BELARMINO Y APOLONIO

the forbidden love between a young seminarist and a beautiful girl, son and daughter respectively of two shoemakers who happen to hate each other. But in truth the work constitutes a singular mechanism of mirrors and retelling, and a continuous pondering upon human behavior, up to the point that the reader soon realizes that one of the cobblers is a philosopher who happens to have invented a new language, and the other one considers himself to be a playwright and normally speaks in verse. With this novel Perez de Ayala presents a fictional research on the point of view, the contrast and, finally, the relativeness and contingency of human opinion, and how do these affect the precious good called happiness , in a text that combines cultural references and an essay-like style with a precise narrative structure, all encompassed in a playful and ironic tone of voice.