Gerra Zibila Ramon Saizarbitoriaren narraziogintzan

Abstract

As Aristotle made clear in his Poetics, poetry is truer and more universal than history, since the former takes us to what might have happened, whereas the latter only refers to what happened. Hence, fiction enriches and broadens our understanding of that plausible hypothesis that suits our purpose to call “reality”. This article analyses the dialectics of historical memory/fiction, based on two stories that the novelist Ramón Saizarbitoria brings together in Guárdame bajo tierra (“let me restunderground”) (Alfaguara): “la guerra perdida del viejo gudari” (“the lost war of the old soldier”) and “el huerto de nuestros mayores” (“the vegetable garden of our elders”). However, its seems appropriate to compare the world of our elders, that is, the generation of many of those persons who were involved in the Civil War and shared values and same vision of the world, and their children’s generation, which gained special prominence from 1968 with the armed struggle of ETA. the latter is found in the Los pasos incontables (“Uncounted Footsteps”) (Espasa Calpe), by the same author, his most accurate version.