez de Ayala, and certainly a most significant one among those published during the so-called Spanish culture Silver Age (1898-1936). According to the French hispanist critic Jean Cassou "Belarmino y Apolonio" should be considered one of the most important novels in Spanish literature, second only to "El Quijote." The novel appears at first sight to be a story that could be classified as "costumbrismo" or even romantic pulp fiction: the forbidden love between a young seminarist and a beautiful girl, son and daughter respectively of two shoemakers who happen to hate each other. But in truth the work constitutes a singular mechanism of mirrors and retelling, and a continuous pondering upon human behavior, up to the point that the reader soon realizes that one of the cobblers is a philosopher who happens to have invented a new language, and the other one considers himself to be a playwright and normally speaks in verse. With this novel Perez de Ayala presents a fictional research on the point of view, the contrast and, finally, the relativeness and contingency of human opinion, and how do these affect the precious good called "happiness," in a text that combines cultural references and an essay-like style with a precise narrative structure, all encompassed in a playful and ironic tone of voice.