French sociologist Edgar Morin will turn 103 next summer. It can be said about him without fear of imposture that, in addition to being one of the most prominent sociologists, he is a philosopher and is wise. At the beginning of the year he published an article in Le Monde in which he expressed his concern – which has accompanied him for a good part of his life – about the drift of Humanity. A Humanity today immersed in an “ecological, economic, political, social, civilizational, polycrisis that is increasing.” A crisis, he says, anthropological. However, Morin does not give up: “We must go to the Resistance.” Even in the absence of hope. Even if only disaster is looming. But what resistance? His answer is clear: “The first and fundamental resistance is that of the spirit.”
I remembered Morin reading Pedro Burruezo’s novel Auto-Sufí-Ciencia, a strange book from its very title but which, precisely for this reason, also attracts attention. The literary debut of Burruezo (Barcelona, ??1964) is many things but, in its essence, we could say that it is something very similar to what the French sociologist proposes. Both in his diagnosis of the world and in his proposal. That is, in the face of the chaos that is coming, spirituality. All of this told through fiction with some ingredients of reality.
The story places us at the beginning on the Costa Brava, in the first years of the tourist boom, in some of those places that opened to attract the first foreigners who came, above all, to seek sun, beach and typicality. Venues like the Las Vegas nightclub or the La Venta del Pozo tablao. Precisely there we find the protagonists, Manuel, a young gypsy and singer, and Txell, an older and wealthy lady, whose destinies come together after meeting each other at a party that Gala had given at the castle of Púbol. In La Venta del Pozo they meet Antonio Gades and Marisol, and with them they will travel to Morocco on one of the dancer’s tours.
Txell and Manuel are two restless souls, somewhat declassed, who seek to fill their spirit rather than satiate themselves with worldly pleasures. Peripheral and unredeemed souls, as the author says in the subtitle of the book. And Burruezo leads them on a journey that will take them from the Empordà to Larache and Granada and back to the Empordà, a journey that is however and above all an internal journey. And in that search inward, distancing themselves from a world in which they do not believe – excessively commercialized, technical, artificial, intolerant… –, they find their light in the spirituality that Islam offers them. It is, in some way, a transcript of the trip made by the author, today a Muslim member of a Sufi brotherhood, the most spiritual – and heterodox – practice of Islam.
The journey of Manuel, Txell and their family – which is growing – takes them along the margins over several decades; Just as Burruezo’s book runs along the margins, between the story of overcoming and the philosophical-religious novel; And without being a dystopian story – it stops shortly after the end of the 20th century – it does predict a hopeless future. A future – which for Edgar Morin is already present – ??to which there will only be room for a spiritual response.
In its singularity, Burruezo’s story perhaps suffers from an excess of doctrine, of proselytism, which at some point we can consider that it overshadows a narrative – that of the journey of its protagonists – that is overly interesting in itself. In any case, an original novel that, even with a story that is no longer from this century, links perfectly with the spirit of the time. That of collapse and resistance.
