Pablo d'Ors, novelist and essayist, is a case apart in the Spanish literary world. Born in Madrid in 1963, he studied in New York, Rome, Prague and Vienna, and was ordained a priest in 1991. A Claretian, he defines himself, à la Graham Greene, not as a Christian writer but as a Christian who writes.
His work, fiction and non-fiction, has a strong spiritual component, with the confessed influence of Herman Hesse.
Finalist for the Herralde Prize in 2000 with The Premiere, other narratives with a culturalist imprint followed, often set in Central European countries, on which the “poetics of humor” of Milan Kundera and the shadows of Kafka, Mann and Bernhard rest.
The adventures of the printer Zollinger, from 2003, portrays a character who, until becoming a printer, works as a railroad worker, soldier, fugitive, bushman, hermit, municipal official and shoemaker. In Stupor and Wonder, from 2007, the protagonist is a caretaker of the fictitious Expressionist Museum in Koblenz, which has rooms dedicated to Klimt, Macke, Kokoschka, Chagall and Kandinsky.
Consecration came in 2012 with Biography of Silence, a short essay of which more than 300,000 copies have been sold and which has been said to reconcile Christian tradition with Zen meditation.
Enthusiasm, from 2017, which he describes as “fictional memoirs,” covers the protagonist's path to the priesthood and his subsequent mission trip in Honduras, where he asks the decisive question: “Did I want to be a white priest, well equipped, unscathed?” and perfect? Did I want to become a priest writer or should I be a missionary, at street level, at the foot of the jungle, with stained hands and muddy feet, with a backpack on my back and a machete on my waist?
Biography of Light, from 2021, proposes a symbolic reading of the Gospels.
Currently, the Galaxia Gutenberg publishing house is recovering all of her work, structured in trilogies: Failure, Illusion, Silence and Enthusiasm, to which Sendino se muerte is added alone, about the agony and the end of a doctor who who attended.
The Contemplatives is a set of six short novels, or long stories. The author traces its origin to an experience that changed his life, the visit, “in the heart of Central Europe”, to the Hungarian Jesuit Franz Jalics, from whom he received inspiration to create the Friends of the Desert network of meditators, today spread across several countries. D’Ors –grandson of the Catalan philosopher who died in Vilanova– points out that each story marks the location of a spiritual path; He undertook them with the idea that “mysticism and poetics would go hand in hand” and thus present “a poetics of transformation.”
The Wu style talks about the body. His starting point is the narrator's fascination with her neighbor, Lita, who has the gift of donation and dedication. In Initiation into the Void, Professor José Mercandino, a friend of the narrator, goes to Candanchú, where he befriends the gymnast Luis Alfredo, with whom he becomes obsessed and whom he considers an angel with the potential to change his life.
In Biography of the Shadow, Lois Carballedo, a former student of the narrator, receives a scholarship from the Kreisler Foundation, where Anne-Sophie Mutter and other virtuosos have studied. At Stetten Castle curious things happen to her and she meets colorful characters, she gets sick, gets drunk and falls in love with her. In this narrative there are many references to romantic authors such as Novalis, Hoffman, Von Chamisso...
Observation Tower is about contemplation and meditation through the figure of the hospital chaplain – like D'Ors himself –, Joan Von Wobeser, a priest who “did not get nervous about the evils of the world, he limited himself to contemplate them.” In Rotating House, the theme is identity, with an almost vampire-like approach. Tina, the narrator's friend, is invited by Estrella to her farm in the countryside, where little by little she sucks the spirit out of her.
Laska – perhaps the most successful story – deals with forgiveness, through a dog that passes from the narrator to its father, and how the affection changes from one to the other.
The middle way, the last, speaks of “the fullness of the everyday and the treasure of simplicity.” Ferrer, distraught after the death of his mother, strengthens his friendship with the narrator and ends up opening a photocopying business. And he marries a young woman who “exudes serenity.” He believes that “people perceive perfectly who has time and who doesn't.” And he will be able to find the charm of everyday life in the most absolute simplicity.
These stories with a realistic setting, sometimes traditional (there are good scenes of life in the Madrid neighborhoods), and a symbolist background, illuminate aspects of human communication (someone contacts someone and changes their life radically) and confirm Pablo d'Ors as one of the most different and suggestive figures on the current scene.
