Why 'Romancero Gitano' or 'The Old Man and the Sea' are perfect titles (and that's why we like them)

Being is neither light nor heavy, neither easy nor unbearable. Being is everything and nothing. This is how Jean-Paul Sartre understood it in Being and nothingness (1943). Humans are the only living beings who question their own existence and develop their personality through decisions, and in choosing, they reject other possibilities. Since consciousness is a nothingness that separates humans from the world, we are not something fixed, but a possibility. Therefore, The unbearable lightness of being (1984) by Milan Kundera is an evocative title that accommodates what each reader wants to understand.

It is the same resource, the multiple meaning, used by Cervantes in The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quijote of La Mancha (1605), where the industrious man isn't so industrious if his wit drives him to madness. On the other hand, other literary knights such as Amadís de Gaula, Palmerín de Inglaterra or Belianís de Grecia , had a greater geographical dimension. But Cervantes, by placing his character in La Mancha (arid, rural and unheroic) achieves something like creating, transported to modern times, a James Bond from Albacete who has his adventures in Pozo Cañada or Peñas de San Pedro.

Cervantes, by placing his character in La Mancha, achieves something like creating, transported to modern times, a James Bond from Albacete.

This plurality of meanings is so evocative and occurs in such a way that it bothers neither those above nor those below, those on the left nor those on the right, the enlightened nor the poor in spirit , neither thinkers nor those who don't think. Cervantes knew how to write for everyone, and so did Kundera. Both created masterful and seductive titles, as narrative as they were reflective.

Giving a title to a book, whether a ten-line poem or a thousand-page novel, is a mandatory task. The content caresses the literary emotion of any reader, who has the right to feel seduced or distant without explanation, to adopt a position exempt from responsibility because they don't need reasons. A glimmer of curiosity, however, tells us that some seem more appealing than others. Allowing the reader's critical powers, and abandoning the right to subjectivity, we could say that some titles are more effective than others.

Among expressive procedures, sonority fulfills the anchoring function, that is, an effective resource for recording something in memory. This effect is achieved through the rhythmic repetition of certain sounds. The vowel a in The Magic Mountain (1924) by the German writer Thomas Mann; the e in Signs of Identity (1966) by the Spanish novelist Juan Goytisolo ; a balanced diphthong in El-vie-jo-iel-mar (1952) by Ernest Hemingway ; two alliterations (ere ye) in La-muer-te de Ar-te-mio Cruz (1962) by Carlos Fuentes and in Heart so white (1992) by Javier Marías where the sound k and the vowel a appear symmetrically; and a title of great interest, Las in-quie-tu-des-de-Shan-tiAn-día (1911) (ie-ia-ia, plus the final -n of the syllable, plus the alliteration of the vowel a). A similar device appears in Úl-ti-ma-tar-des-con-Te-re-sa (1966) (s, r, t and the vowels eya) by Juan Marsé.

Getting a long and accurate title is a delicate task, and even more so if we take as an example The incredible and sad story of the innocent Eréndira and her heartless grandmother (1972), a collection of short stories by Gabriel García Márquez in which Incredible and Sad Story evokes and updates children's stories, but contains a musical rhythm thanks to the alliteration of the vowel i and its placement in the sentence to make it pleasant to pronounce. The rhythmic accents fall on the even-numbered syllables of the first block: lain-creí-blei-trís-teis-to-ria (two synalephas). In the second segment, "Candid Eréndira," the sonority is created by the continuity of two proparoxytone words that rhyme with a consonant . It is difficult to know whether the author added "cándida" to "Eréndira" or searched for "Eréndira" to make it rhyme with "cándida." For the third block, and about his heartless grandmother, the success lies in the alliteration of the open vowel a, in contrast to the "i" he had chosen in the first part of the title.

Finding a long and accurate title is a delicate task, for example: 'The Incredible and Sad Story of the Innocent Eréndira and Her Heartless Grandmother'

Another sound resource uses a rhythmic approach to accent placement. Pedro Salinas chooses a seven-syllable verse that laconically evokes an original idea with accents on even-numbered syllables: La voz a ti debida (The Voice Due to You, 1933).

Joys and Shadows (1957-1962) is a brilliant two-part title with two antonyms. Joys corresponds to pain or disgust, which doesn't fit literarily. Shadows would literally correspond to sun, which also wouldn't fit. By combining joys and shadows, the second word acquires a metaphorical meaning that is immediately interpreted as an antonym of joys. If we add the alliteration of the "s," the title is perfect.

More daring and original was JB's Saga/Fugue (1972). The choice of two interchangeable words is a complete success, very original because no one had used the device before. And to anchor it, both words are disyllabic without a blocked syllable and with double alliteration, that of the vowel a and that of the syllable -ga . The proper name, even without reading the novel, evokes mystery by choosing only the initials.

Alive and especially skillful is the title of Muñoz Molina's novel Winter in Lisbon (1987) where the double alliteration of the vowels io in both words and in the same order facilitates anchoring in memory, as does the voiced bilabial phoneme /b/ (the spelling is foreign). We should also point out that these are two trisyllabic words joined by a preposition. We discover a refined aesthetic in words so eloquent and subtly related to time (winter) and space (Lisbon). The procedure might work, to a lesser extent, in titles like Spring in Prague, but not with any season or any city.

If we consider the content, a striking resource is the combination of two rarely imagined ideas: Gypsy ballads (1928) by Federico García Lorca, Time of Silence (1961) by Luis Martín Santos or The Diary of Hamlet García (1944) by Paulino Masip . Even The Old Man and the Sea (1952) by Ernest Hemingway and The Sailor on the Land (1924) by Rafael Alberti. The author goes one step further by conceiving an irrational message, within reason, such as confronting infinity with a reed in Infinity in a reed (2019) by Irene Vallejo.

Very close traces appear in the French writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline (pseudonym of Louis-Ferdinand Destouches) in his Journey to the End of the Night (1932) where travel, at last, escapes reason because the night stretches into infinity. Rather than limiting meaning, it multiplies it. And In Search of Lost Time (1913-1927) by Marcel Proust suggests a meaning as broad as it is impossible.

Of all fictions, literature is the least provocative. Through it, one feels life, perceives its grandeur. Without the aesthetic feeling of the word, existence, being, and nothingness would be a mistake.

** Rafael del Moral is a sociolinguist and expert in world languages and the author of the 'Encyclopedia of Languages', 'A Brief History of Languages', 'History of Hispanic Languages' and 'The Battles of the ñ', as well as numerous articles in specialized journals.