Balthazar Gracian

Baltasar Gracián y Morales (Belmonte de Gracián, January 8, 1601-Tarazona, December 6, 1658) was a Jesuit, Spanish writer of the Golden Age who cultivated didactic and philosophical prose.. Among his works stands out El Criticón —allegory of human life—, which constitutes one of the most important novels of Spanish literature, comparable in quality to Quixote or La Celestina.

His production is attached to the literary current of conceptism. He forged a very personal, dense, concentrated and polysemic style built from short sentences, in which word play and ingenious associations between words and ideas dominate. The result is a laconic language, full of aphorisms and capable of expressing a great wealth of meanings.

Gracian's thinking is pessimistic, as befits the baroque period. The world is a hostile and deceptive space, where appearances prevail over virtue and truth. Man is a weak, interested and malicious being. A good part of his works are concerned with providing the reader with skills and resources that allow him to navigate among the traps of life. For this he must know how to assert himself, be prudent and take advantage of wisdom based on experience; even dissimulate, and behave according to the occasion.

All this has earned Gracián to be considered a precursor of existentialism and postmodernity. He influenced French freethinkers such as La Rochefoucauld and later the philosophy of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. However, his vital thought is inseparable from the consciousness of a Spain in decline, as noted in his maxim "in the golden age, simplicity flourished, in this one of error, malice."

Biography

The poet Baltasar Gracián, oil preserved in the Museum of Fine Arts of Valencia, possibly the first half of the seventeenth century (perhaps during its Valencian stay between 1630-1636). Although it is an unfamiliar portrait, it has not been questioned that it represents the writer, although its author, because it has been attributed to Velázquez (who Gracián praised in his works) or to his workshop, or to his countryman Jusepe Leonardo.

Born in Belmonte de Gracián, very close to Calatayud, in 1601, the information about his childhood is very scarce. Son of Francisco Gracián Garcés, a native of Sabiñán, the solar house of the Gracián family is still preserved in this Zaragoza town. It is known that his father was hired by the council of Ateca to practice as a doctor in 1604, so his entire family had to travel to that town. Everything indicates that he studied letters from the age of ten or twelve in Calatayud, perhaps at the Jesuit college in this town. Around 1617 he must have resided for one or two years in Toledo with his uncle Antonio Gracián, chaplain of San Juan de los Reyes, where he would learn logic and delve into Latin.

In 1619 he entered the novitiate of the Jesuit province of Aragon, located in Tarragona, where he was exempted from the mandatory two years of study in the humanities due to his excellent previous training. In 1621 he returned to Calatayud, where he studied Philosophy for two years. From this stage dates his appreciation for ethics, which influenced all his literary production. Four other Theology courses at the University of Zaragoza completed his religious formation.

Ordained a priest in 1627, he began teaching Humanities at the Colegio de Calatayud. It seems that it was a pleasant period, but a few years later he had serious confrontations with the Jesuits of Valencia, where he was transferred in 1630. From there he went to Lérida in 1631 to take charge of the Moral Theology classes. In 1633 he traveled to Gandía to teach Philosophy at the town's Jesuit college and enmities with his old Valencian co-religionists were renewed.

In the summer of 1636 he returned to Aragonese lands, to Huesca, as a confessor and preacher. This city had a capital importance in the life of the Jesuit, since with the support of the scholar patron Vincencio Juan de Lastanosa he was able to publish his first book: El Héroe (1637).

Lastanosa brought together an important literary and artistic circle in his house-museum. The palace of the Huesca hero, which was visited by Felipe IV, was known for its exquisite gardens, for a stupendous armory, for the collection of medals and for a magnificent library of nearly seven thousand volumes, an extraordinary number at that time. In this favorable environment, Gracián made contact with the Aragonese cultural intelligentsia, including the poet Manuel de Salinas and the historian Juan Francisco Andrés de Uztarroz.

In 1639 he arrived in Zaragoza, appointed confessor of the Viceroy of Aragon Francisco María Carrafa, Duke of Nochera, with whom he traveled to Madrid, where he preached. However, his stay at Court was discouraging, because, although he aspired to thrive among the capital's literary republic, his ambitions ended in frank disappointment. However, he published his second work there, El Político (1640) and completed the first version of his theoretical treatise on baroque literary aesthetics, entitled Art of wit, treatise on sharpness (1642).

From 1642 to 1644 he held the position of vice-rector of the College of Tarragona, where he spiritually helped the soldiers who would take Lleida in the Uprising of Catalonia (1640). As a result of this campaign, he fell ill, and was sent to Valencia to recover. In the warmth of the magnificent hospital library, he prepared a new work, El Discreto (1646), which will see the light of day in Huesca. Back in his refuge in Huesca, he taught Moral Theology classes until 1650. It is at this time that he was able to dedicate himself more actively to literature. Then appeared the Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia (1647) and the second version of the treatise on ingenuity and the concept Agudeza y arte de ingenuity (1648).

Baltasar Gracián Portrait by Valentin Carderera.

He was assigned to Zaragoza in the summer of 1650 as Master of Writing, and the following year he published the first part of his masterpiece: El Criticón. With the exception of El Comulgatorio , Gracián published all of his work without the Company's mandatory permission, which provoked formal protests that were raised to the governing bodies of the Jesuits. Such complaints did not dissuade him to the point that the second part of this work appeared in Huesca. Some Valencian Jesuits, as a result of old enmities, interpreted one of his passages as an offense to their persons, which earned him new attacks from the superiors of the Company who pointed to the scarcely doctrinal content of his works, inappropriate for a professed Jesuit. Since, all of them dealing with Moral Philosophy, it is approached from a profane perspective. Perhaps to contribute to the discharge of him he published, for the first time under his real name, The Communion Table (1655), a book about the preparation for the Eucharist.

But the appearance in 1657 of the third part of El Criticón determined his fall from grace. The new Provincial of Aragon, the Catalan Jacinto Piquer, publicly reprimanded Gracián in the refectory, imposed a fast on bread and water as penance —forbidding him even to have ink, pen and paper—, and deprived him of his chair of Writing at the College Jesuit of Zaragoza. At the beginning of 1658 Gracián was sent to Graus, a town in the Huesca pre-Pyrenees.

Shortly after, Gracián wrote to the General of the Company to request admission to another religious order. His demand was not met, but his sentence was mitigated: in April 1658 he was already sent to perform various minor positions at the College of Tarazona, today Hogar Doz. The last setbacks must have accelerated his physical decline, since in June he could not attend the provincial congregation of Calatayud, dying a little later, in Tarazona, on December 6, 1658. He was probably buried in the common grave of the school.

Work

In Gracián everything is absorbed by the life of the intelligence, for which the affective aspect is practically annulled: hence the harsh tone and lack of human warmth that his works often suffer from. His concept of man (the worst of the beings in creation) and of life (perpetual deceit and constant struggle) is negative and purely baroque: a disappointment All things have a double value of deceptive appearance and hidden reality. And he adjusts to reflect the decline of the Spanish Empire.

His morality is practical, combative and triumph-oriented: you have to act tirelessly putting will and intelligence in tension. Prudence, and at the same time distrust and suspicion, are unavoidable conditions for this. It is expressed in the three hundred maxims included in the Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia (1647). Since life is a struggle, he prepares us for combat, proposing defense as concealment and attack as discovery of another's soul; also a retreat in time is worth more than a brilliant victory.

His style presents the maximum intensification of conceptism, of which he is even a theorist. Different types of antitheses are constant (also paradoxes, litotes, oxymorons) and puns (amphibologies, etc.), as well as different types of ellipses, especially the zeugma, whose purpose is to achieve a dense, fast prose. and laconic. But three resources peculiarly characterize it: wit, allegory (especially prosopopeia or personification) and humor.

Thematically, in his booklets he proposes various human archetypes of the superior man: The hero (1639), which establishes the necessary conditions to overcome all kinds of practical obstacles; El discreto (1646), who does the same for the courtly sphere, and El politico (1640), where he proposes Fernando el Católico as a model.

Viewing the production of Baltasar Gracián as a whole, we can observe a close relationship with his biography. From the youthful enthusiasm for the triumph and glory of the exemplary man, configured in The Hero, one will arrive at the disappointment of old age and death in the last chapters of The Criticon. He thus presents himself as a writer in 1637 in the prologue "To the reader" of The Hero:

How singular I wish you! I intend to form with a dwarf book a giant man and, with brief periods, immortal facts. Remove a maximum man; this is a miracle in perfection (...)

The Hero, prologue «To the reader»

Two more treatises would continue this line of outlining the perfect man: El Político, which extracts such qualities from King Ferdinand the Catholic, and El Discreto, a manual of conduct for man in society, whatever his position in it.

First known portrait of Gracián, preserved in the Jesuit school of Calatayud.

On the other hand, Gracián devoted great efforts to preparing a treatise on baroque literary aesthetics: Agudeza y arte de ingenuity, which recasts a previous version entitled Arte de ingenuity, treatise on sharpness. There he theorizes about the «concept» and proposes a new rhetoric based on baroque praxis that distances himself, in part, from the Aristotelian tradition of Poetics, since his analysis is based on texts, which in turn exemplify a classification of the different types of acuity of his own invention.

All of Gracián's work, always concerned with its practical application to human life, has moral philosophy as its object. The ideas accumulated in previous treatises on how to behave in the world are synthesized and brought together in the most laconic and sententious book of his production, the Manual Oracle and the Art of Prudence . With it, the project of "manuals of living" for the well-rounded person culminates, and in it are also subsumed, probably, projected books —in El Discreto it speaks of the "twelve graces", which would be titled «El Atento», «El Gallante»— that never saw the light of day.

He was admired by French moralists of the 17th and 18th centuries, and in the 19th century by Schopenhauer, who was influenced by Gracian thought and translated into German the Manual Oracle and Art of Prudence. This version, very faithful to the spirit of the Aragonese, was known by Nietzsche, who said in one of his letters: "Europe has not produced anything finer or more complicated in terms of moral subtlety." Thanks to them the work of the philosopher Spanish was studied at the German university.

The only thing left to do was rehearse the storytelling. Putting all his rhetorical research work at the service of a novel, which was also a treatise on moral philosophy, under the genre that he himself called "fake compound wit," which comes to mean "novelized allegory." It materialized in the three parts of El Criticón, which covers the entire cycle of a man's life, who must also overcome the circumstances of the world in crisis of Baroque society.

The last book he would publish, perhaps to make a concession to the professions of the Jesuit order, which did not look favorably on his approach to the struggle for life, always apart from Christian help, was The Communion Table. It is the only one that he published under his real name and complied with the mandatory review by the censors of his order. However, after the appearance in 1657 of the third part of El Criticón —again without the consent of the Company and with his well-known (by now) pseudonym Lorenzo Gracián—, the Aragonese was confined to a cell and punished to rigorous fasting. The pessimistic overtones that El Criticón exudes go hand in hand with his last vital vicissitudes.

First edition The hero, Huesca, Juan Francisco de Larumbe, 1637.

The Hero (1637)

The Hero (Madrid, 1639).

The title of The Hero refers to the highest quality of man in classical antiquity, that is, the Latin virtus or areté (αρετη) Greek. The first of the books published by Baltasar Gracián is a treatise in which the qualities of the exceptional man are described. Each of these relevant garments that the hero is made of is authorized with the mention of his presence in an eminent historical figure, connecting with the Dicta et facta memorabilia of the Latin tradition of Valerio Máximo. This example works as the culmination of each of the chapters, called "beautiful". The term alludes to the etymological meaning of this word, deriving it from primus as a noun, that is, "the best", "the first".

The work also refers to Machiavelli's The Prince, since it is a doctrinal of good government, although applied to the sphere of personal rule. But, in contrast to the Italian treatise writer, this "raison d'état of oneself" does not forget to reconcile politics and morality, since in the Spain of the Counter-Reformation the Machiavellian prince was opposed by a Christian prince, as the title of the book proclaims. work of his contemporary Diego Saavedra Fajardo Idea of a Christian political prince (1640).

On the other hand, The Hero connects with The Courtier by Baltasar de Castiglione, although courteous Renaissance manners are no longer enough. In Gracián the courtier also needs cunning, intelligence, good discernment and even dissimulation.

Editions

• Manuscript of The Hero autograph of Baltasar Gracián (National Library of Madrid. Ms. 6643). Reproduced in: Aurora Egido (ed.), "The Hero" by Baltasar Gracián. Facsimile edition of the autograph and printing of Madrid, [Diego Díaz], 1639, edited by Adolphe Coster. Zaragoza, Institution Fernando el Católico, 2001. ISBN 84-7820-629-9.
• Huesca, Juan Francisco de Larumbe, 1637 (National Library of Spain, with reference R/41684).
• Madrid, Diego Díaz, 1639 (National Library of Spain, exemplary R-13.655).
• Amsterdam, Juan Blaeu, 1659.
• Adolphe Coster, Chartres, poundire Lester, 1911.
• Luis Esteso, Madrid, Editorial América, 1918.
• Antonio Bernat Vistarini, Palma de Mallorca, José J. de Olañeta editions, 2001. ISBN 84-7651-967-2.
• The Hero (facsimile edition of Diego Díaz, Madrid, 1639), prologue of Aurora Egido, Zaragoza, Institución Fernando el Católico, 2001. ISBN 84-7820-600-0.
• The Hero. Manual Oracle and Prudence Art, Antonio Bernat Vistarini and Abraham Madroñal Durán (eds.), Madrid, Castalia, 2003. ISBN 84-9740-081-X.
• The Hero (facsimile edition of Juan Francisco de Larumbe, Huesca, 1637), prologue of Aurora Egido, Zaragoza, Institución Fernando el Católico y Gobierno de Aragón, 2016. ISBN 978-84-9911-391-3.

The Politician (1640)

Edition of 1646 (Huesca, Juan Nogués) The Political.

In El político don Fernando el Católico, in the form of a thesis that defends that Fernando el Católico was the greatest king of the Spanish monarchy, his political skills and virtues are described as an example of emulation for the political man. It is, then, not so much a biography but another treatise on practical morality, only embodied in the greatest prince, in a king.

This text is built on the generic falsehood of the biographical commendation, characterized as an academic discourse before an audience, a model that was widely cultivated in the Renaissance and Baroque periods. A specific model of ruler is offered with him who stands out from all past monarchs, and who constitutes a mirror in which later ones must be reflected, including Philip IV, along the lines of the well-known "mirrors of princes".

Editions

• THE POLICY/D. FERNANDO CATOLICO/ DE/ LORENZO GRACIAN./ TO THE EX^MO Sr/ Don Francisco Maria, Carafa, Castrio-/to, y Gonzaga, Duque de Nochera,/ [...]Capitan General en los Rey-/nos de Aragon, y/ Navarra. /With License, and Privilege./ In Zaragoça, by Diego Dormer/M.D. XL. Facsimile reproduction in: Egido, The Political, Zaragoza, Institution Fernando el Católico, 1985. ISBN 8400059166
• Evaristo Correa Calderón, Madrid, Anaya, 1973⁶. ISBN 84-207-0753-8
• The Hero. The politician. The Discreet. Manual oracle and art of prudence., Arturo del Hoyo (ed.), Barcelona, Plaza y Janés (Clásicos Plaza y Janés. Biblioteca Crítica de Autores Españoles, 54), 1986. ISBN 84-01-90575-3

Art of wit, a treatise on sharpness (1642)

Gracian wrote two treatises on wit and sharpness. The first of them was published in Madrid in 1642 under the title Arte de ingenuity, treatise on acuity. The second appeared in 1648, with the title Agudeza y arte de ingenuity. The theory about the concept that he addresses in this work illuminates the contemporary literary production of Gracián. The genres used in Gracián's different works are defined here theoretically. Later it was recast, revised and expanded in a definitive edition entitled Agudeza y arte de ingenuity, published in 1648.

Editions

• ARTE/INGENIO,/ TREATMENT OF AGUDEZA./ In which all modes and differences of / Concepts/ POR/ Lorenço Gracian are explained./ DEDICALA/ our Lord's Prince./ With Privilege in Madrid, by Iuan/ Sanchez, Year 1642./ At the expense of Roberto Lorenço, merca-/r de libros. Facsimile reproduction in: Art of ingenuity, treated of sharpness (priologist of Aurora Egido), Zaragoza, IFC-Gobierno de Aragón, 2005. ISBN 84-7820-794-5
• Emilio Blanco (ed.), Art of wit, Madrid, Chair (col. “Hispanic Laws”), 1998.

The Discreet (1646)

The Discreet (1646).

It is its first full-ripe fruit. Once again, we are facing a treatise that describes how the man who wants to become a "person" should be: a complete prudent, shrewd gentleman, endowed with good taste and good education. By discretion he understands the capacity for discernment, which is, after all, the intelligence to choose the best and to distinguish and value what a man needs to be a man at all times and in all circumstances.

But now he renounces achieving heroic excellence, contenting himself with helping to improve the man of the world so that he stands out among his peers. The proposed model is no longer an exceptional being, a famous hero, ruler or king, as was the case in his two previous treatises on a similar theme. Now it is about training a prudent man who not only needs many qualities to govern, but also to function in society. Over time, the pessimism of a Gracián who contemplates the malice of the world has become more acute. His disappointment makes the objective of the triumph of the hero raised in the first treatise a utopia. Now it is enough to become a person, that is, to be, in the classical sense, a virtuous man.

In the chapters of this treatise —now called “highlights” in keeping with highlighting, and not being the best, which revealed “pretty”— a great variety of genres are tested: dialogue, apologist, emblem, satire, fable, epistle, academic discourse, or panegyric, among others. In them he uses the fable or allegory for the first time, already creating a fictional module that will serve the purposes of the "fake compound wit" or allegorical novel, which will be his final effort. The last of his «enhancements», which does not bear an indication of gender, entitled «Cult distribution of the life of a discreet», shows a scheme of division of man's life into ages that preludes that of his novel The Criticon .

Editions

• THE DISCRECT / DE / LORENZO GRACIAN, / that publishes / DON VINCENCIO IVAN / DE LASTANOSA./ Y / LO DEDICA / AL / Serenissimo Señor, / DON BALTASAR CARLOS /Principe de las Españas. / And / From the New World. / Licensed. /Impresso in Huesca, by Iuan / Nogues, Year 1646. Facsimile edition online
• Miguel Romera Navarro and Jorge. M. Furt (ed. critique based on princepsBuenos Aires, Academia Argentina de Letras, 1959.
• Aurora Egido (ed. critique), Madrid, Alianza, 1997.
• Wikisource (en), critical edition (View your editing criteria)

First Edition Manual Oracle.

Manual oracle and art of prudence (1647)

The Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia (1647) supposes the synthesis of previous didactic-moral treatises. The book consists of three hundred commented aphorisms, and offers a set of rules and guidelines to guide oneself in a complex and crisis society.

It has not only interested literature aficionados. The work has been approached from its publication to the present by thinkers and philosophers. The admiration that Arthur Schopenhauer showed for it led him to translate it into German and his version was the most widespread of the Oracle in this language.

This «art of prudence» written by Gracián has been valid even today, as evidenced by the fact that an English version, entitled The art of worldly wisdom: a pocket oracle arrived to sell more than one hundred and fifty thousand copies in the Anglo-Saxon world, being presented as a self-help manual for executives. In 1992, it spent eighteen weeks (two in first position) on the Washington Post best-seller list under Nonfiction/General.

It has been thought that this work is a mere compilation of sentences from his previous books, but this is only true, and in part, in the first hundred aphorisms. The fact of glossing apothegms of his own works was a new procedure, since until then it had been reserved to the authority of the quotations taken from the classics of antiquity, or at least to authors of recognized prestige. Being the Oracle an anthology of his maxims indicates that Gracián elevates himself to the rank of the authors who constituted the literary canon of the time.

The two-member phrase «manual oracle and art of prudence» works as an antithesis, since oracle has a meaning of «secret emanating from divinity», and to this term the adjective «manual» is added, that is, «for a practical and portable use. The word «art» is used in the sense of «rules and precepts to do things correctly», as stated in the Dictionary of Authorities. But prudence opposes him, since there are no certain and universal norms for the conduct of man. In conclusion, the book would be a precious and secret manual of rules of practical use for the conduct of man in a world of conflict.

The genre adopted by the Oráculo, unlike previous treatises, dispenses with the argumentation and authority of historical examples that had been common in The Hero, The Political or The Discreet. The observation of the world and the application of these tips in practice are enough to guarantee the validity and usefulness of these mundane oracles.

His style is the quintessence of expressive economy and Gracian conciseness. In this work there is the greatest intensity in terms of semantic concentration in short and elliptical sentences, which follow one another in a chain of sentences. This character makes the Oracle his most difficult work to read, but also the one with the greatest content of ideas, constituting a summa of his previous thought.

Editions

• MANUAL ORACULO, AND PRUDENCE ARTE. SACADA OF AFORISMS/ QVE SE DISCURRADE In the works of / LORENÇO GRACIAN. / PUBLICALA/ D. VINCENCIO/ LASTANOSA VAT,/ I dedicate/ Al Excelētissimo Señor/D. LUIS MENDEZ/ DE HARO,/ CONDE DUQUE. / License: Print in/ Huesca, by Iuan No-/ gues. Year 1647. Facsimile reproduction in: Manual Oracle and Prudence Art (priologist of Aurora Egido), Zaragoza, Institution «Fernando el Católico»-Gobierno de Aragón, 2001 ISBN 84-7820-342-7
• Miguel Romera-Navarro (ed. critique and introductory study), Madrid, CSIC, 1954 (RFEAnejo LXII. Reissued in 2003¹² ISBN 8400081803
• Benito Pelegrín (ed.), Zaragoza, Guara, 1983. ISBN 84-85303-94-6
• Emilio Blanco (ed.), Madrid, Chair (Hispanic Laws, 395), 1995. ISBN 84-376-1349-3

Agudeza and art of wit. Cover of the Antwerp edition, 1669.

Sharpness and Art of Wit (1648)

With the Sharpness and art of wit, Gracián writes his definitive baroque literary aesthetic. It is a rhetorical treatise in which the dominant literary figures of his time are analyzed.

This work represents the definitive commentary on the concept and also a theorization of his own previous and subsequent literary production, and that of his contemporaries. It is not just another rhetoric, since his analysis of the literary fact starts from the examples taken from the texts, which in this version are considerably expanded, and not from a previous prescriptive one.

In this revision of his labored Arte de ingenuity, to a large extent a greatly expanded reissue, he included more Castilian translations of Latin texts —especially Marcial—, due to Manuel de Salinas. But he also rearranges the 1642 materials and revises, corrects, and refines the style.

It is in this treatise that Gracián's definition of the concept appears:

an act of understanding that expresses the correspondence between objects

It is not, strictly speaking, a work on conceptism, as conceived by Menéndez Pelayo in his History of aesthetic ideas in Spain, since the concept in Gracián is the expression from a resemblance, from a simile to a metaphor, from a dilogy to sustained allegory. And these tropes are used both by writers characterized as "conceptists" and by those called "culteranistas." So much so that the largest number of examples (which support the figures that he defines as concepts) are brought from Góngora's poetry. He also exemplifies with writers not only from the Spanish baroque, but from all times. And in this way he finds ingenious concepts in Marcial's epigrams, Seneca's sentences, Tacitus' aphorisms, Cicero's speeches or Juan Manuel's exempla.

Editions

• AGUDEZA/ Y/ ARTE DE INGENIO,/ WHICH ALL MODOS AND DIFE are EXPOSE-/Rencias de Concetos, with exemplars chosen from everything / rather said assi sacro, as human./ BY/ LORENÇO GRACIAN./ AUMENTALA el mesmo Author en este segundo impression, con un Tratado de los/ Styles, su propiedad, ideas del bien hablar: con el/ Arte de/ Erudicion y manera de aplicaciónla; Crisis de los Au-/ tores y noticias de libros./ ILUSTRALA/ EL DOCTOR DON MANUEL DE SALINAS AND LIZANA,/ Canonigo de la Cathedral de Huesca, con saçonadas translate-/ ciones de los Epigramas de Marcial./ PUBLICALA/ DON VINCENCIO IUAN DE LASTANOSA/ Cavallero y Ciudadano de Huesca, en el/ Reyno de Aragón./ CORONALA/ con su nobilisima protección, el Excelentíssimo Señor/ DON ANTONIO XIMENEZ DE URREA: Conde de Aranda & Grande de España./ Licensed. Printed in Huesca, by IUAN NOGUES, the Coso,/ MDCXLVIII Year.
• Agudeza and art of ingenuity, in which all the modes and differences of concetos are explained, with exemplars chosen from all the more well said, so sacro, as human..., Antwerp, in Casa de Geronymo and Iuan Baptista Verdussen, 1669 edition facsimile online
• Evaristo Correa Calderón (ed.), Agudeza and art of wit., Madrid, Castalia (col. «Clásicos Castalia»), 1969. (2 vols.)
• Ceferino Peralta, Jorge M. Ayala and José Ma Andreu Celma, (eds.) Agudeza and art of wit, Universidad de Zaragoza-Larumbe (Col. « Aragonese Classics» Larumbe, n. 31), 2004. ISBN 84-7733-732-2
• Agudeza and art of wit, Facsimile edition of the first edition (Huesca, Juan Nogués, 1648), preliminary study by Aurora Egido, Institution "Fernando el Católico"-Gobierno de Aragón, 2007, ISBN 84-7820-739-8

Cover The ComulgatoryAntwerp, Jerome and John the Baptist Verdusen, 1669.

The Communion Table (1655)

The Communion Board deals with the preparation of the Christian to receive communion. As the cover reveals, the treaty "contains various meditations so that those who attend Holy Communion can prepare, receive Communion and give thanks." «Meditations» is the name that the Jesuit assigns to the chapters of this book, in the line of previous works, where they were titled «beautiful things» (The Hero), «highlights» (The Discreet ), “speeches” (Agudeza y arte de ingenuity ) or “crisi (s)” (El Criticón ). The first chapter or meditation serves to prepare the Christian to receive communion, the second to the act of communion itself, the third to the fruits obtained from receiving the body of Christ and the fourth to give thanks. These meditations are divided into points or themes for reflection and, in turn, each point presents two parts separated typographically by an asterisk.

With El Comulgatorio Gracián abandons the study of wit and dedicates himself to that of emotions, in line with the spiritual writers of the Golden Age. This is a book of a religious nature, very different from the up to now written by the Aragonese, both in theme and style. He published it for the first time with his real name and not with his brother's "Lorenzo Gracián" or under an anagram like "García de Marlones" with which the first part of El Picky. The Communion Prayer is more discursive and appeals to the affections. It is closer to sacred oratory than to sententious moral philosophy.

Regarding the genre of El Comulgatorio, criticism is divided between those who think it is a piece of sacred oratory, that is, a sermon, and those who maintain that the work belongs to the genre of devotional books.

Editions

• Baltasar Gracián, The Comulgatory, Zaragoza, Juan de Ybar, 1655. (National Library of Spain. Sig. R/22037.)
• A. Egido (introduction), The Comulgatory, facsimile edition (Zaragoza, Juan de Ybar, 1655), Zaragoza, Government of Aragon-Institution «Fernando el Católico», 2003.
• Evaristo Correa Calderón (ed.), Madrid, Espasa-Calpe (col. Clásicos Castellanos), 1977. ISBN 84-239-3816-6
• Miguel Batllori, Aurora Egido and Luis Sánchez Laílla (eds.), Zaragoza, Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza (col. Clásicos Aragoneses Larumbe), 2003. ISBN 84-7733-644-X

The Criticon (1651-1657)

Cover of the first edition The Criticon (1651).

The three parts of Criticón, published in 1651, 1653 and 1657, are undoubtedly the author's masterpiece and one of the masterpieces of the Spanish Golden Age. In the form of an extensive allegorical novel of a philosophical nature, this novel brings together in the form of fiction the entire literary career of its author. El Criticón combines didactic and moral prose with metaphorical fabulation, and with this, each «crisis» (chapter), harbors a double reading —if not more— on the real and philosophical planes. In it, invention and didacticism, erudition and personal style, disappointment and social satire come together.

The work constitutes an extensive allegory of the life of man, represented in its two facets of impulsive and inexperienced (Andrenio) and prudent and experienced (Critilo). These two symbolic characters, pursuing Happiness (Felisinda, Critilio's mother and Andrenio's wife), end up traveling the entire known world pursuing the learning of virtue that, despite the deception that the world commonly offers, will lead them to gain immortality by his deeds upon death at the end of the novel. It is, therefore, the literary culmination of Gracián's philosophical vision of the world, where vital disappointment and pessimism prevail, although the right person manages to rise above this world of malice.

The work could be seen, from the point of view of the genre used, as a great moral epic: a menippean fable called it by Fernando Lázaro Carreter. In addition, it has been related to the Byzantine novel due to the multitude of adventures and adventures suffered by the characters and to the picaresque novel due to the satirical vision of society that is shown throughout the pilgrimage of its protagonists Critilo and Andrenio.

First Edition of Part Two Criticon (1653).

Although El Criticón is initially presented as a Byzantine novel, in which the two pilgrims have as their goal the search for Felisinda, this is soon discovered to be impossible, and with it the structure of the novel is made up of a series of episodes strung together, in the manner of the usual itinerant novel of the picaresque. After this disappointment, the true objective of our protagonists is to achieve virtue and wisdom. Soon, with this, a tenuous intrigue is abandoned to dwell on successive allegorical paintings that give way to philosophical reflection based on a satirical perspective of the world.

As for the external structure, El Criticón appeared, as we said, in three installments. In the First part, subtitled «In the spring of childhood and in the summer of youth», the protagonists find themselves on the island of Santa Elena, they recount the vicissitudes of their lives that have led them there. and they undertake the trip to Spain, starting with the Court. The Second part, which appears under the epigraph "Judicious courtly philosophy in the autumn of manly age", takes place in the lands of Aragon and France. In the Third Part, titled more simply "In the winter of old age", they enter the lands of Germany and end up in the mecca of the Christian pilgrim, Rome, to be announced to death and reach the immortality crossing the inky waters of fame. The three volumes offer a very remarkable external structural balance. The first two parts consist of thirteen "crises" each and the third has twelve.

The time of the story is configured through a chronological axis marked by the life cycle of man and associated with the seasons of the year, as outlined in the last chapter of El Discreto. The time of fictional fiction progresses in a linear fashion, but is traversed by constant digressions and interruptions. In these pools, he realizes an allegorical world and supposes a stoppage of time, very appropriate to philosophical and moral generalization.

Edition princeps of the third part of The Criticon (Madrid, 1657).

It seems certain that there was a preconceived plan for the work in El Criticón, which can be seen in the fact that the beginning and end of the work take place on an island, according to Klaus Heger. The same thesis is collected by Ricardo Senabre, who also points out the existence of structural principles based above all on the antithesis. This is already present in the two core protagonists, Andrenio-Critilo, and runs through the entire work, from the different behaviors that each of the protagonists have in certain situations, to the abundance of bi-membered periods in phrases and even in the literary figure. of amphibology. On the other hand, if we stick to the themes that run through the work, we find a recurring antinomy between deception and disappointment, thematic axis that structures the entire narrative.

In short, Correa Calderón considers that El Criticón is nothing more than a series of juxtaposed allegorical paintings, constituted as moral fantasies, and linked only by the path of its two protagonists, as it happens in the satirical books of the time. This is how works such as El Diablo Cojuelo, by Luis Vélez de Guevara, did, adopting a structure of small independent allegorical modules, such as those strung on the thread of the path of the two pilgrims from Gracián.

The author constantly exhibits a perspectivist technique that unfolds the vision of things according to the criteria or points of view of each one of the characters, but in an antithetical way, and not plural as in Cervantes. The novel reflects, however, a pessimistic vision of society, with which one of its best readers, the 19th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, identified. It is a bitter and desolate look, although its pessimism harbors hope in the two virtuous protagonists, who manage to escape the prevailing mediocrity, achieving eternal fame.

Editions

• THE CRITICLE/ FIRST PART/ IN/ THE FIRST/ AND IN THE STATUS OF THE JUVENTUD./ _ And I give it to the CABALLERO VALEROSO/ DON PABLO DE PARADA, / OF THE CHRISTO ORD,/ General of the Artillery, and Governa/Dor de Tortosa./ WITH LICENCE. In ZARAGOZA, by IVAN NOGUÉS, and at its coast./ MDCLI Year.

• THE CRITICLE/ SECOND PART IVYZIOSA CORTESANA/ FILESOFY,/ IN THE OTOTHE OF THE VARONIL EDAD./ PLEASE. AND/I DEDICAL/THE SERENSIMORE/D. AVSTRIA VAT. / LICENCE,/ In Huesca: by Ivan Noguès./ Year 1653./ At the expense of Francisco Lamberto, Mercader de Libros./ Come in the Carrera de San Gerónimo.

• THE CRITICLE. THIRD PART/ EN/ THE INVIERNO OF VEJEZ./ PLEASE. AND DEDICA/ TO DOCTOR DON/ Lorenço Frances de Vrritigoyti,/Dean de la Santa Iglesia/ de Sigança. / WITH PRIVILEGIO./ In Madrid. To Pablo de Val. Year 1657./ At the expense of Francisco Lamberto, he sells at his house/ in the Carrera de San Geronimo.

• The Criticon, Lisbon, Henrique Valente de Oliveira, 1.a parte, 1656; 2.a parte, 1657; 3.a parte, 1661.
• Three parts of El Criticón (...), Barcelona, Antonio Lacavallería, 1664.
• Three parts of El Criticón (...), Barcelona, Antonio Lacavallería, 1682.
• The Criticon, edition of Julio Cejador, Madrid, Renacimiento, (col. Masterpieces of the Universal Literature), 1913-1914, 2 vols.
• The Criticon, critical and commented edition of Miguel Romera Navarro, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 3 vols., 1938, 1939, 1940, (ed. facsimile, Hildesheim-New York, Georg Olms, 1978, 2 vols.) Digitalized Edition at the Miguel de Cervantes Virtual Library, 2010. I take first. (breakable link available on the Internet Archive; see history, first version and last).. I take second. (breakable link available on the Internet Archive; see history, first version and last).. Third (breakable link available on the Internet Archive; see history, first version and last)..

• The Criticon, edition, introduction and notes by Evaristo Correa Calderón, Madrid, Espasa-Calpe (col. Classics Castellanos, 165-167), 1971, 3 vols.
• The Criticon, edition, introduction and bibliography of Santos Alonso, Madrid, Chair (Hispanic Laws, 122), 1980 (1984, 2.aed.). ISBN 84-376-0257-2
• The Criticon, edition, bibliography and notes by Elena Cantarino, introduction by Emilio Hidalgo-Serna, Madrid, Espasa-Calpe (Austral, 435), 1998, 840pp.
• The Criticon, edition and introduction of Carlos Vaíllo, prologue by José Manuel Blecua, Barcelona, Círculo de Lctors, 2000.
• The Criticon (ed. facsimil), prol. de Aurora Egido, Zaragoza, Institución «Fernando el Católico» (C. S. I. C.), 2009, 3 vols. ISBN 978-84-9911-000-4
• The Criticon, critical edition of Luis Sánchez Laílla and José Enrique Laplana; annotation by María Pilar Cuartero, José Enrique Laplana and Luis Sánchez Laílla, Zaragoza, Institución «Fernando el Católico» (C. S. I. C.), 2017, 2 vols. ISBN 978-84-9911-418-7

Other works

Minor works

Preliminary writings on other people's works

• Foreword and editing Successful preaching of Father Pedro Jerónimo Continente, Jesuit (1652)
• Foreword and selection Poesías varias de grandes ingenios españolas, by José Alfay (Zaragoza, Juan de Ibar, 1654).
• Adoption Entertainment of the musesof Francisco de la Torre Sevil (1654).
• Adoption Life of the Infanta Santa IsabelFrancisco Funes de Villalpando, Marquis de Osera (1655).
• Adoption The Pearl. Moral Proverbsof Alonso de los Barros (1656).

Epistolary

32 complete letters from Gracián have been preserved, addressed to Vincencio Juan de Lastanosa, Andrés de Uztarroz, Manuel de Salinas, or Francisco de la Torre Sevil from Tortosa. We also have epistles addressed to his superiors and fellow Jesuits.

The ones sent to a Jesuit in Madrid in 1646 are especially important, in which he refers to the battle of Lérida, where he is proud of his courageous intervention. He tells us how many chaplains fell ill or were taken prisoner, and how he had to multiply his work to absolve and jubilee the soldiers on the same front line, as one more combatant.

In these letters, in addition to obtaining juicy information about his biography, he shows himself to be a writer in a natural style, which is far from the one he himself forged to convey his literary work. On the other hand, the cited approvals and prologues, written in his peculiar conceptual style, are not of much interest, since we must also take into account his laudatory tone and obligatory formalism.

Bibliography of minor writings

• Letters the chronicler Juan Francisco Andrés de Uztarroz and the canon Manuel de Salinas. Ms. V, 171. National Library of Spain, Madrid.
• MOREL-FATIO, A., «Liste chronologique des lettres de Balthasar Gracián dont l'existence a été signalée ou dont le texte a été publié», en Bulletin Hispanique, 1910, XII, pp. 204-206.
• Poesías varias de grandes ingenios españolased. José Alfay, Institución Fernando el Católico, Zaragoza [s.n., 1946].
• Relationship [...] on the site and relief of Léridaed. Carlos Sánchez, Madrid, Carlos Sánchez, 1646. CCPB000418430-0.

Exemplars:

• Madrid. Real Academia de la Historia 9/3629(30). Olim: T-55(30). Relation of the happy events, and vitoria that the Catholic weapons of his Magestad have had, that God guard, begotten by the Excelentissimo Marques de Leganes, on the site and relief of Lerida, Madrid, at the house of Carlos Sanchez, 1646.
• Barcelona. Library of Catalonia. F.Bon. 2129 [1] (breakable link available on the Internet Archive; see history, first version and last).

• ROMERA-NAVARRO, M., “Two Gracián Approvals”, Hispanic Review, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Jul., 1940), pp. 257-262. [2]

Editions of his complete works

• Evaristo Correa Calderón. Madrid: Aguilar, 1944.
• Miguel Batllori and Ceferino Peralta. Madrid: Atlas, 1969.
• Emilio Blanco. Madrid, Turner-Biblioteca Castro, 1993, 2 vols. ISBN 84-89794-59-6
• Luis Sánchez Laílla, introduction of Aurora Egido. Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 2001. ISBN 84-239-7893-1
• Santos Alonso. Madrid, Chair, 2011. ISBN 978-84-376-2845-5

Style

Art of ingenuity, treated of sharpness. Cover of the edition princeps Madrid, 1642.

Baltasar Gracián's style, generally called «conceptismo», is characterized by ellipsis and the concentration of a maximum of meaning in a minimum of form, a procedure that Gracián takes to its extreme in the Manual Oracle and art of prudence, composed entirely of almost three hundred commented maxims. In them he constantly plays with words and each sentence becomes a riddle due to the most diverse mechanisms of rhetoric.

If the mannerists, such as Herrera or Góngora, had the oratorical style of Virgil and Cicero as their model, Gracián —baroque— adopts the laconic style of Tacitus, Seneca and Marcial, his countryman. This does not mean, however, that his is a flat style, in the manner of Cervantes. The difficulty is the patrimony of both Gongorian cultists and conceptists. The difference is that the reader's effort to understand the latter requires deciphering the multiple hidden meanings behind each linguistic expression. Syntactic conciseness, moreover, frequently forces one to assume elided elements, whether they are words with lexical meaning or logical connectors.

Gracian's prose is made up of independent and brief sentences separated by punctuation marks (comma, period and semicolon) and not by subordination links. Thus, juxtaposition and coordination predominate. The scarce presence of subordinate clauses in complex periods, far from facilitating understanding, makes it arduous, it is necessary to supply the logic of the relationships between the sentences, deducing it from the meaning, from the idea that is expressed, which is not always easy.. The depth of Gracián, then, is in the concept and in the avoidance, not in the syntax.

Expressive conciseness is manifested in the frequent deixis of elements with an anaphoric function that appear to be understood by the linguistic context that precedes it or because (as in the frequent case of links) the logical relationship is taken for granted and delegated to the reader intelligence. So that the ellipsis of the verb "to be" is common, as can be seen in his well-known maxim "The good, if brief, is twice as good. And even the bad, if little, not so bad »(Oráculo..., 105.), which is also a declaration of intent that can be applied to the laconism of his elocution. Very frequent is, with this same objective, the use of the zeugma. The ellipsis of the noun is also given. Here we see an example of a noun omitted in zeugma: «They later found me in a dungeon carrying irons, for this was the fruit of mine» (mis erros —to err—, it is understood: El Criticón, part 1, crisis IV).

The semantic richness, almost always polysemic, offers in Gracián the greatest intensity that had occurred until then in Spanish literature. The main denotative meaning will never suffice, but all simultaneous meanings must be sought. Dilogy, semantic ambivalence, double and even triple meanings are constants in Gracián's work. Not to create ambiguity, but to offer all the possibilities of knowledge and perception of the world.The double interpretation in the real plane and the allegorical or philosophical one is what gives an extraordinary density to his work. And this happens both at the morphological or lexical level as well as sentence and textual. Thus, examples of frequent double meanings in it are "río" (from 'laugh' and 'water current') or "error" ('metal' and 'error').

Manuscript autograph The Hero corresponding to Cousin 5, "Relevant menu", which in its printed edition reads:

[...] children of capacity, inherited equally in excellence. Sublime engineering never raised taste thunder.

There are sun perfections and there are light perfections. Gimme the eagle in the sun, pray in it the ice cream gusanillo by the light of a candle, and take the height to a flow for the elevation of taste.

It's something to have it good, it's a lot to have it relevant. Get your tastes with communication, and it's luck to play with who has superlative.

They have many for happiness, borrowing will be, enjoying what they appeal, condemning others unhappy, but dislodge these for the same filos, with which it is to see half of the world [... ]

Heroe, cousin 5 (Wikisource).

.

In the language of Gracián, the verb and the noun dominate, in contrast to the scarce use of the epithet, since «the laconic style has them banished in the first law of attending to the intention, not to the extension» (Agudeza y arte de wit, speech LX). Many of his sentences, preferably in the Manual Oracle and art of prudence , begin with a verb, sometimes preceded by the negative particle. On many occasions the verb becomes the axis of the sentence.

On the other hand, Gracián constantly uses the antithesis, the contrast, the paradox, reinforcing them in phrases and sentences with a two-membered structure, which oppose each other. This symmetry leads to an agile rhythm, a binary prose, similar to that used by Fray Antonio de Guevara in the XVI century. It stands out how he constructs oppositions with the use of paronomasia, as can be seen in the doublets sky-silt, thalamus-tumulus, jewels-hoyas, vestal-bestial or taste-expense. The same pun often serves to express the contrast: man "no longer eats to live, but lives to eat" (Criticón, I, X); Spaniards "have such virtues as if they had no vices, and have such vices as if they had no virtues" (Criticón, II, III); "So there is everything in the world: some who, being old, want to look young, and others who, being young, want to seem old." (Criticon, III, I).

Another stylistic feature of Gracián's prose is the search for lexical precision, for which the neologism of creation is often used. And in this terrain, it is where the noun appears, the true touchstone of Gracián's style, to the detriment of adjectives, adverbs and links of subordination. This is how terms such as "conreyes", "descomido", "desañar", "despenado" or "reconsejo" appear, new to the Spanish lexicon.

Other times he resorts to meanings that have fallen into disuse and that he brings to the fore (plausible=admirable, plático=practical, brujulear=probing character, sindéresis=natural capacity for correct judgment, etc.) or cultisms brought back to enrich the language, such as «crisis» (estimate, judgment), «speciosity» (perfection), «delecto» (discernment capacity), «deprecar» (to ask insistently), «squeeze» (express), «convicio» (offense), "intent" (effectiveness). Other times he brings up proper names to create common words: "his minerva" (his intelligence or his wisdom). Lastly, we find Aragoneseisms that contribute to increasing the volume of Spanish vocabulary: «to rot» (to rot), «to defecate» (to decant the wine of impurities, and by extension, to polish, to perfect), among others.

The etymological or falsely etymological polysemy in the name is very characteristic, from strange etymologies invented by him. Thus, of God he will say "that from giving (...) the Lord took his Most Holy and Most August remembrance of Dí-os in our Spanish language". In the same place ( Agudeza... , XXXII), he gives us another similar case: «A serious and severe man pondered the time that comedies steal in Spain, and he called them come-day and eat-days." Other times he uses procedures of derivation and composition to create unusual nominal neologisms, such as «espantaignorantes», «arrapaltares», «marivenido», reaching extremes of linguistic monstrosity, in cases such as «serpihombre» or «monstrimujer». The inverse process to the composition also occurs in examples such as "casa y mento" (perverse interpretation of the lexical roots of 'marriage'), or "cumplo y mento" (of 'compliance').

Its use of maxims from the Greco-Latin and humanistic traditions and also popular proverbs is well-known, but always taking one and the other to their terrain, reinterpreting their meaning or adapting it to the times and, in the case of paremiological folklore sayings, misrepresenting his enunciation and manipulating it to his liking. Thus, the difficulty and conciseness of his style is matched by one of his most successful manipulations of the common heritage: his phrase "A few words, a good listener", which gives a radically different meaning to the popular proverb, justifying his elliptical style by the intelligence of the readers who have to approach the work of Gracián.

Gracián's prose is not the product of spontaneity, since Romera-Navarro's study of the autograph of El Héroe shows that he constantly corrected and polished his style. He elaborates the form as much as he takes care of the ideological content, which shows his clear awareness as a writer. The search for originality and the rejection of hackneyed language make his art a minority, distinguished and elevated; Well, as it says in the prologue —although in the name of Lastanosa, undoubtedly due to his pen— "To the readers" of El Discreto:

I mean, therefore, that it is not written for all, and that is why the arcanity of the style increases reverence to the sublimity of matter, making things more venerated the mysterious way of saying them. That they did not spoil Aristotle or Seneca the two languages, Greek and Latin, with their writing condito.

Prologue «To readers», El Discreto.