Novel
El evangelio del amor
Not translated into English
Enrique Gómez Carrillo · 1922
Opening lines
Después de permanecer una semana entera arrodillado en un ángulo del locutorio, sin comer ni beber, orando día y noche ante una imagen milagrosa del Pantokrator, el joven solitario fué admitido en la estrecha celda del higúmeno Teodoro, el de las barbas de nieve.
After remaining a whole week on his knees in a corner of the parlour, without eating or drinking, praying day and night before a miraculous image of the Pantocrator, the young hermit was admitted to the narrow cell of the hegumen Theodore, he of the snowy beard.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from archive.org
Synopsis
A young cenobite prostrates himself before an old monk to confide the secret of his life: born in Thrace, near Heraclea, into a wealthy family of Roman stock, Count Theophilus Constantine had a youth of pleasures which he now repents. Having left for Byzantium, he meets Eudosia there, a woman without charm whom he marries as penance for his past sins; but with time, he sees his wife grow more beautiful with each passing day without knowing why.
Context
The novel was written between 1918 and 1922 and appeared in Madrid with Mundo Latino, two hundred and eighteen pages, as the twenty-fifth volume of the complete works that the publisher was then issuing of its author; an abridged version came out the same year in a popular weekly series, with illustrations. The author revised it and had it republished in 1925, preceded by a text by Blasco Ibáñez, and considered it his best book.
Who it is for
In Spanish, with no French translation. The story is set in Byzantium and assumes knowledge of the quarrels of the Eastern Church over images, whose names the characters bear.
Prizes and reception
It is the last of its author's four novels and the one he preferred. The 1925 prologue led to its being read well beyond the isthmus.