Helena o el mar del verano (1952) and the lyrical novel

After analysing the reception and context of Julián Ayesta's Helena o el mar del verano (1952), this paper examines the diverse formal resources that connect this work to the genre of lyrical novel. From this perspective, it puts special attention to the subjectivity of the text, which particularly shows the consciousness of the child who progressively becomes an adult, rather than the objective representation of the world. Thus, the circular structure, the fragmentarism, the division of the story in scenes or the descriptive stillness are part of the narrator's internalization of time and space, whose experience of the past has not concluded, for it continues to be alive for him.