Document Type
Article
Journal/Book Title/Conference
Decimonónica
Volume
6
Issue
1
Publisher
Decimonónica
Publication Date
2009
First Page
19
Last Page
33
Abstract
They saw it coming. Writers. The Revolution. Not in any prescient way nor with any real accuracy, and certainly not with any predictability (they were playwrights and poets, after all, not futurologists), but they sensed disquiet, heard the nearly inaudible harp strings of discord playing on the horizon, and picked up on what Bécquer would later so beautifully refer to as “los átomos del aire” (208). When the invasion finally came and the war broke out in 1808, that subtle disquiet turned into a maelstrom of noise, a chorus of voices singing out a harsh reality, mocking an untenable situation that they could not control—or rather, could only hope to control through the power of their words—, and seeking to shape a better future. And then, as suddenly as their voices were heard, they were silenced again, consigned to the basement of history (or to the footnotes of unread scholarship).
Recommended Citation
Gies, David T., "The Canary in the Mind: Quintana, Pelayo (1805) and the Play of War" (2009). Decimonónica. Paper 125.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/decimononica/125