Escenas junto a la muerte

Benjamín Jarnés (1888-1949) occupies the central place of the Spanish avant-garde novel, having produced a series of hybrid works that blend fiction, essay, autobiography, and lyricism. Escenas junto a la muerte (1931) is one of the most distinguished examples of the "new narrative art" of modernity, standing alongside the structural renovations of contemporary masters like Proust, Joyce, Musil, and Dos Passos.

The novel opens dramatically: a young man, a candidate for a professorship in literature, is prepared to commit suicide. Interrupted by a friend, he begins to narrate his life—a story of a taciturn, meditative "Don Juan" who interprets reality through the lens of literary myths. This journey through his past reflects the broader stages of human history (Classical, Medieval, Romantic), transforming the protagonist's personal disenchantment into a profound meditation on Time and the human condition.

Jarnés’s prose is a sensory and intellectual *tour de force*. It is rhythmic, precise, and crystalline, filled with metaphors and surprising images that construct a meticulously crafted aesthetic universe. The novel advocates for a "vitalist" ethics, claiming the present experience and the body's sensitivity as the only true antidotes to the "shackles of memory" and nihilism.

Edited and annotated by Juan Herrero-Senés, this Stockcero edition offers the first-ever reissue of the original 1931 text. It is an indispensable resource for advanced courses in Spanish Peninsular Modernism, Avant-Garde Literature, Narrative Theory, and 20th-Century Cultural Studies, revealing Jarnés as a sophisticated chronicler of the modern urban subject.