Narcís Oller

Narcís Oller is the creator of the modern Catalan novel with such notable works as La febre d'or (Gold Fever). Shaped in the current of romanticism, he turned later toward realism and naturalism. He also wrote a psychological novel - Pilar Prim - short stories, and works for the theatre. The world of Oller's novels moves between two poles: realism, which at times verges on naturalism, and late romanticism, which manifests itself both in and as a not-inconsiderable residue of moralistic sentimentality. Oller represents the most important achievement of the Catalan novel in the nineteenth century.


The personality and work of Narcís Oller cannot be understood without taking into account the political-cultural conceptions that arose from the Revolution of September 1868. This background led to two factors that enabled a renovation of literary production. First was a desire in the more progressive intellectual sectors to impose rationalism and criticism, and then there was the impact of the historic events themselves. Together they ensured the greater significance the novel would have in relation to other genres, even theatre, in the period of the Restoration. Under debate at the time, as Yxart notes, was the "issue of realism and naturalism in art, which nourishes and colours all other matters, definitively bringing literature, and even poetry, to the immediate and living reality". This experience, which Narcís Oller describes in one of the stories of the collection entitled Croquis del natural (Sketch of the Natural), and in the novel La bogeria (Madness), meant that he would become disabused about events that he had previously understood as liberating and hopeful. From then on, according to Yxart, he became "conservative and close to the middle-of-the road parties".

The life and work of Narcís Oller fall into three periods. The first is a time of learning, until 1877. The second, until 1906, is a period of plenitude and recognition both inside and outside Catalonia, while the third stage represents a period of recuperation of memory and of working to complete the compilation of his work until his death in 1930.

Narcís Oller i Moragas was born on 10 August 1846. He was educated by his maternal uncle, the legal adviser Josep Moragas, in the Moragas family mansion in carrer del Forn Nou in the town of Valls, where his mother had gone to live on being widowed when Oller was three years old. Since his younger brother Josep died very young (in 1853), his relationship with his mother was very close (and in La febre d'or (Gold Fever), is translated into that between senyora Mònica and her son). He shared his games, an inclination for drawing and painting, readings and literary ambitions with his cousin Josep Yxart, who was six years younger, and they always exchanged opinions about one another's writings. Oller soon combined his taste for socialising with his powers of observation of human behaviour and a "growing enthusiasm for investigating the truth", which he would later bring to his work. In 1863, he went to Barcelona to study the final year of his school-leaving exams, after which he studied Law at the university. In this period, the cousins wrote to one another and met during their holidays. However, between October 1868 and June 1871, they also shared student accommodation. In 1873, Oller succeeded in obtaining, through public examinations, the post of Secretary at the Provincial Council of Barcelona and went to live with his mother in a flat in carrer de Mendizábal. In May the following year he married Esperança Rabassa, but his happiness was short-lived because his mother died on 18 February 1876, eleven days after the death of his uncle Josep Moragas. Some months later, the couple moved with their daughter Maria to live in the Rambla de Catalunya, where their two sons, Josep and Joan were born. Continue reading...