From Seville the humanist..
Andalusia bears in its name the memory of al-Andalus, which for a time had Seville as its capital before it gave way to Cordoba. However, it has kept the image of a cultural city, attractive to scholars and writers, such as Ibn Ammar (1031-1086) who would have done better to continue cultivating his talent as a poet rather than trying to impose himself in politics, which cost him his life, but also Al Mutamid ibn Abbad (1040-1095) who, on the contrary, consoled himself with poetry after being the last Abbadid emir to rule over Seville. A few upheavals later, the Andalusian city really entered literature at the very beginning of the Spanish Golden Age, even initiating it to some extent thanks to a playwright whose life is not well known but whose importance has never been underestimated: he was even praised by Cervantes in the prologue of his Ocho Comedias y ocho entremeses! This fine scholar is Lope de Rueda, born in Seville around 1510 and director of a troupe with which he traveled the country, going as far as Valencia where he met Juan de Timoneda, his future publisher. Influenced by the Italian theater, he excelled in writing both comedies (Eufemia, Medora, etc.) and shorter playlets called "pasos" (La Carátula, Cornudo y contento, etc.). His truculent characters and debonair humor, his sense of formula and the accuracy of his dialogues have ensured him a largely timeless posterity. In the same spirit, and although it is necessary to add a pinch of moralism that Lope de Rueda certainly lacked, Mateo Alemán (1547-1614) also marked Spanish literary history with his picaresque novel Guzman de Alfarache. Published in two parts, the first in 1599 in Madrid and the second in Lisbon in 1604 - even before Cervantes' Quixote
was published - his adventures of a young pícaro were very popular, which led to many translations and some plagiarism. Unfortunately, it is said that the author did not make any profit from it - the clandestine copies were too numerous - and that he ended his life in great poverty in Mexico. The period also knew how to be very serious and Seville, once again, became famous for its humanist school with a strong mannerist accent, a movement that can be understood both as a way of writing "in the manner of the Ancients" and as a facet of the Baroque with its propensity for lyricism. Still they were numerous to meet and to meet, it will be necessary thus to quote Gutierre de Cetina (1520-1557), imitator of Anacreon and author of madrigals (short poems in free verse), Juan de Mal Lara (1524-1571), who had a strong taste for sayings, the all-rounder Balthasar del Alcázar (1530-1606), the playwright Juan de la Cueva (1543-1612), but also Cristóbal de Mesa (1556-1633) or Francisco Pacheco (1564-1644). The most famous of these poets are certainly Fernando de Herrera (1534-1597), whose nickname "Divine" says a lot about the respect he was held in, and Rodriguez Caro, born in Utrera in 1573 and died in Seville in 1647, who devoted himself to lyrical poetry as well as historical chronicles. The capital of Andalusia was to retain for a long time the taste for these literary circles, which were to multiply and among which we can count the Escuela poética sevillana or the Academia particular de letras humanas de Sevilla.... in romantic Seville
While the French took over Seville - Molière (1622-1673) borrowed the character of Don Juan from Tirso de Molina (1579-1648), the author of El Burlador de Sevilla, Beaumarchais (1732-1799) and Mérimée (1803-1870) played Figaro and Carmen, respectively - the Andalusian capital became the capital of love and took on a Romantic spirit. The most prominent representative of this trend was undoubtedly Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, who was born on February 17, 1836 and breathed his last, prematurely, on December 22, 1870. Although his success was posthumous, his works have become classics and are for the most part collected in the collection Rimas y Leyendas (Spanish Legends and Oriental Tales, published by Classiques Garnier). Very influenced by the "costumbrismo", a literary movement that drew its themes from folklore, not hesitating to add a supernatural or strange touch as did E.T.A. Hoffmann, his romanticism became almost gothic, with no real equivalent in Spain. Two other men will be concerned with folklore without bringing to it the lyricism proper to Bécquer: Luis Montoto, who edited the Biblioteca de Tradiciones populares collection (1883-1888) with his friend Antonio Machado Álvarez. The latter would also give birth to two well-known poets: Manuel Machado (1874-1947), the author ofArs moriendi, and his younger son, Antonio Machado, whose poetry was published in French by Gallimard under the title Champs de Castille
. Rafael Cansinos Assens (1882-1964) would be affiliated with the "Generation of 14", which might not have been the case if he had not moved to Madrid with his family as a teenager. In any case, he left a fruitful body of work that is illustrated by his psalm El Candelabro de los siete brazos and his numerous novels(La Encantadora, El Eterno moraclo, etc.).on the other hand, the "Generation of 27" flourished in the south of Spain and is best represented by at least three Sevillians, one of whom was awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize in 1977: Rafael Laffon (1895-1978), Vicente Aleixandre (1898-1984) and Luis Cernuda (1902-1963). The former was one of the co-founders of the magazine Mediodía in 1926 and was awarded the National Poetry Prize in 1959 for La Rama ingrata. The second, our famous Nobel Prize winner, was introduced to poetry through symbolism and produced prose that was occasionally very pessimistic(Sombra del paraíso). Nevertheless, his literary career will go through different periods that will perhaps lead him to a certain serenity when his death approaches, so long awaited because of his failing health(Poemas de la consumación). Although translated by Gallimard, his work is now unavailable in French. Finally, Luis Cernuda will work on a certain form of meditative and love poetry(Égloga, elegía, oda, Donde habite el olvido) which unfortunately will have little effect on the coming civil war which, in Andalusia as elsewhere, will sound the death knell of the avant-garde and literary effervescence.
