Fog: nivola or novel

Miguel de Unamuno is one of the most important authors in Spanish literature. He was born in Bilbao in 1864 and died in Salamanca in 1936. To this day, his name resonates as one of the greats in Hispanic letters and one of the representatives of the Generation of ’98.

In 1914, he published a rather peculiar novel, a novel that he prefers to classify as “nivola.”, thus preventing critics from comparing it with other works. That novel is none other than Foga work that we will explore in this article.

In this work he collects many of the ideas present in his previous texts, but he does so through the life of a character, Augusto Pérez, a rich man with a law degree. The story itself doesn’t have too many twists, but the writer tried to give it another dimension.

A new reading that he himself would classify as a “nivola” and not a novel as it would conventionally have been described. In this article, we will reveal some of the keys to Fog in the hope that, when reading it, you will be carried away by its genius.

The argument of Fog

Something that will catch the reader’s attention early is that The prologue is signed by Víctor Goti, one of the characters in the work. Likewise, the author makes a post-prologue in which he argues that we are not going to read a novel, but rather a “nivola.”

To confuse all this even more, the epilogue consists of a narration of the events of the work, but from the point of view of Orfeo, the dog of Augusto Pérez, the protagonist.

The action begins when Augusto sees a woman with whom he ends up falling madly in love. He will try, with her limited resources, to conquer her, but he will only get rejections, Well, the woman has a partner. However, over time, she will agree to go on some dates, but in order to take advantage of the protagonist. Finally, on her wedding day, she writes to him explaining that it was all a hoax.

From this moment on, we witness a true revolution from a narrative point of view. Augusto feels so unhappy that he plans to commit suicide. However, Augustus is nothing more than a character in a play and, as such, lacks free will. It is Unamuno, the author, who can make the final decision.

At this moment, what we would know in cinema as the fourth wall is broken and Augusto decides to start a talk with the author; that is, speak directly to Unamuno.

The character ends up rebelling against the author, explaining his intentions. In this way, doubt is raised in the author: is he himself a character from another fiction? To what extent does he have free will? The idea is that, as Unamuno begins to doubt his own freedom and his reality, the reader questions his own existence at the same time. What if we only existed in a dream? What if we are part of someone’s dream?

The magnitude of the novel is not only found in the plot, but in its capacity for dialogue with the reality of the reader and, in this case, also of the author.. Hence, Unamuno decides that the work should be included in another generic classification, in a category full of paratexts and that he prefers to call “nivola”, making it impossible for critics to catalog or compare it.

Facts and fictions in the novel Fog

Unamuno’s work has a certain relationship with The life is dream of Calderón de la Barca. In some ways, fiction is more real than the authors themselves. For Unamuno, the characters have a life of their own, the reader makes them live and what matters is how literature is revived.

All of this is closely related to the problem of immortality: if we are what we dream of and we call reality the dream of all in common, we cannot know what is real.

Unamuno had read Descartes, but also Calderón de la Barca and, precisely there, lies the inspiration for his “nivola”. We see a reflection of Descartes’ rationalism, since we have, in principle, no reason to believe that what surrounds us is more than a dream.

Unamuno, despite being a believer, He cannot rationally deduce the existence of God as Descartes does, therefore, he has no reason to believe that what surrounds him is a dream or deception.. How do we know when our senses are deceiving us?

Unamuno brings together all this complexity in Fog drawing different regions: that of fiction, in which we find the characters; framing fiction, we would find the reality of fiction, which is the place where the fictional author is; Finally, outside, at the limits, we would find another reality, that of the reader himself.

With Fog, the author describes various planes that are intertwined. The author himself ends up acting as a character when he meets Agusto. In other words, we are faced with a reality of reality that would be that of the world around us and, at the same time, a reality of fiction where Unamuno is. Finally, a fiction of fiction which is where the characters meet.

More philosophical aspects of Fog

Another of the fundamental questions of Fog It is, as we have well anticipated, that of free will. It is presented from two perspectives: the first is found in the fictional entity, from which the character wonders if he is free.

We see Augusto who wants to commit suicide, but he finds that Unamuno does not allow it, he cannot do it because he is simply a character. And, at this point, the same doubt is reflected in the reader.

The characters are born from a language, from a heritage; for this reason, We are not free to think what we think either and these two possibilities arise again.: God does not exist and reality is nothing more than the dream that we all dream or that God exists and we would be God’s dream.

Augusto fights for his life, his fictional life, but his after all. In his despair, the character of Augustus announces to the readers that they are also going to die and that the work is, ultimately, a metaphor for human existence itself.

What is the nivola? It is a novel in which the characters are not previously defined, but are created as they move, the creator does not have a plan of what will happen, just as it happens in life itself.

The objective of the nivola It is none other than to confuse critics who tend to compare everything with the previous, in this way, it provides a new genre without precedent with which to compare.

For Unamuno, there is something of a trap in the realistic novel, they make us believe that it is real and that is the genre of men who do not see that their reality is a dream. The nivola, However, it would be a way to understand any novel; a novel that only exists when you think, activate and read. It is an uncomfortable novel, in which the prologue is also a novel; in which reality and metafiction intermingle in the text.

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