Ortega y la reivindicación de la vida en Viviana y Merlín, de Benjamín Jarnés

Abstract

In Viviana y Merlín (1929, 1930, 1936), Benjamín Jarnés recycles an episode of the Arthurian legend involving the two title characters, whereby he avails himself of the ‘mythical method’ so widely used by modernist writers to reflect on the present with tools from the past. This article offers a close reading of Jarnés’s ’leyenda’ through the lens provided by three texts that Ortega had published in the early to mid- 1920s: El tema de nuestro tiempo and, most importantly, ‘Vitalidad, alma, espíritu’ and ‘Epílogo al libro De Francesca a Beatrice’. The article shows that Viviana y Merlín fictionalizes Ortega’s raciovitalismo as well as his topografía del ‘yo’, and it is a work tainted by the philosopher’s proverbial misogyny.