The intuition of the journalist and professor Carlos Aimeur did not fail. After reviewing the file that the renowned journalist Rafael Ventura Melià had donated to the Valencian Library on the writer Blasco Ibáñez, he was convinced that, at Ventura's house, there would have to be "something else". Engaged in a doctoral thesis on the beginnings of the novelist in the cinema, Aimeur convinced a nephew of Ventura to search the "chaotic" library of his uncle.
It was then that they discovered some typed documents to which the aforementioned family member, in principle, did not give too much importance. However, Aimeur captured the importance of the finding: it was an unpublished film script written by the famous Valencian author in 1916, during the First World War.
Aimeur explains to La Vanguardia that these are the notes from El Novelista, a work that was known to exist through Blasco Ibáñez's epistolary correspondence, but which had not been found. The journalist says that this script "thought for a medium-length film of two or three reels" was never filmed. The play tells the story of a very famous novelist who loses his son in the war.
He is inspired, Aimeur explains, by the figure of Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of characters like Sherlock Holmes. As it happens, the journalist and researcher comments, the son of the British writer died, two years after Blasco Ibáñez wrote the text, of pneumonia contracted at the front.
The Valencian journalist maintains contact with the professor at the University of Paris Cécile Fourrel who had already investigated this rather unknown story by Blasco Ibáñez that the writer planned to adapt to the screen in Paris. In an article, Fourrel highlights the propagandist role of the Valencian novelist in favor of allies with works such as El Novelista.
"At a time when effective rhetoric was needed to galvanize patriots and convince neutral countries to enter the war, the screen quickly turned out to be an effective weapon," writes the French scholar.
Fourrel describes that, "despite being a little-known text, "El novelista" is representative of a crucial stage in the artistic career of Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, given that this story and its film adaptation were devised around 1916, when the Spanish creator he launched into his first cinematographic experiences. At that time, the context of the First World War and the economic difficulties of the recent Prometeo publishing house founded by the writer-publisher, paradoxically, pushed him to explore the possibilities of the visual arts”.
With all this material, Aimeur has devised a project to investigate and investigate the unpublished script found almost by chance. A project that has been the winner of the Vicente Blasco Ibáñez Research Grant, 2023-2024, promoted by the Valencia City Council.
The objective of the scholarship, municipal sources explain, is to promote research on the figure of Blasco Ibáñez, his work or his legacy. The Department of Cultural Action, Heritage and Cultural Resources has expressed its interest in "the physical recovery of the referenced document" and has valued "the opportunity of its transcription, translation and other proposals made" by the winner of the aforementioned scholarship.
