Using the two imperfect subjunctives

I always keep an eye out for nice examples of Spanish prose that exploit the two versions of the imperfect subjunctive. (Previous posts on this topic are here and here.) I came across one recently in Cuatro días de enero, a police procedural by Jordi Sierra I Fabra set in Barcelona just before Franco’s forces take the city on January 26, 1939. Early in the novel the protagonist, a world-weary police detective, and his wife, who is dying from cancer (probably a metaphor for the death of the city), are talking about the state of the war. The author describes the detective’s feelings:

  • A veces se sentía atrapado, hiciera lo que hiciese, dijera lo que dijese.

This sounds much better, to my ears, than the English equivalent: Sometimes he felt trapped, no matter what he did or said.

I knew that fuera lo que fuese is a standard saying (‘be that as it may’) but was curious about hiciera lo que hiciese and dijera lo que dijese. A Google search turned up several more examples of these two verb pairs used together, and some that added a third:

  • Aquella desesperación cada noche ante la inminencia de lo que iba a ocurrir, aquella fatalidad ante el hecho de que hiciera lo que hiciese, dijera lo que dijese, o callara lo que callase (Cuentos desde mi rincón)
  • …la férrea y negativa postura de la señorita en cuestión de no querer acostarse con él, pasara lo que pasase, dijera lo que dijese e hiciera lo que hiciese (La codorniz de Enrique Herreros)

I love the sound of these verb pairs, and I guess these authors do, too.

One thought on “Using the two imperfect subjunctives

  1. Pingback: Perfect detective, imperfect subjunctive | Spanish Linguist

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