2024-07-24 19:49:55
On July 27, 1994, the writer Rosa Chacel died in Madrid. He was 96 years old, a longevity that allowed him to enjoy, even if he came late, recognition: the Critics’ Prize in 1976, the National Prize for Literature in 1987, the Gold Medal in Fine Arts in 1993, among others. Most importantly, she stayed active: just a few months before she said she was working on a new novel, the fourth part of one of her masterpieces, the cycle Plato’s schooldone by Neighborhood of Surprises (1976), Acropolis (1984) y Natural Sciences (1988), which in the end lasted only a few pages. It was only physical health – she had suffered a stroke in one eye, and the other was already very bad – that slowed her down. His mind was as clear as ever.
The forgotten women of Generation ’27
She was born in Valladolid on June 3, 1898, in a liberal family – she was the granddaughter of the poet José Zorrilla – she barely attended school for a month; Her mother, a teacher, educated her at home. Contrary to what it might seem, not only did this situation not limit her, but it encouraged her critical and independent spirit from an early age. When he was ten years old, they moved to Madrid, close to his grandmother’s house, to the Barrio de las Maravillas that he would show later in his story, with an unusual ability of observation that reinterpreted any detail, giving new meanings him. She studied at different centers until she enrolled, in 1915, at the School of Fine Arts of San Fernando Superior, which brought her closer to the cultural life of Madrid and to the man who would become her husband and father to her only son, the painter Timoteo Pérez. Rubio (1896-1977).
At that time he began to collaborate with magazines and strengthen ties with the most illustrious figures of the Bohemian environment. Between 1922 and 1927, the couple traveled through Europe, a period in which their stay in Rome stood out because of a scholarship awarded to him. In the 1930s, on her return, she became a mother and published her first book, ie. Season. Round trip, a novel that is difficult to classify, a hybrid between narrative and essay, laid the foundations for the literature of deep philosophical significance that he would later develop. In that first beginning he showed an absurd language, which he owed to his parents: “They bequeathed me something of incalculable value: the good Spanish spoken at home and with which I have written,” he said in an interview for The country in May 1994.
He was given his first major project by his teacher, José Ortega y Gasset, who commissioned him to write a fictional biography of Espronceda’s lover, for a collection entitled The extraordinary life of the 19th century. the book, Teresa (1941), later than expected, and in Buenos Aires, because, as happened to many of his contemporaries, the Civil War cut short his career. With a small son, their priority was to protect him at all costs from the horror, they were exiled to South America after a short stay in France and Switzerland. Her husband followed them a little later, since at first he stayed in Spain, where he participated in the evacuation of the works of the Prado Museum to Geneva to save them from barbarism.
The family lived between Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro, and had serious economic problems. Chacel did not set foot in Spain again until 1972, although it was for a short time. While in exile, far from her homeland, she became even more discouraged by the censorship restrictions of the Franco regime, which prevented her from publishing in her country (the only exception. Teresa, although it came years after the original). A friend of writers such as Jorge Luis Borges and Silvina Ocampo, her intellectual curiosity remained alive: from that stage to light The unreasonable (1960), which many consider his masterpiece, a huge novel of ideas covered in detective fiction, with digressions, twists and turns and a character who, despite living his adventures mainly in Argentina, has much of the Spanish past recently, the trauma. the competition. It was constant in her: as well as being inspired by international references, especially French – she was a translator To the fishby Albert Camus, among others, who brought to the Spanish tradition Cervantes, Galdós, Larra and Unamuno, who ordered a permanent search in other directions.
In exile, his exile was compensated in the sixties when he began a correspondence with some of the “very new” poets of Barcelona, such as Pere Gimferrer and Ana María Moix, who wrote to him after reading with surprise Teresa. The letters to the latter, collected in From sea to sea, highlighted the spark that burned in the ancient writer when she knew that she was respected by that cultured and rebellious university youth, who gave hope to her country. Moix introduced her to the new voices in the literary world and asked her for advice, both educational and vital. Chacel answered with affection, but without the soft tone of a mother: he treated his interlocutor with intellectual respect, he took her seriously, he took her opinion into account; and she opened up in turn, sharing her loneliness and pessimism for the future of her work.
She returned to Spain definitively in the eighties, after the death of her husband, when she settled in Madrid with her son. The democratic transition opened the door for their books, which were finally published and recognized. He worked hard, signed his great trilogy and several essays, took advantage of his moment of good fortune with the humility of someone who had been in the shadows for many years. There were only readers against her: those who respected her, and among them there were many authors of the new generations, but there were never many, she did not top the bestseller lists. He nurtured all genres – novel, short story, poetry, essay, biography, memoir, diary – and left his mark on them all, a mark that might be too unique to attract the masses. Although she is usually included in the ’27 Generation, she has always been alone; a rare review.
Chacel had ideas about youth and femininity that might be scary today. She declared, on the one hand, that she had never been a girl, because she had always been treated as such; He was not the author of an insult, but the opposite: he felt rejected by the tendency, a product of mass culture imposed in the second half of the 20th century, to infantilize the child, whether with too much attention, whether with stories or movies She wrote that “being a girl wants to stop being one.” […]. From our maturity we see the magic of youth; “From childhood we see the desired puberty and we are anguished by our impotence to achieve it with the speed of lightning or thought.” In novels like Memories of Leticia Valle (1945), about teenage awakening, describes that stage with a protagonist who is not far from being an honest young woman.
Regarding the identity of a woman, it was uncomfortable for her from the beginning, in the sense that she did not want to be what was expected of women, to keep the house and maintain submission to her husband. He didn’t want to be like his grandmother or his mother; She didn’t like playing with other girls but they weren’t interesting to her. She refused to be divorced by her gender, to value the creation of men and women with different parameters. She set the bar high for herself, and this meant talking face to face with the best. Disciple of Ortega y Gasset and Gómez de la Serna, admirer of Joyce and Proust, her work has a philosophical background and contributes to the refreshing breath of the avant-garde, in which she found modernity in the speech she sought to escape from conventions. . Her literary corpus was therefore not far from being the traditionally feminine domain of emotion and the home. This earned her the respect of many of her peers, although the complexity earned her a reputation as a “difficult” author who frightened readers.
Her refusal to fit into the model of women of the time went beyond her performance: she was not afraid to express her opinion out loud, to be critical or stand up when the occasion called for it.
Her refusal to fit into the model of women of the time went beyond her performance: she was not afraid to express her opinion out loud, to be critical or stand up when the occasion called for it. She said she wasn’t nominated as an academic or awarded the Cervantes Prize because she didn’t work hard enough on her contacts; He did not shy away from Francisco Umbral when he suggested that he was hanging around the young girls; He dealt with aspiring writers who asked him for advice not to give in, pointing out their shortcomings and urging them not just that vague concept of improvement, but to be more ambitious, to ask questions, to explore. Her intellectual status was reflected in everything she wrote and spoke, as well as the type of her that she herself described as “stupid”. She was not, of course, everyone’s beloved author; but he didn’t want to be either.
She was one of the few women mentioned by Javier Marías when he talked about great authors: Chacel, a family friend – her father, Julián Marías, tried to become an editor in Spain during her exile – who advised him at the start. as a novelist. She looked tough, but because she knew she could be tough, she saw her potential and didn’t want her to get lost or lower the bar. by the way, Marías also mentioned Mercè Rodoreda – herself in exile, in her case between France and Switzerland –, with whom Chacel corresponded; The two writers claimed each other. Both of them were pioneers of letters, and, after the break caused by the exile, they were able to redeem themselves to a certain extent on their return, since Rodoreda also received honors in the Catalan circle.
Chacel, so self-demanding, imposed an austerity that might not be very welcome today, either, but there’s no doubt that anyone who wants to know can’t find the best of the Spanish literary tradition to miss it. If you start with The unreasonable It makes you dizzy, you can try Teresa, more traditional, whose denial of the state of women is still valid; or for his non-fiction, as excellent and honest, as his memoirs From sunrise (1972) or his diaries, Bank carry, recovered the same year. Introspective, incomprehensible and deep, his story is like a steep terrain, but, as Plato warned, the truth is only reached after a hard path, which forces one to remove the cobwebs from his eyes and who dare to look towards the light, at most at first blind. It is never too late to take that path; good books know how to wait.
1930: Season. Round trip (novel), Cuadernos del Vigía, 2020
1941: Teresa (novel), Viewer Books, 2007
[1945:Cuimhní cinn Leticia Valle (úrscéal), Comba, 2017
1952-71: Scéalta (roghnú), an Astráil, 2024
1960: An míréasúnta (úrscéal), Comba, 2015
1971: An admháil (aiste), Comba, 2020
1972: Ó éirí gréine (cuimhní cinn), Lumen, 2017
1976: Comharsanacht na nIontas (úrscéal), Lumen, 2022
1982: Mhuiniompair bainc. Ag dul (nuachtáin), Blatt agus Ríos, 2024
1980: Timoteo Pérez Rubio agus a chuid portráidí den Ghairdín (beathaisnéis), Herratas Ediciones, 2021
1989: Tá léamh rúnda (aiste), The Deaf Lantern, 2014
1998: Ó mhuir go muir (irisleabhar le Ana María Moix), Comba, 2015
#late #Rosa #Chacel #rara #avis #Generation