Sentimental school memories in literature: Zweig, Pla, Camus and Giménez

Abstract

This article explores sentimental school memories through four literary accounts, each representing a distinct model of memory. The first concerns the memory of a Viennese secondary school (Gymnasium) at the end of the nineteenth century, as recounted in Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday. The second, a decade later, concerns his Spanish counterpart Josep Pla, as portrayed in his biographical account of his formative years, Girona. A further decade brings us to Albert Camus’s recollections of primary school in colonial Algiers, as recounted in The First Man. Finally, the Falange’s orphanages of the Auxilio Social in the final years of the dark decade of the 1940s in Spain constitute the framework for Carlos Giménez’s memories in Paracuellos. Collectively, these four accounts offer a journey into the significance these writers attribute to their formative years and the associated emotions.