La troisième partie du Criticón : dernière partie ou œuvre dernière ?

Abstract

The third part of Criticón, last publication of Gracián issued a year before his death, shows remarkable innovative aspects. A sum and a coronation, this story about old age is indeed a « mixture of opposites ». Although it’s substantially in accordance with the whole work, this part accentuates its audacity. Actually it motivated a serious vital crisis which might have hastened the death of the writer who came then close to sixty. By a kind of witty but involuntary correlation (correspondencia ingeniosa), this last work is a meditation on aging, on the final purposes and the ultimate ends. Removing marginal notes, it proclaims the sovereignty of the writer. Along the quest for wisdom and heroic achievement, while the main characters ultimately are reaching their goal, it becomes increasingly clear, in pages of supremely black humour, that unreason is shared even by the wisest men, that dreams of happiness are mere nonsense and that heroic deeds always belong to another world and another time.

Keywords

• Criticón
• Baltasar Gracián
• Crítica de reflección
• late style
• Jesuits
• black humor