The origins
Seneca the Elder was born on Roman soil, around 60 BC, in Cordoba. While the value of his Sentences, divisions and colors of orators and rhetors, fictitious controversies that train in the art of argumentation, is undeniable, the grace of his progeny is especially memorable. It's unusual to have a philosopher as a son and a poet as a grandson from a different branch. The first, Seneca, sometimes called The Younger to distinguish him from his father, was also born in Cordoba, but it was in Rome that he was raised and embarked on a political career of intrigue and bad company, his proximity to Nero condemning him to suicide in April 65. Despite these vicissitudes, and an eight-year exile from Corsica, he still found time to write the nine tragedies that have come down to us(Medea, Phaedra, Oedipus, etc.), his seven-book scientific treatise Natural Questions, and above all his dialogues, the sentences of which still ring so true today. Although he drew his inspiration from Greek stoicism, he developed a genuine Roman philosophy, combining morality and wisdom, happiness and reason. His nephew, Lucain, suffered the same tragic fate, as he too was ordered by the emperor to slit his wrists. Despite his precocious talent, he didn't have time to complete his epic, Pharsalus, which wasn't published until after his death at the age of 25.
Literature allows us to leap forward in time, and Al-Andalus, the future Andalusia, which we find in the 10th century, has become Arab territory, following its conquest by the Moors in 711. A few centuries later, in 1930, the Madrid-born Emilio García Gómez published the highly successful Poemas arabigoandaluces, which mentions some of the most important poets of the time, notably Ibn Hazm (994-1064). His poetry and the universality of the love he sings about, which "begins in jest and ends gravely", have stood the test of time, with Editions Babel offering Le Collier de la colombe (The Dove's Necklace) in a translation by Gabriel Martinez-Gros. Another name figures prominently in García Gómez's anthology: Al-Mutamid ibn Abbad, who inherited the throne of Seville in 1068. The emir's feats of arms did not prevent him from showing great sensitivity, as his poetry attests, and his testimony to exile still touches us closely. Just two names, as an invitation to immerse oneself in a period fertile with multiple influences and the beauty of cultural intermingling.
But the time of the Reconquista was already looming, as little by little during the Middle Ages the Catholic Monarchs reconquered the territories occupied by the Muslims. Symptomatically, it was in 1207 that Per Abad transcribed El Cantar de Mio Cid, the oldest chanson de geste in Spanish literature. Fragmentary, this incunabulum, written in medieval Castilian, extols the courage of Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar and the epic that led him to recapture Valencia, where he reigned until his death in 1099. Four hundred years later, the last Moorish stronghold fell, and Abû Abdil-lah handed over the keys of Granada to Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon. In the same year, 1492, Antonio de Nebrija published his famous Gramatica castellana, the first time in Europe that a vernacular language was the subject of a grammar treatise.
Golden age, decline and rebirth
In 1528, Francisco Delicado, the Cordovan exiled to Rome, published La Gentille Andalouse in Venice. This short, dialogue-filled plot is interesting not only because it follows in the footsteps of Fernando de Rojas's La Celestine, but also because it foreshadows what was to become one of Spain's most popular genres: the picaresque novel. The pícaro is a literary figure who almost deserves to be called an anti-hero, as he displays some of the characteristics of a trickster. Living on the bangs of society, sometimes at its expense, he never hesitates to use cunning to achieve his ends, although he often regrets it later. Mateo Alemán's Guzmán de Alfarache is a good counterpoint to the novel of chivalry, combining entertainment in the form of a bizarre autobiography with the moralizing of the adult narrator. It should be noted that the author was born in the same year (1547) as Miguel de Cervantes, and while this is not the place to debate whether or not Don Quixote falls into this specific category, it is interesting to remember that the celebrated writer himself lived in Andalusia, and that a significant part of his plot takes place there. Finally, recent discoveries suggest that La Vie de Lazarillo de Tormes, considered the first picaresque novel, was written by the ambassador Diego Hurtado, born in Granada in 1503.
Seville saw the birth of the poet Gutierre de Cetina in 1520, followed by the playwright Juan de la Cueva in 1543. The latter freed himself from Aristotelian norms of unity of time and place, and from the classic five-act form. He also drew inspiration from the Romancero and mythology for his comedies of manners, the most famous of which is El Infamador(The Defamer). In this, he prefigures the originality of Lope de Vega (1562-1635), considered the founder of the Comedia nueva and who, although from Madrid, also lived in Andalusia. His love life, complicated to say the least, did nothing to curb his talent; on the contrary, the numerous alimony payments he had to make perhaps explain the proliferation of his theatrical output - over 1,800 plays are attributed to him! His praise of patriotism as much as sentiment is said to have influenced even French playwrights. Another major figure of his time, Luis de Góngora was born in Cordoba in 1561, where he died, terribly diminished, in 1627. Although he was rarely recognized for the richness of his themes, his plots being as thin as that of Solitudes, which recounts the rescue of a shipwrecked man by goatherds, his peers and public admired him for the luxuriance of his metaphors, to such an extent that he became the emblem of the Baroque style known as cultism... or gongorism. A few years later, in 1630, El Burlador de Sevilla(The Abuser of Seville) was performed for the first time by the monk Tirso de Molina, who may well have been inspired by his time in the city to create this play, considered the first to feature the mythical Don Juan. The age of Spanish cultural influence came to an end, some say in 1681 with the death of Calderón, and the century to come looked set to be a quieter one.
The 19th century brought a new lease of life. Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer was born in Seville on February 17, 1836. His short life, 34 years partly spent in Madrid, went unrecognized, and it was only after his death, on an eclipse night, that his friend Casado del Alisal launched a subscription to publish Libro de los gorriones(The Rhymes) , for which the poet is celebrated today as the founder of modern Spanish lyricism. His Legends, meanwhile, take up texts originally published in newspapers during his lifetime, and have a Romantic, supernatural touch, like the early writings of his contemporary Pedro de Alarcón (1833-1891), influenced by Edgar Allan Poe. The Guadijeño writer, however, also marked the transition to realism, recounting his memories of military campaigns in his Diary of a Witness to the African War. His most popular work, Le Tricorne (1874), an almost vaudevillian romp, takes up the theme of an old romance and pokes fun at an unfulfilled adultery. Finally, El Clavo is often cited as the very first Spanish detective novel.
At the turn of the century, Spain was in the midst of the Restoration. The Spanish fleet suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the United States off the coast of Cuba, signaling the end of the immense colonial empire. This marked the emergence of the Generation of '98, of which Ángel Ganivet García from Grenada was one of the precursors, at least from an ideological point of view, given his pervasive pessimism. His successors reflected on the decline of their homeland, set themselves the mission of cultural regeneration for their people and gathered around Miguel de Unamuno. The Sevillian Antonio Machado was at their side, and he would express their admiration for the return to the land in his famous Champs de Castille in 1912. Although they were not yet aware of belonging to a literary movement, and the paths they took were disparate, the authors of this generation had the merit of giving Spain back its letters of nobility at a time when everything seemed doomed to failure. The intellectual emulsion continues with Juan Ramón Jiménez, born in Moguer in 1881, who is associated with the Generation of '14, but who is praised above all for having been awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize for Literature in 1956, while living in exile. His poetry is available from José Corti, and his Andalusian gem Platero et moi is published by Seghers. The dialogues between a man and his donkey, and their misadventures, are tinged with a gentle melancholy that brings this poetic tale close to the beauty of The Little Prince. Then came the avant-garde Generation of 27, whose creative movement was interrupted only by the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. One of its leading figures was Federico García Lorca, who was shot when he was just 38, and died twice as his works were banned by Franco's regime. He is best remembered for his poetry, of course, but also for his theater, notably Noces de sang (Gallimard), which recounts the drama of an honor killing in Andalusia. His contemporary, Rafael Alberti, winner of the 1983 Cervantes Prize, is published in French by the same publisher(Marin à terre - L'Amante - L'Aube de la giroflée). Vicente Aleixandre, another member of the Generation of 27, also won the Swedish prize in 1977.
The war gave way to dictatorship, which in turn gave way to monarchy in 1975. In literature, one generation followed another, and the second half of the twentieth century in Andalusia was above all marked by two men, two great pens. José Manuel Caballero Bonald (1926-2021), born in Jerez de la Frontera, has written some forty works and is hard to find in our language, although the invaluable Solanhets publishing house has offered him a few translations in recent years. Equally at home in prose and poetry, he has won several prizes and his baroque style is representative of a certain post-war literary style. Antonio Muñoz Molina is enjoying greater visibility, spotted as early as his first novel, Beatus ille by Actes Sud, then picked up in paperback by Points. Flirting with the noir genre in L'Hiver à Lisbonne (Winter in Lisbon) and delving into the thriller genre in Pleine Lune (Full Moon), he also shows himself to be tender, yet worried, in En l'absence de Blanca (In Blanca's Absence).
