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Beribilez (1931), by Jean Etxepare

The second book ((original Basque title) Beribilez; (engl.) By car) by Jean Etxepare (1877-1935). The author shows his ideology/ in his intellectual maturity and his image of the Basque Country, along the journey made by car through the Southern Provinces. Because his positivist academic training an his personal readings, Jean Etxepare, in the Northern Basque Country was confronted with the hegemonic traditional catholic way of thinking. During the years of dissent between the State and the Church, Etxepare chose the free-thinking path, inspired by German philosophy. In the area of aesthetics, his view of the Basque landscape is mostly economicist. His perspective of the appreciation of rural lands combines with a poetic mysticism. He considers the display of Baroque religious luxury that he sees in the Sanctuary of Loyola, spiritually deficient; we can see that, on the one hand, we are dealing with an intellectual author of petit bourgeois standing and sound artistic judgement... On the other hand, even if he proves to be a knowledgeable person, he is very capable of enjoying the small pleasures of life as gastronomy, wines, dances and eroticism in a harmonious and measured way. He moves moderately away from traditional confessional asceticism, giving in his book to the pleasures of the body an unusual and enlightening place unknown to the catholic dominant literature. In the field of ethics, he criticizes the urban growth of San Sebastian: he proclaims secular spirituality against the materialism and degeneration of the high bourgeoisie. He prophesied that there would be the Second World War, because he saw the human beings lacking mutual respect. As a positivist, he criticizes any irrational belief. Finally, he indicates that in adulthood he has been aligned with the Greek philosophy of measure, in spite of his non-conformist youth. About the Basque Country, he intends to promote solidarity between the two sides of the frontier, reinterpreting the history passages in a diplomatic way. His attitude towards the South is of a filia one (term utilised in Daniel-Henri Pageaux´s imagology). As a conclusion, we can say that the writer measured the expression of his dissident way of thinking, because he did not want his second book to be rejected as had been the case with the first one (Buruxkak, 1910).