Work · Life & Existential Philosophy
Mist
A “nivola” whose protagonist, Augusto Pérez, visits his author Unamuno to tell him of his plan to end his life and ends up disputing with him about his own existence – a novel about freedom, fiction and the reality of the self.
Introduction
“Mist” appeared in 1914. Unamuno called it a “nivola”, a word coined in the book itself to escape the rules critics set for the novel: it consists largely of dialogue and inner monologue, with little description. Augusto Pérez, a wealthy and idle young man, drifts through life until he falls in love with the piano teacher Eugenia, who deceives him. Resolved to die, he visits the author Unamuno in Salamanca, learns that he is a fictional character whose fate has already been decided, and replies that his author too may be no more than a dream of God. Soon afterwards Augusto dies. The novel plays with the boundaries between author, character and reader and anticipates later metafiction; it is usually read alongside “The Tragic Sense of Life” as a treatment of the freedom and reality of the self.
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