The shadow of the wind 3

Warning: plot spoilers.

Someone else, from the Washington Post, observes the likeness of The Shadow of the Wind to Marquez. The reviewer mentions several others (Paul Auster, Victor Hugo) but fails to mention the other dominant influence: Edgar Allan Poe.

Since the start of the novel the pervasive sadness reminded me of someone's writing but I couldn't put my finger on it. King's Bag of Bones came to mind, but it didn't quite fit because the archetypes are different. But when, in TSOTW, the true relation between Julian Carax and Penelope Aldaya was revealed (they have the same father) it suddenly clicked. In The Fall of the House of Usher Roderick Usher and his sister are so similarly locked together in the crumbling House of Usher. The "Angel in the Mist", the cursed gothic mansion in TSOTW, falls into disrepair and becomes just a shell. Like in TFOTHOU it is symbolic of the lives it has touched - in TFOTHOU the house caves in taking its inhabitants with it and there is no redemption. In TSOFTW much of the story takes place when the house is in a suspended state of shell-like existence, just a shadow of itself. Nobody lives there but Carax, who is himself faceless and without identity. But it's finally a temporary state, unlike in TFOTHOU where the ruin is total and ultimately more devastating. In TSOFTW sexual activity ruins, but also gives hope and resurrects.

In further support of Poe's spiritual patronage of TSOTW I submit the proof of death of two of the female leads. Apart from Clara and Bea they are the most attractive female leads: Nuria Monfort and of course Penelope Aldaya. Both die and leave no offspring - Penelope's David was stillborn, and Nuria never had a child. Further, Clara's solitary confinement is a spiritual death - she has many suitors but no true happiness, and no children that we are told of. Poe, outside of his stories, once said that the death of a beautiful woman is the most melancholy thing in the world. Poe's maidens are beautiful but none of them are fertile (unless I have forgotten any, but I don't think so). Daniel's mother died and is the reason for his father's lifelong sadness.

Zafon breaks the trend with Bea and the narrator Daniel. Bea is spiritually the most fertile, because she gives birth to Daniel's son, restores Julian Carax's ability to write, and by virtue of leading Daniel to the conclusion of the drama in The Angel of Mist leads him both to his death and his new life: his spiritual rebirth.

The rebirth of Daniel is like the rebirth of Barcelona in general, and that goes for the new modern face of The Angel of Mist as well.

The analogy between the energy of successful procreation and the way the story was conceived makes TSOFTW a love story in two senses of the phrase: girl and boy in love conceiving a baby against (and despite of) a backdrop of memories of the people much like them who had failed to sustain life; and the spirit reborn like a Phoenix illuminating the history of the ashen ruins from which it arises, via words.