French Literature Reviews - 2026
B. Gracián, Le Criticon.
Novel and Narrative Prose
Baltasar Gracián, Benito Pelegrín (Annotator), Le Criticón
SEUIL, 2008, 473 p.
EAN: 9782020950312
€24.00
"The course of your life in a single discourse": thus Baltasar Gracián (1601–1658) defines his novel in his "To the Reader" note—"the incomparable Criticón", according to Schopenhauer.
An allegory of life's journey across four seasons, this first European Bildungsroman—presented here in its absolute essence—features "two pilgrims of life" traversing Europe in search of Felicity through a world of appearances that is systematically articulated, denounced, and banished to "The Cave of Nothingness." Gracián shatters the false and enduring values of image, ambition, power, and lucre with a hammer-like philosophy that ruthlessly smashes gaudy idols and false pretenses.
He contrasts them with education and culture, which transform raw humanity into a consummate Person, and extols Art, which is "undoubtedly man's primary vocation in paradise." Acerbic and ferocious, the satire taps into a fantastic vein, written with a whimsical verve that makes Le Criticón a masterpiece of linguistic freedom and joyful wordplay.
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An article about this work can be read on P. Assouline's blog:
"Troublemaker and cross to his superiors".
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In Libération on July 10, 2008, this article by R. Maggiori:
"Muchas Gracián
Preference. From Saint Helena to Saint Blaise, Le Criticón, the most baroque of epics from the Spanish Grand Siècle. ROBERT MAGGIORI DAILY: Thursday, July 10, 2008 Baltasar Gracián Le Criticón Presented and translated by Benito Pelegrín, Seuil, 502 pp., €24.
What Le Criticón says about the "sole defect" that can be found in a "great book" applies to Le Criticón itself: "Not brief enough to be memorized, nor long enough to never finish reading it." Indeed, the work of Baltasar Gracián y Morales—the first European Bildungsroman—is unfathomable: one never finishes reading it, as if harvesting an infinite field of pleasures, stopping the moment a citation, a word, or a turn of phrase sparks daydreaming or meditation: "Oh life, you should never have begun! But since you have begun, you should never end!"; "He who is dying of hunger receives not a single crust of bread, while he who is bursting with indigestion is invited to dinner everywhere"; or "Wine is the milk of the old." Schopenhauer, who read all of Gracián's books—and translated the Oráculo manual—called him "incomparable" and placed him above Don Quixote or Gulliver.
"Mooring Lines". Reduced to its plot, Le Criticón recounts, in an allegorical and satirical mode, the adventures of two life pilgrims brought together by Fortune. Returning from the Indies, Critilo is shipwrecked off the island of Saint Helena and pulled from the waves by Andrenio, "a handsome young man, an angel in his bearing and even more so in his actions." Critilo is the criticón, the ceaseless critic, civilized man, the scholar, Reason; Andrenio is Nature, Instinct, the feral child abandoned at birth who, raised by beasts, would never have learned human language without the miraculous arrival and conversation of the shipwreck survivor whose life he saved. United by the "moorings of a secret magnet," Critilo and Andrenio reach Spain and begin a long trek—both an initiatory journey and a quest for happiness, embodied by the figure of Felisinda, who turns out to be the (secret) wife of one and the (unknown) mother of the other. Their tumultuous pilgrimage across a metaphorically mapped Europe ends in Rome with an encounter with Life's mother-in-law, namely Her Majesty Death. The two heroes manage to escape her and land on the Isle of Immortality after being judged by Merit. In the end, they attain the status of Person, the philosophical ideal of man who, raw and wild, perfects himself step by step through experience, knowledge, culture, and art.
The moral of the story? Everything created by the Supreme Artisan is perfect; everything added by man is imperfect. Yet if man, born innocent, is corrupted by the world, he can save himself, build an art of living, and establish a harmonious society if he gives the ongoing education he receives the power to shatter prejudices, false values, and the power of appearances—to overturn a world where "virtue is persecuted, vice applauded, truth mute, and falsehood trilingual." Let us not mistake this for something "edifying," however. Le Criticón—whose three parts were published under a pseudonym between 1651 and 1657—is a baroque celebration, a fireworks display full of wit and wordplay, alliteration, and whimsical etymologies, a dizzying, irreverent sarabande that we can guess did not greatly please the Society of Jesus, which stripped Father Gracián of his duties, put him on a diet of dry bread, and expelled him from the college of Zaragoza.
"Populace-lovers". True enough, the Spanish Jesuit sets Le Criticón in infernal or surreal landscapes reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch's paintings. Through fantastic scenarios, he has Critilo and Andrenio journey from the House of Ambition to the court of Pride, from Hypocrisy Street to Ostentation Square, where—much like Friar John of the Funnels—he joyfully thrashes everything that moves: fake scholars, genuine idiots, the arrogant and the slick, the "populace-lovers," the "fans of popularity"—won through "stunts, wonders, and sucker-trap miracles for naive and incongruous dupes"—the "idols of the vulgar," heroes of nothingness, and princes of emptiness. It is a massacre game, yet gentle, witty, and amused—driven by agudeza, that acute wit which is the hallmark of all Baltasar Gracián's work. Is it reasonable, for example, for a mother to let her daughter go on a pilgrimage "to Saint Blaise without her"? Without l…
Published during the seventeenth century under a pseudonym, Le Criticón is an allegorical work associated with the Spanish Golden Age and the literary tradition of the period. Its structure utilizes allegorical framing to examine human nature, society, and the pursuit of wisdom through encounters with diverse symbolic landscapes, reflecting the broader intellectual currents of its era and the cultivation of acute wit known as agudeza.
Readers interested in seventeenth-century European fiction, classical allegorical narratives, or the broader reception of Spanish prose may find this edition relevant. Benito Pelegrín provides the presentation and translation of the text, offering access to Baltasar Gracián's vocabulary and stylistic choices within a volume that presents the novel as an exploration of human artifice, illusion, and the transformative potential of education and culture.