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Duende
‘Duende. That most vital struggle, when touching death is knowing, and truly knowing, life.’
In the years leading up to the Spanish Civil War, two men fall in love, a relationship which, in public, can never be accepted. Throughout their lives, Nayo, an artist, and José, a philosopher, wrestle with the duende, a force propelling passion, authenticity and fearless confrontation with death.
Their journey coincides with that of real-life people: Salvador Dalí, Ortega y Gasset and, most significantly, Federico García Lorca who becomes their friend.
Nayo and José are part of this wider movement in European art when creativity flourished amidst escalating violence. Provoking parallels with the instability of our contemporary world, Duende unfolds within a complex and vibrant landscape in which survival is paramount while existence is tenuous and forever under threat.
In the years leading up to the Spanish Civil War, two men fall in love, a relationship which, in public, can never be accepted. Throughout their lives, Nayo, an artist, and José, a philosopher, wrestle with the duende, a force propelling passion, authenticity and fearless confrontation with death.
Their journey coincides with that of real-life people: Salvador Dalí, Ortega y Gasset and, most significantly, Federico García Lorca who becomes their friend.
Nayo and José are part of this wider movement in European art when creativity flourished amidst escalating violence. Provoking parallels with the instability of our contemporary world, Duende unfolds within a complex and vibrant landscape in which survival is paramount while existence is tenuous and forever under threat.
- GenresFictionHistorical
492 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 20, 2011
8 people are currently reading
30 people want to read
About the author
Lizzie Eldridge
4 books18 followersLizzie Eldridge grew up in Glasgow and after 15 years teaching theatre in UK universities, she moved to Malta to work as a writer, actor and teacher. She returned to Glasgow in December 2019 where she continues to work as a freelance writer and teacher.
Lizzie is also a political activist and is heavily involved in the fight to get justice for Daphne Caruana Galizia, a journalist assassinated in Malta in 2017. This informs Lizzie's journalistic work as well as her creative fiction and she was recently elected to the board of Scottish PEN.
Lizzie's first novel, Duende, was published in 2011 and is now available in its second edition (2014): http://amzn.to/1LV7WHp This book is set in Spain in the period leading up to civil war.
Lizzie's second novel, Vandalism (Merlin Publishers 2015), is set in Glasgow and was shortlisted for the award of Best Novel by the National Book Council of Malta.
Vandalism was also selected as one of Waterstones Glasgow's Best Books Christmas 2017.
Vandalism is available in bookshops in Malta and Glasgow as well as on Amazon:
http://amzn.to/2t91IlV
In 2024, Lizzie's collection of short stories, It Doesn't Matter When, was published by Alien Buddha Press https://amzn.to/3Ytkl5T
"Sad, unpleasant, challenging or just difficult to grasp, these are stories which give the opportunity to share something deep and real. To stand alongside people in darkness. To perhaps even develop some empathy for those whose life experience is so different from our own." ~ Paul Trembling
Lizzie is also a political activist and is heavily involved in the fight to get justice for Daphne Caruana Galizia, a journalist assassinated in Malta in 2017. This informs Lizzie's journalistic work as well as her creative fiction and she was recently elected to the board of Scottish PEN.
Lizzie's first novel, Duende, was published in 2011 and is now available in its second edition (2014): http://amzn.to/1LV7WHp This book is set in Spain in the period leading up to civil war.
Lizzie's second novel, Vandalism (Merlin Publishers 2015), is set in Glasgow and was shortlisted for the award of Best Novel by the National Book Council of Malta.
Vandalism was also selected as one of Waterstones Glasgow's Best Books Christmas 2017.
Vandalism is available in bookshops in Malta and Glasgow as well as on Amazon:
http://amzn.to/2t91IlV
In 2024, Lizzie's collection of short stories, It Doesn't Matter When, was published by Alien Buddha Press https://amzn.to/3Ytkl5T
"Sad, unpleasant, challenging or just difficult to grasp, these are stories which give the opportunity to share something deep and real. To stand alongside people in darkness. To perhaps even develop some empathy for those whose life experience is so different from our own." ~ Paul Trembling
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 30, 2013
Duende, by Lizzie Eldridge, is deeply thought provoking, classically written, and teems with wise interpretations of philosophy, art, and politics. It is not a quick read, not something you’d bring with you to the beach while the children play in the sand; it is something to contemplate. It’s a book for someone who can enjoy thinking deeply and slowly, who can stand before a painting and get lost in it or read a text on philosophy and bask in all the connections to real life.
It is not everyone who can relate to a person who can become lost in a poem that traces “the randomness of inspiration”, but in a world where people seem to flit, to participate without really caring, to quip on Facebook without thinking, there is something deeply satisfying to read about characters who have the capacity to weep at a painting or a poem.
While reading this book over a couple of weeks, I took about ten pages of notes. I wrote down things I found interesting, things I disagreed with, connections I made or formed, or ideas I wanted to explore further.
In fact, I would say that it’s misleading to classify Duende as a novel. Plot development is not central to the story, and though the political background and setting reflect the character development, it is not done in the way one might be used to in a novel. Duende belongs, I believe, in the category of academic readings. Philosophy students, art history students, political theory students: these people should read this book, keep it, and make notes in the margins.
In the first few chapters I found reading this book much like watching a movie from a different room. You don’t get the entire picture, you don’t know the full story, but it still draws your attention because of the language and the conviction you have that some climax or pinnacle will happen. It’s like a painting that you see and love but never get the full explanation from the artist, and I found myself at times craving more plot, more show. Duende is written like real life in the sense that in small things there is great significance but it doesn’t always culminate toward one theme or goal. Many readers might find this tendency tedious, but Eldridge does it beautifully. It’s like a stream of consciousness, but erudite and focused, if that makes sense. To quote from the book, “Life is fundamentally paradoxical. So you can’t apply any logical or rational analysis because it’ll never give you the answers.” Duende embodies this and once I realized that plot was far from central to this story, that this book is not a novel in the traditional sense of the word, I relaxed into the philosophy and thoughts of the characters.
There is a lot to think about in this book – perhaps too much – but you only need to focus on what you find interesting, what speaks to you. I found myself skipping over some of the political references, obscure to me, but I found myself drawn in to the discussion of the different philosophers.
I enjoyed the constant conflict between nature and culture. The characters are engaged in a struggle, or more accurately a dance, between their natural drives and tendencies and society’s limitations upon them, and this mirrors what they’re studying and the political landscape around them. The characters also struggle at times with the need to be separate versus the need to belong.
What is included in the book is significant, but I would have liked to have seen some of what was not included. Did the characters’ families find it strange or suspicious that their sons had such a lasting, deep friendship? There was almost no discussion about the daily risk that the men were taking by being together. How would the story have been different if they had been a heterosexual couple? Did the fact of their both being men give them an equality that couldn’t be illustrated so clearly or simply if one of them had been a woman? And what of Angelita? In the first few pages of the book I had thought she was going to be the protagonist, the main character, and yet she drifted away to hardly even a secondary character. It took me quite a while to stop waiting for Angelita to come back.
But again, this is the way life is. Some people play a significant role in our lives, and then they disappear and we forget about them. There are other characters that we catch a glimpse of (like Nuria) but they have little impact on our lives. Again it illustrates the fleetingness of the world. “All that is solid melts into air,” so said Marx according to Duende.
“Duende” means the force within art that evokes the essential experience of life in the face of death, and Duende ends with the ultimate in “duende.” It is the culmination of happiness and despair, of beauty and ugliness, of love superimposed on a backdrop of hatred. That is, perhaps, the sublime, the transforming of things into an ideal or pure form. But unfortunately, “we can touch perfection but we cannot sustain it.”
It is well-executed book, impeccably researched and beautifully written. If you love to think deeply, I highly recommend it.
http://hayleylinfield.webs.com/duende...
It is not everyone who can relate to a person who can become lost in a poem that traces “the randomness of inspiration”, but in a world where people seem to flit, to participate without really caring, to quip on Facebook without thinking, there is something deeply satisfying to read about characters who have the capacity to weep at a painting or a poem.
While reading this book over a couple of weeks, I took about ten pages of notes. I wrote down things I found interesting, things I disagreed with, connections I made or formed, or ideas I wanted to explore further.
In fact, I would say that it’s misleading to classify Duende as a novel. Plot development is not central to the story, and though the political background and setting reflect the character development, it is not done in the way one might be used to in a novel. Duende belongs, I believe, in the category of academic readings. Philosophy students, art history students, political theory students: these people should read this book, keep it, and make notes in the margins.
In the first few chapters I found reading this book much like watching a movie from a different room. You don’t get the entire picture, you don’t know the full story, but it still draws your attention because of the language and the conviction you have that some climax or pinnacle will happen. It’s like a painting that you see and love but never get the full explanation from the artist, and I found myself at times craving more plot, more show. Duende is written like real life in the sense that in small things there is great significance but it doesn’t always culminate toward one theme or goal. Many readers might find this tendency tedious, but Eldridge does it beautifully. It’s like a stream of consciousness, but erudite and focused, if that makes sense. To quote from the book, “Life is fundamentally paradoxical. So you can’t apply any logical or rational analysis because it’ll never give you the answers.” Duende embodies this and once I realized that plot was far from central to this story, that this book is not a novel in the traditional sense of the word, I relaxed into the philosophy and thoughts of the characters.
There is a lot to think about in this book – perhaps too much – but you only need to focus on what you find interesting, what speaks to you. I found myself skipping over some of the political references, obscure to me, but I found myself drawn in to the discussion of the different philosophers.
I enjoyed the constant conflict between nature and culture. The characters are engaged in a struggle, or more accurately a dance, between their natural drives and tendencies and society’s limitations upon them, and this mirrors what they’re studying and the political landscape around them. The characters also struggle at times with the need to be separate versus the need to belong.
What is included in the book is significant, but I would have liked to have seen some of what was not included. Did the characters’ families find it strange or suspicious that their sons had such a lasting, deep friendship? There was almost no discussion about the daily risk that the men were taking by being together. How would the story have been different if they had been a heterosexual couple? Did the fact of their both being men give them an equality that couldn’t be illustrated so clearly or simply if one of them had been a woman? And what of Angelita? In the first few pages of the book I had thought she was going to be the protagonist, the main character, and yet she drifted away to hardly even a secondary character. It took me quite a while to stop waiting for Angelita to come back.
But again, this is the way life is. Some people play a significant role in our lives, and then they disappear and we forget about them. There are other characters that we catch a glimpse of (like Nuria) but they have little impact on our lives. Again it illustrates the fleetingness of the world. “All that is solid melts into air,” so said Marx according to Duende.
“Duende” means the force within art that evokes the essential experience of life in the face of death, and Duende ends with the ultimate in “duende.” It is the culmination of happiness and despair, of beauty and ugliness, of love superimposed on a backdrop of hatred. That is, perhaps, the sublime, the transforming of things into an ideal or pure form. But unfortunately, “we can touch perfection but we cannot sustain it.”
It is well-executed book, impeccably researched and beautifully written. If you love to think deeply, I highly recommend it.
http://hayleylinfield.webs.com/duende...
October 4, 2016
THE LOVE, ART AND PHILOSOPHY OF DUENDE
Set in the first half of the twentieth century, Duende is literary fiction of the highest order. It centres on the relationship between Nayo, a painter, and Jose, a philosopher, as they navigate through the political upheavals and revolutionary furnace of Spain.
Politics and the friction between the extremes of the political spectrum take a back seat, however, to the evolution of Western art, philosophy, poetry and theatre, all of which the author has an exceptional grasp.
The weaving, interlocking and the drawing of parallels of philosophical, spiritual, and psychological ideas reads like a classic in this beautifully written novel, and spans from Ancient Greece to the Renaissance, through philosophers, such as Hegel, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. The book is concerned with how to find meaning in existence, controlled as it may be by blind will and Darwinian natural selection, and how literature, paintings and the other arts - the gateways to 'the deep lakes of the soul' - may act as a salve.
The horror of existence - its brutality and cruelty - is the central problem which Nayo and Jose must contend with. 'All too often,' Jose's Philosophy professor says, 'ideas harden into rigid ideologies and these become used to justify all sorts of atrocities.' Duende, which lies at the heart of our striving and shakes the roots of existence through its bitter duel between life and death, is epitomised here with the horrific bullfight, in which the bullfighter's eye is gouged, and serves as a metaphor throughout the book.
Probably more so than the arts, it is ultimately love that can redeem us. Love acts as a refuge from the dichotomies of the world: determinism/free will; beauty/ugliness; civilisation/savagery; self/other; subject/object. Love can halt Schopenhauer's will to life or Nietzsche's will to power. Love may offer light through the murk of Platonic and Hegelian illusion. Love is what the poet strives for and from which the painter begins; and the love between Nayo and Jose is the emotional core of the novel.
Plot is of lesser importance to a book of this kind, which instead strives for something else. Like Nayo's second art exhibition, 'there was no apex, simply a meandering through ideas and sensations which encourage the viewer to reach their own conclusions.' So is it here with this novel: a whirlwind of ideas, dizzying in unexpected parallels drawn, a mesmeric trip through philosophic, artistic and political thought.
Set in the first half of the twentieth century, Duende is literary fiction of the highest order. It centres on the relationship between Nayo, a painter, and Jose, a philosopher, as they navigate through the political upheavals and revolutionary furnace of Spain.
Politics and the friction between the extremes of the political spectrum take a back seat, however, to the evolution of Western art, philosophy, poetry and theatre, all of which the author has an exceptional grasp.
The weaving, interlocking and the drawing of parallels of philosophical, spiritual, and psychological ideas reads like a classic in this beautifully written novel, and spans from Ancient Greece to the Renaissance, through philosophers, such as Hegel, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. The book is concerned with how to find meaning in existence, controlled as it may be by blind will and Darwinian natural selection, and how literature, paintings and the other arts - the gateways to 'the deep lakes of the soul' - may act as a salve.
The horror of existence - its brutality and cruelty - is the central problem which Nayo and Jose must contend with. 'All too often,' Jose's Philosophy professor says, 'ideas harden into rigid ideologies and these become used to justify all sorts of atrocities.' Duende, which lies at the heart of our striving and shakes the roots of existence through its bitter duel between life and death, is epitomised here with the horrific bullfight, in which the bullfighter's eye is gouged, and serves as a metaphor throughout the book.
Probably more so than the arts, it is ultimately love that can redeem us. Love acts as a refuge from the dichotomies of the world: determinism/free will; beauty/ugliness; civilisation/savagery; self/other; subject/object. Love can halt Schopenhauer's will to life or Nietzsche's will to power. Love may offer light through the murk of Platonic and Hegelian illusion. Love is what the poet strives for and from which the painter begins; and the love between Nayo and Jose is the emotional core of the novel.
Plot is of lesser importance to a book of this kind, which instead strives for something else. Like Nayo's second art exhibition, 'there was no apex, simply a meandering through ideas and sensations which encourage the viewer to reach their own conclusions.' So is it here with this novel: a whirlwind of ideas, dizzying in unexpected parallels drawn, a mesmeric trip through philosophic, artistic and political thought.
April 28, 2013
An engaging and unforgettable novel of love in a time of violence. Controversial? To some it will be, as the two protagonists and lovers are men, one a philosopher and the other an artist. But to me, this novel is an unforgettable story of commitment, affection and love in a time of exploration and simmering unrest and violence.
“Duende” is a Spanish word that refers to the deeper, more earthy notes and sounds of life where all is not light. Set in Spain (mainly in Barcelona and Madrid) in the years between World War One and the Spanish Civil War of 1936, duende is a prominent presence in the novel as Spain devolves into increasing social discord and violence. Yet the novel isn’t only about that; it is also about one of the great love stories in literature as these two young men begin their careers and grow as life around them descends into the darkness of civil war and Francisco Franco’s fascist regime.
Once I opened “Duende” and began reading, I found it impossible to put the book down.
The story follows the lives of Antonio (“Nayo”) and José from their school days in Barcelona to their studies and developing careers in Madrid and does it so well that I felt I was there as Nayo painted and José studied and taught philosophy as their world gradually descended into violence. Reading “Duende” is more than reading about these two men and the world they lived in, it is being there, being inside their heads as they struggle to comprehend the forces that threaten to tear their world apart. I have seldom read a novel that is quite like this one, that includes in such detail the intellectual and creative struggles of its characters, and makes it so lifelike and lively that I felt a part of the story. How is it possible to include so much information about what a philosopher teaches and an artist struggles with and make it vitally interesting to a reader? Yet Lizzie Eldridge does it, does it superbly well, and does it in her debut novel. I am impressed.
The love between Nayo and José is tender, poignant, and beautifully drawn. I felt I knew these two men, that they’d be a joy to have coffee with, that I couldn’t wait until Nayo’s next exhibit (I even knew what painting I wanted), and I feared for them and their friends as the situation in Madrid worsened.
Lizzie Eldridge is a writer to watch. I look forward to her next book.
“Duende” is a Spanish word that refers to the deeper, more earthy notes and sounds of life where all is not light. Set in Spain (mainly in Barcelona and Madrid) in the years between World War One and the Spanish Civil War of 1936, duende is a prominent presence in the novel as Spain devolves into increasing social discord and violence. Yet the novel isn’t only about that; it is also about one of the great love stories in literature as these two young men begin their careers and grow as life around them descends into the darkness of civil war and Francisco Franco’s fascist regime.
Once I opened “Duende” and began reading, I found it impossible to put the book down.
The story follows the lives of Antonio (“Nayo”) and José from their school days in Barcelona to their studies and developing careers in Madrid and does it so well that I felt I was there as Nayo painted and José studied and taught philosophy as their world gradually descended into violence. Reading “Duende” is more than reading about these two men and the world they lived in, it is being there, being inside their heads as they struggle to comprehend the forces that threaten to tear their world apart. I have seldom read a novel that is quite like this one, that includes in such detail the intellectual and creative struggles of its characters, and makes it so lifelike and lively that I felt a part of the story. How is it possible to include so much information about what a philosopher teaches and an artist struggles with and make it vitally interesting to a reader? Yet Lizzie Eldridge does it, does it superbly well, and does it in her debut novel. I am impressed.
The love between Nayo and José is tender, poignant, and beautifully drawn. I felt I knew these two men, that they’d be a joy to have coffee with, that I couldn’t wait until Nayo’s next exhibit (I even knew what painting I wanted), and I feared for them and their friends as the situation in Madrid worsened.
Lizzie Eldridge is a writer to watch. I look forward to her next book.
January 27, 2016
Lizzie Eldridge has done something remarkable in this book. Somehow, she has woven together so many different strands, so many remarkable characters (many of them real, all realistic), so many ideas into a powerful, colorful, terrible and poignant story. At the center of the story is the love between two talented young men, one an artist, the other a philosopher. Together, they explore the world of ideas and thought, seeking to capture the 'duende', the driving force behind art. But at the same time, Spain is being torn apart by divisive political forces that will eventually lead to the violence and horror of the civil war. These events are not so much a background to the story, as another character in it, who influences and drives all the other characters along at an increasing rate into ultimate tragedy. The writing excellent throughout, well paced and accessible in spite of the depth of ideas that are being considered. I'm no philosopher, and some of the concepts were beyond my grasp, but I was so caught up in the story of Nayo and Jose that I wasn't put off by the intellectual challenges! Instead, I read on, sharing their struggles, right up to the very moving finish.
January 7, 2017
Not my cup of tea - I prefer a lighter read and I've never been one for philosophical argument.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews