Valle-Inclan and Arniches began to cultivate the grotesque genre around the same time, the former through his esperpentos and the latter by way of his grotesque tragedies. Valle's approach to the genre did not involve a drastic break from his previous aesthetic modes, but rather the development of techniques that were present in his writing from the beginning of his career, and that were already clearly evident in La Marquesa Rosalinda. The description of urban life and of the people living in cities also produced a change in Valle's language, which partially coincided with the approach to verbal communication that Arniches had been developing in his popular sainetes and zarzuelas. This article offers a collection of words and expressions used in Luces de Bohemia that coincide with forms used by Arniches.
Galvez has been largely unknown as a poet, and he is typically mentioned only in the context of grisly anecdotes about his life. This brief study aims to demonstrate his poetic craftsmanship, his noteworthy command of the sonnet, and his evolution as a poet. His creative trajectory begins by opting for an aesthetic position fusing tradition and originality. He would subsequently pass through different artistic phases, producing texts that engaged other movements, from Modernismo-both in its noncommitted and "rough and proletarian" variants-, to avant-garde tendencies like Ultraism and Expressionism, in addition to emotional Romanticism. He finally embraced the poetry of protest and social commitment, that which was written for specific events and to offer tribute, as found in moments of war.
This article addresses the loss of meaning of literary criticism in an information society, following an apparent boutade by the German essayist Hans Magnus Enzensberger: "the influence [of critics] evaporates when faced with the indifference of a pluralistic market which couldn't care less about the difference between Dante and Donald Duck." The author of this article, however, affirms his belief that this kind of work continues to have a prescriptive value. In any case, traditional criticism in the written press (or in reputable digital media), remains the most decisive factor in securing a writer's place within the canon. Recent critiques about the novels of Javier Cercas allows us to see how a contemporary critic may shape and solidify an author's artistic image.
This article focuses on the importance of the genre of short fiction in Ramon del Valle-Inclan's development as a writer and in the construction of his authorial image. During the first stage of his creation, the author primarily published short stories and novellas, genres that functioned as a laboratory in which Valle could refine his style and construct his literary voice. Despite being texts early in his career, we can already discern the thematic and stylistic elements that would later characterize his mature work. Although short fiction is a specific phase of his career that is closely related to his Modernista aesthetics, the selected corpus is of interest for the fact that Valle-Inclim did not cease to reedit and publish collections of his stories, with different titles and structures, as he became increasingly aware of his oeuvre as a whole and its organic character. His choices in the selection of publishers, the collections' internal forms of organization, and the presence of paratextual elements offer insights into his "posture" and "ethos," in accordance with the analytical framework of Jerome Meizoz. To address the diversity of these texts, this study relies on original documents by the author and on research conducted by Eliane Lavaud, Javier Serrano Alonso, and XaquIn Niiriez Sabaris concerning Valle's short stories and their genesis. Moreover, Ramon del Valle-Inclan's decisions as an author cannot be separated from the social, cultural, and literary context that frames his artistic biography. Indeed, the Galician author's strategies reveal a dynamic and conscious authorial construction, which is articulated within the arc of time in which he developed his creative work.
It is well known that Emilio Thuillier tried to stage Saltimbanquis some time before its publication in Teatro de ensueno (1905). However, we were unaware that this work-which was performed and translated into Catalan as Aucells de pas in 1908, and which became a resounding success as the "lyrical drama" Las golondrinas in 1914, with music by Jose Maria Usandizaga had other previous versions. The discovery of a novelistic adaptation of the same story-Por las carreteras de polvo y de lcigrimas-published in 1904 in the journal Hojas Selectas, allows for us to propose the following hypothesis concerning the successive processes of rewriting of Saltimbanquis. The first version that was offered in 1900 or 1901 to various theatre companies-and that was seemingly lost-was transformed into a novel in the 1904 edition. It was then converted into a play again a year later, before being included in the volume of 1905. Our study analyzes Saltimbanquis as a central piece in the theatrical output of Maria Lejarraga y Gregorio Martinez Sierra. Additionally, we compare the last two versions of this work and consider the most important changes made by the authors.
Ramon Perez de Ayala's activity as a playwright was sporadic when compared to his poetic creation, his abundant narrative production, and his extraordinary dedication to essay writing. In his journalistic articles, he demonstrated a deep knowledge of different tendencies in Europe's theatrical innovations, in addition to being a respected and polemical theatre critic. However, in his youth, he only premiered one play that was written collaboratively, and he published two dramatic works, which can be described as "closet dramas." Perez de Ayala justified his limited engagement with the composition of plays due to his disconnect with the theatre audiences of his time. Nevertheless, research in his archive and the study of the newspapers of the era reveal that the Asturian author continued to work on various dramatic works during his lifetime. This article aims to shed light on one of these projects-entitled Triunfo de Caliban-by way of publishing an edition of a previously unknown autograph manuscript preserved in Perez de Ayala's archive. This study focuses, first, on the relationship between the fragment entitled "La escena de las guirnaldas" and the anacreontic genre. Second, the article offers a possible interpretation of the reference in this work's title to Caliban, the character in Shakespeare's The Tempest.
The purpose of this article is to make known some of the Argentine sources that were used by Francisco Madrid in the writing of La vida altiva de Valle-Incicin (1943). One such source that stands out is a previously unknown interview between Valle-Inclan and Edmundo Guibourg included in this article's "Appendix"-which was published in the Buenos Aires newspaper Critica on January 14, 1928. This article also discusses two avant-textes that appeared in the magazine Argentina Libre in 1940 and in 1943. The present study, moreover, highlights the significant efforts made by Francisco Madrid, an exiled journalist, to gather numerous texts related to Valle-Inclan-including statements, journalistic reviews, biographical profiles, conference presentations, anecdotes, among other sources-which would be integrated into the final work, without specifying their origin.
This article examines Azorin's short story "Los intelectuales" (1928) in the context of several writings that he published between 1905 and the proclamation of the Second Republic, in which he addressed the contributions of Spanish intellectuals to the political, social, and economic life of the country. Considered in isolation, "Los intelectuales" would seem to be yet another utopian story by Azorin, who throughout his career turned to the genre of science fiction to express his futuristic visions. However, given that it was published during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and that the dictator had declared war on intellectuals shortly after taking power, it transcends the mere projection of a utopian world to address the struggle between intellectuals and the dictatorship and, above all, to make a plea in favor of the Spanish intellectual elite.
This article recovers an unpublished manuscript by Guillermo de Torre, written in the earliest stage of his work -known as his preconscious stage-, between 1920-1921, which is entitled Destruccion y Construccion. La pintura post-cubista de Robert Delaunay. Part of the Archivo Personal de Guillermo de Torre housed in the Spanish National Library, this monograph is dedicated to Delaunay for his foundational role in the Cubist Movement, which is emblematic of creative vis-a-vis imitative art. I will consider De Torre's text from a dual analytical perspective, employing a genetic and hermeneutic approach, since I seek to retrieve this manuscript's genetic dossier, which is located in the Spanish National Library, the French National Library, and the Centre Pompidou. Moreover, I aim to reconstruct the writing process of a text which almost became De Torre's first critical essay. Additionally, I highlight the important place that this work has in both De Torre's trajectory and in the development of his thought. It should also be noted that this document is the first monograph written about Robert Delaunay, and remains the only work that was not only read, but also authorized for publication by the painter himself.
There are playwrights who echo social and political concerns in their work, creating plays that can be classified as "documentary theater," following Peter Weiss's definition. In this study, we analyze the discourses of four plays that were performed at the Teatro del Barrio: El pan y la sal and Flores de Espana (2015) by Rafael Quires, Ruz-Barcenas (2014) by Jordi Casanovas, and Masacre (2017) by Alberto San Juan. We also consider how the playwrights achieved their goals, whether by showing the injustices suffered by the victims of the Spanish Civil War and the Post-War Period and by their families, or by exposing how particular unethical power structures function.
Ramon del Valle-Inclan visited Enrique de Mesa in solidarity when the latter was confined in 1929 in Soria by an arbitrary decision of Primo de Rivera. This essay describes what happened, and how that visit was yet another demonstration of Valle's opposition to the dictator and his followers.
The publication of Narrativa espanola fuera de Espana (1939-1961) by Jose Ramon Marra-Lopez is a landmark text in the literary reception of the Republican Exile of 1939 in the Francoist Spain of 1963. The thirteen reviews of this book that I have located are overwhelming proof of this work's impact. The analysis of these critical reviews is the primary goal of this article. For reasons of space, I exclude from my discussion the polemic between Guillermo de Torre and Jose Ramon Marra-Lopez that developed after De Torre's review of Marra-Lopez's book. This controversy is the focus of a complementary study.
When Melchor Fernandez Almagro published Vida y literatura de Valle-Incicin in 1943, it would have appeared to be a recent study, which had been started in the immediately preceding years. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, this essay-conceived of during the years of intimate friendship between Valle-Inclan and Fernandez Almagro-was the result of a twenty-year relationship between 1916 and 1936. These decades shine a light upon the breadth of their friendship as manifested in the specific actions detailed in this study. This article gathers Valle-Inclitn's autograph letters found in the Fernandez Almagro archive, most of which are unpublished and previously unknown. These texts open up and offer new avenues and keys to evaluate biographical, personal, and intellectual matters. Among such topics, we find references to Valle-Inclan's illness, the proceedings of his marital separation, as well as his appointment and experiences as the director of the Spanish Academy in Rome. Moreover, this correspondence allows us to glimpse on how Valle-Inclan interprets the conservative drift of Spanish politics in 1935, from certain ethical and aesthetic positions that became the basis of his esperpentos. The letters, therefore, reveal the arc of the connections between these two writers. These documents also encourage reflection on the dialectic between the Galician author's better-known public voice and his private voice, which is still far from being understood.
The first section of this article offers a sociocultural panorama of the present and the changes occasioned by the digital age. It explores how the concept of reality, as well as the scientific, philosophical, and moral bases of our culture have lost their factual foundations, due, in part, to social media. The frontier between truth and falsehood has become susceptible to ideological manipulation, stealing the liberty to feel as we feel. In the second section, this study considers film director and writer, Mario Camus's work, full of human strength and personal initiative which can be posed as an antidote capable of recovering personal balance in the present. (GG)
In this study, we commemorate two notable anniversaries: the life and work of a good man, the recently deceased Spanish writer Ramon Hernandez (1935-2024), and the fiftieth anniversary of Anales as a whole and in the context of its three manifestations (ANP, ANEC, ALEC, and the beginnings of three other journals [JSS: TC, STCL and Siglo XX120th Century]; I was the editor of all of them). It is to Ramon that this volume of ALEC is dedicated in view of the high caliber of his work and his close association with the journal over several decades. Thus, we celebrate having known him and his contributions to Hispanic Letters. (LTGdV)
The poetry of the authors of what was called "Young Literature" ("la joven literatura") in the 1920s was internationalized by way of the production of anthologies containing this generation's most significant poems, whether in translated or bilingual versions, as early as 1924. Subsequently, different projects offered selections of the group's texts in different countries and languages, always in the field of Hispanism and under the names of "Poets of 27" or "Generation of 1927". In the 2181 century, work on these major poets continues to be disseminated in other languages, now finally incorporating texts by the women writers of the crucial "Generation of 1927". (FJDdR)
Elegy is the most powerful form of poetry itself as a wound, wherein we catch glimpses of the invisible afflictions of language and the gift of poetry, the primal piercing cry that inhabits it, a wound without language. A wound is both a curse and a blessing in this poetry. Derek Walcott phrases it this way: "Like Philoctete's wound, this language carries its cure, / its radiant affliction." "Radiant affliction" also characterizes the elegiac poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca and Luis Cernuda, especially in such poems as Cernuda's "A Larra, con unas violetas" and Lorca's "Llanto por Ignacio Sanchez Mejias." Larra and Sanchez Mejias can be seen under a dual elegiac epic light, as gifted, heroic yet vulnerable figures whose talents are also disabilities. The wounds that open them both up to death likewise disclose the rift of language even as they are blessed by poetry itself. (NV)
This essay analyses the spectrality of the past in Manuel Rivas' novel O lapis do carpinteiro (The Carpenter's Pencil) focusing on the use of ghost stories and the fantastic. With a deep-rooted tradition in Galician popular folklore, Rivas' work a form of reparation for the injustices of the past allows for the silenced, repressed, and neglected voices of the forgotten and the disappeared to be heard. O lapis do carpinteiro channels the memories of the Galician Republicans and nationalists murdered, imprisoned and exiled, as a result of the violence of the Civil War and the brutal repression of the Franco Dictatorship. The essay also examines Rivas's use in the novel of Rosalia de Castro's poetry in relation to issues of spectrality, female subalternity, and social injustice, all of which appear as ghosts haunting our present. (JC)
Ricardo Baeza accumulated a rich and diverse range of experiences working in Madrid's literary world as a magazine contributor, translator, critic, journalist, travel writer, theater impresario and artistic director, lecturer, publicist, and publisher. He knew this last sector particularly well because he had founded, in 1916, a publishing house, Minerva, later renamed Atenea. In 1928 he left the company, now rebaptized Ediciones La Nave, in the hands of its co-owner, Fernando Calleja, and the following year Baeza launched a new project, the Association of the Best Book of the Month, clearly modeled after the original U.S. one the Book of the Month Club created in 1926. However, Baeza's organization exhibits some important differences. This essay traces the prehistory and origins of the Association and its links with other organizations, documents how it functioned, analyzes the selection of books that it offered every month over the three years of its existence, and indicates the reasons for its closure in the first half of 1932. (AAA)
Even though certain critics have pointed to costumbrista elements in Antonio Pereira's (1923-2009) short fiction, most tend to either dodge or undervalue his affiliation with the genre called costumbrismo, instead choosing to highlight the postmodern aspects of his short stories. This article traces an arc that reconsiders nineteenth-century costumbrismo in the context of Pereira's fiction to propose a critical stance that vindicates this legacy in a novel way. In fact, Pereira's playful flirtation with autobiographical writing has its roots in experiments with authorial representations by authors such as Larra, Mesonero Romanos, and especially Gil y Carrasco, to whom Pereira explicitly pays tribute. Thus, Pereira refashions the narrative experiments of his literary antecessors to offer sketches of the people from the Bierzo region in Leon, while he also engages in postmodern writing practices, including autofiction in cosmopolitan contexts. These postmodern practices in Pereira's fiction stem from costumbrismo and build on three characteristics shared with costumbrista texts: observations of the surroundings that depict type characters and genre scenes conveying a sense of authenticity, the ruse of authorial masks, and the complicity of the reader. (AR)
