El Epicureísmo de Pío Baroja The Epicureanism of Pío Baroja

Abstract

This article studies the Epicurean affiliation of the Spanish novelist Pío Baroja. In a first section, his pessimistic view of life is examined by tracing this life attitude in his medical Dissertation about the pain. The influence of A. Schopenhauer’s irrationalism and from F. Nietzsche’s nihilism on his dissertation will be studied. Then, the writer’s self-definition, included with the title of “Epicuri de grege porcum” in his biographical essay Juventud, egolatría (1917), will be considered: in this essay, the novelist expresses his personal and intellectual affinity with Epicureanism. A negative review on his first novels, because of his anticlericalism, may have been the main trigger of this Epicurean lifestyle self-assertion. The tradition and reasons for the Horatian expression Epicuri de grege porcum as an unmotivated disqualification of Epicurus and an ironic pun is also examined. Afterwards, some Epicurean principles present in two passages (“La vida de los átomos” and “Las coles del cementerio”) of his first novel, Vidas sombrías (1900), are analyzed. These narrations were probably inspired by Lucretius or by some scholarly and philosophical essays engaged to Materialism. Pío Baroja wrote a sincere and reliable self-portrait of his life ideal.