4 - Reading Between the Lines: Silences and Double Language in Xavier Benguerel's El testament

Summary

The endless night of Xavier Benguerel: challenging the critical reception of El testament

Xavier Benguerel was one of the most widely read authors of the 1960s and 1970s but, in spite of this, the critical reception of his work has been superficial and subject to misinterpretation. There are several reasons for reassessing El testament: firstly, it was a great success at a very difficult period, to the point that it was translated into Spanish and Polish and in 1960 adapted for the stage by the writer himself; secondly, it has been considered a turning point in Benguerel's oeuvre, since supposedly this was his first novel·la catòlica; and, thirdly, it was the first novel he published after his fourteen-year exile in Chile (1940–1954). El testament, accordingly, was written at a crucial period in the author's career, when he had just returned to Catalonia, and this explains why, as this chapter argues, the novel echoes the fears and concerns of the author with regard to the situation of his country and his difficulties in understanding and adapting to Franco's Spain.

The quality and cultural importance of Benguerel's novels deserves a new critical response, as Lluís Busquets pointed out in his re-evaluation of the author's narrative world:

El problema, doncs, no és pas recuperar l'obra literària de Benguerel […] sinó fixar el seu lloc en la nostra història literària […]. En definitiva, cal veure les novel·les de Benguerel no tan sols com un exponent de l'anomenada novel·la catòlica, en la línia de Graham Green o de François Mauriac.