"¿Y memoria?": Larra y la resistencia al olvido

This study highlights the role of the past in the work of Mariano José de Larra, and in so doing addresses a contradiction in the traditional view of the writer as both anachronistically "modern" and the exemplary Spanish Romantic. While displaying an artistic sensibility in line with the German Romanticism of A. W. Schlegel, which is characterized by an emphasis on the interdependence of the literary past and present, Larra refuses to limit his conception of good art to the chronological category of Romanticism, and fights against the forgetfulness that such a narrowing of scope would imply. This "resistance to oblivion" is analyzed as it appears in several of Larra's writings, beginning with articles on the arts in Spain such as "Conventos españoles," "Literatura," and "You quiero ser cómico"; then moving to the political vision he expresses in his introduction to his translation of a visionary text by F. R. Lammenais; and finally turning to the social criticism of the author's last writings, with particular focus on the article "Fígaro dado al mundo." In all of these texts, Larra makes reference to Spain's political and religious past, as well as to literature from a variety of time periods, in order to include that past in a better understanding of the present. Thus emerges a view of art and criticism as mnemonic and, thereby, restorative forces in society—along with a sharp critique of modernity's forgetfulness and, implicitly, the selective memory of the Romantic Movement.