Benedetto Croce en Islandia: la estética croceana en la novela de Guðbergur Bergsson Lömuðu kennslukonurnar

Abstract

In his most recent novel, The Paralytic Sisters (2004), the Icelandic writer, Guðbergur Bergsson, approaches Benedetto Croce’s thinking narratively and in a most personal way: the ultimate model for the novel is Croce’s Contributo alla critica di me stesso and a large part of the ideology and aesthetics underlying the novel is based on other writings by Croce. This paper analyses the key elements in this approach in order to identify the forms it takes and the purposes it serves. The paper examines the author’s stance on such topics as the relation between truth and literature, the role of intuition and imagination, the moral responsibility of the artist or the usefulness of literature and the writer’s dependence on the demands of the public; and how Bergsson’s ideas are directly and explicitly linked to Croce’s philosophical, especially aesthetic thinking. In addition to all this, the presence of Italy in this novel is something totally new in Bergsson’s writing. The conclusion is that Croce offered Bergsson a way of theorizing his own aesthetic concerns and literary production over more than forty years.