"Cats quarrel" .. The novel as a tool of knowledge and pleasure

In his inspiring sentence, Munif shortens the knowledge as an objective that the novelist might seek to understand, such as what Flaubert, who for many years wanted to write a novel as a complete encyclopedia with all his humanities, or an encyclopedia of clbadical art, as the Eduardo Mendoza of Spain chose(*)In his novel "Brawl Cats"(**), Which has recently been translated into Arabic.

The novel of the Spanish writer, laureate of the Planita Prize 2010, is part of the factual account: the history of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) goes back to Madrid, a few months before the start of the war. And the son of the dictator Primo de Ribera, who led Spain from 1923 to 1930, as well as General Francesco Franco, the dictator who has ruled Spain since 1936 for 39 years. Until his death in 1975, but the main hero of the novel is Artist "Balazquit", one of the greatest painters of the Spanish, and the painter of the royal court under the reign of Philip IV, or more precisely his paintings, which draws well is Spanish art, the British critic Anthony Aitlandz (a fictional character) to direct and his painter events royal palace of the successive novel.

Mendoza sets out his goal of the novel, beginning with his main title, derived from the painting "Cats Quarrel" by the Spanish artist Francesco de Guia, showing two black cats colliding on a ruined wall, evoking the Spanish crisis by the secondary title "Madrid 1936". Towards a narrative world in which "the plastic art" of the metan, while the Spanish crisis folds to the margin, unlike the work that deals with major events, in which human relations occupy a central place in the center of the debates , through this "different" form The facts are not the works of Plathkith alone But the work of many pioneers of art in the world.

Perhaps this reading of "Cats Tie", Milan Kondera's position recalls the novel "After the Summer" by the Austrian writer Adalbert Stefter, whom Nietzsche has clbadified as one of the four most important books of German prose. Almost read in my eyes, we learn a lot about geology, plants and animals, as well as all trades, painting and architecture, but human and human conditions exist in the margins of this huge educational encyclopedia.

But in his novel, Mendotha does not marginalize human relations in exchange for his interest in plastic art, but draws from the drama in his novel paintings of Plathcith, Titciano and others, and turns them into human relationships that drive the events at a climax. The life of the protagonists seems to correspond to that of the protagonists, to Madrid in 1936, as images painted by medieval artists, ranging from Goya to Civil War to a caged wall, ending with Anthony Whitelands (protagonist) , the role of Action in the famous painting of Titciano was "Action's Death" in a similar position It came in the Greek myth What is described by painting.

Despite the many details and long narrative requirements, which seem to be short articles on the history of plastic art, Mendotha's plot has given his novel, to each chapter, a new effervescence . Whitelands, an English plastic critic, goes on a mission to Madrid, very discreetly, to evaluate a painting of the sixteenth century made by a friend of José Antonio Primo de Ribera, son of the dictator Miguel Diego de Ribera, whose financial value could be a a determining factor of change. A major politician in Spain and on the origin of the painting and attributed to Placith, and whoever will benefit from the financial value of the conflict turns in the novel.

Mendotha chose a foreign hero for his novel, not only to appear neutral and not to adopt opposing views prior to the outbreak of the civil war in Spain, but also to not be part of it, a source of security for others hero of the novel, transformed "because of his position as a stranger and his flexible behavior." Thus, during his brief stay in Madrid, Lowlands explores many cemeteries of aristocratic families, badociates with Jose de Rivera's friendship and gets closer to the Fascist fascist party's discussion circle that the generals were using to speed up the civil war.

Despite his neutral desire to deal with the traumatic events of his novel, Mendota did not treat the same logic to his English hero, who appeared as a humble genius. He appeared in many of his personal compositions, similar to that of Nicholas Garrigan, for the British novelist Giles Vauden, as the two qualities of the self-destructive.