For a Reading of Julio Llamazares’ La lluvia amarilla (1988) as a “Theatre of Ruins”

Abstract

The article studies Llamazares’ novel La lluvia amarilla (1988) from a new perspective, which identifies the scenario of the work as a ‘theatre of ruins’. The essay opens with a reflection on the chromatic symbolism already suggested by the title and discernible also in Vilas’ novel Ordesa (2018), with which it seems to have a dialogical relationship. After a necessary reference to the lyricism of Llamazares’ prose, the Ainielle landscape is interpreted as a ‘literary landscape’, a concept that refers to the subjective experience of nature through the protagonist perceptive consciousness. In the second part of the article, the metamorphosis of Ainielle into a place of ruins (which also engulfs the narrator) is demonstrated, in a passage that is accomplished through the cemetery metaphor and the supernatural incursion. Finally, it illustrates the current state of Ainielle, a village in the Pyrenees, which has become a ‘place of memory’.