Lo sagrado y lo profano: intertextos bíblicos en la narrativa de Ramón Pérez de Ayala

Abstract

Although Ramón Pérez de Ayala has long been regarded as fiercely antireligious, most often manifested through his anti-Catholicism and anticlericalism, there is throughout his work a concern for the nature of religious experience. While this has been alluded to, no significant study of this aspect of his writing has been undertaken. This article, while not exhaustive, examines one dimension of the religious theme, namely, the presence of the Bible in Pérez de Ayala's narrative. Key themes are the legacy of his early readings of the Bible, his love of the language of the Bible, and his remarkable awareness of the most recent trends in Biblical scholarship. In the context of the intense ideological and religious debates of the Spain of the early twentieth century, Pérez advocates a more liberal, and less literal, interpretation of the Bible in contrast to the the more authoritarian approach of Catholic orthodoxy. He maintains a constant dialogue with biblical texts, stresses their importance as myths of value for all humankind, their significance as seminal texts in Western culture, and conceives of them as symbols of humanity's need to impart meaning to the world, a need which is shared by all works of the imagination