From Trasalba to Lourenzá: landscape in the work of Francisco Fernández del Riego

Abstract

As an essayist and literary critic, artist and traveler, Francisco Fernández del Riego put landscape at the centre of his work, thereby tracing a continuity between the “Nós” Generation and the Generation of 1950 to which he belonged, and which occupied a prominent place in essays on the landscape in Galicia. In addition to essays by colleagues from the same generation, such as “Abrente e solpor da paisaxe”, by Celestino Fernández de la Vega, Del Riego contributed “Panorámica da nosa paisaxe literaria” (1955), under the pseudonym of Salvador Lorenzana: a cross-sectional view of Galician literature from the specific perspective of the depiction of the landscape. A bias towards sensoriality that transcends the visual and a considerable focus on animal elements in the landscape is quickly perceptible in this approach. In line with this critical perspective and in the literary production itself, as in O cego de Pumardedón, Del Riego opts for a blind protagonist in a novel in which the recreation of the environment and space is central in order to focus on the other senses. Transversal in terms of its various facets, it is possible to identify his personal and very specific way of approaching the territory and the landscape that will be studied in this article.