The simultaneity of events such as the awarding of the Barcino International Historical Novel Prize and the publication of Las barbas del profeta represents one of those rare but happy coincidences. Its protagonist, Eduardo Mendoza, has not explicitly cultivated the genre of the historical novel ---he has even acknowledged this in relation to one of his most celebrated works, La ciudad de los prodigios, which shows the social transformation that took place in Barcelona between the late 19th and early 20th centuries--- but he has set there the adventures and misfortunes of many of his characters, often in a joking tone. We think of lesser-known works, which consciously approach parody, such as El misterio de la cripta embrujada or El laberinto de las aceitunas, not to mention the multi-translated ---this one, more popular--- Sin noticias de Gurb.
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Those novels, which fueled the love of reading in many young readers, partly by presenting plots in recognizable city locations, but above all by the use of a fresh and uninhibited perspective, which contrasted with the threatening grandiloquence of some titles in the curricula of the time. Mendoza himself looks back in Las barbas del profeta to show the impact that the subject called "Sacred History" had in his case. Far from being tedious indoctrination sessions ---he warns in the Introduction--- through Christian imagery he was inoculated with a passion for storytelling; the magic of narrative recreation, with the experience of perhaps not very plausible situations, but wonderfully allegorical, and therefore full of significance.
It is not imprudent to also recognize in this work the stamp of fiction and to approach it as a window open to unfoldings, deformations and amazing processes of identification"Fiction selects and structures fantasies and frames them, for better or worse, in our contradictory and confused reality," writes Mendoza, before moving on to a remembrance of the place and relevance of religion during his childhood. Precisely, The Prophet's Beard is a work that can be read autobiographically, as an exercise in recovering the past.Also, as the result of a series of communications or conferences, focused on some of the most striking passages of the Bible. But in view of the subject matter ---stories extracted from an immemorial background, with a mythical flavor, most of which come from the Old Testament--- and especially taking into account the spirit of that recovery, it is not imprudent to recognize the seal of fiction and face it as a window open to the humorous recreation of reality, based on dissociations, deformations and amazing processes of identification.
Otherwise, the way Mendoza conveys and translates the passages starring Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Abraham, Joseph and his brothers, etc., may seem incomprehensible ---and even irreverent. The rather serious tone of the Introduction, which could function as a prologue to a profound essay, sets the reader on the path to something they will not find, or not exactly in the expected terms. His subsequent disquisitions emerge with false naivety, with a delicious spontaneity, that of the gaze of the child who, perhaps, has never ceased to be. Or at least that's what he plays at in fiction. Because the mischief is evident: "It was hard to imagine God in the midst of Nothingness, in a timeless infinity, bored to death until one day he said: enough, I'm going to create the universe."
Episodes from the Old Testament are referred to with a feigned strangeness, through a notarial decontextualization technique that oscillates frantically between the tender and the rogueThere are more passages in which the narrator shows Jehovah's contradictory ---or, at least, problematic--- disposition. The candor of his words is not, however, without a certain acidity:"Some of us wondered if, in addition to the pair of elephants, buffaloes, rhinoceroses, and other easily identifiable animals in the illustration, Noah also embarked two fleas, two cockroaches, and similar things". Episodes as graphic and spectacular as those of Noah's Ark or the Tower of Babel are referred to with feigned strangeness; through a notarial decontextualization technique, which oscillates frantically between the tender and the rogue. Comparable, in short, to the adventures of thealienwho, in the Barcelona night, was searching, without much success, for the famous Gurb. That, as Mendoza has confessed: "It is undoubtedly the most eccentric book of all I have written (…) it is an astonished look at the world, a bit helpless, but without a hint of tragedy or censorship."
The Prophet's Beard, which for some readers might be at the antipodes of fiction and historical novel, nevertheless represents a major parable. It abounds in that eccentricity, assuming the not inconsiderable fact that, like literature, stories of gods ---as Mendoza himself reminds us in the "serious" Introduction--- have always allowed men and women to approach an explanation of the inexplicable, or to find solace and promote some kind of catharsis. Alongside the theological matter, properly speaking, this compendium of texts also contains a biographical basis, as well as references to the historical framework. But none of this prevents them, filtered through a kind of Petit Nicolas lens, from provoking laughter. Shameless and sly, the observations on the "Sacred History" of a child ---scarcely innocent, indeed--- add spice to our adult worldviews. They shake and relativize them, without malice or condescension. A very welcome mischief, in these times.