Cesar M. Arconada

César Muñoz Arconada (Astudillo, Palencia, December 5, 1898-Moscow, March 10, 1964), who used to sign as César M. Arconada, He was a Spanish writer belonging to the generation of '27 and later to Spanish literature in exile. He stood out in his beginnings as an avant-garde prose writer, developing a renovating style of Spanish narrative (together with authors such as Benjamín Jarnés or Francisco Ayala, among others), and later —in the years of the Second Republic and during his exile in Moscow— in socialist realism.

Biography

Arconada and avant-garde literature

César Muñoz Arconada was born on December 5, 1898 in Astudillo, a town in the province of Palencia. His father —“a rigid and traditional man,” according to his scholar Gonzalo Santonja—, forced to raise his six children, “divided his time into a curious moonlighting job”: correspondent for the Diario Palentino and El Norte de Castilla, in turn served as attorney for the courts and "semi-perpetual mayor" of Astudillo. destined in Palencia and in 1921 in Madrid. From January 1920 to March 1923, his signature was common in the Diario Palentino . And from that last date, in the A Coruña magazine Alfar , where his participation was not limited to music criticism, but rather "addressed all fields of artistic and literary creation, sustaining, for Of course, an avant-garde and anti-classical vision».

César M. Arconada soon became a prominent figure of the Spanish literary intelligentsia in the twenties: he was a music and film critic; he author of one of the first analyzes of the composer Debussy with the work Around Debussy (1926); in relation to the cinema Life of Greta Garbo (1929) (this approach to the actress would be translated into Italian and German in 1930) and Three film comedians. Biographies of Shadows (1931); without forgetting the poetry collected in Urbe (1928); the short narrative of Love Stories for Rainy Afternoons (a book that was going to appear in the Cuadernos de La Gaceta Literaria, but the edition was frustrated) or the novel La turbina (1930), where he already manifests some unequivocal social concerns, which announce his future literature.

Suffice it to say about his intellectual importance that he became editor-in-chief of the magazine La Gaceta Literaria (1927-1932) —the main vehicle of expression for the so-called generation of 27— where his collaboration (until January 1931) is very frequent and outstanding. It was Arconada who introduced the director of the magazine, Ernesto Giménez Caballero —who from 1928-1929 would evolve towards fascist postulates—, his colleague in the Post Office, Ramiro Ledesma Ramos, future leader of the first Spanish fascist organization.

Political Engagement and Social Literature

In 1931 he joined the Communist Party and became one of the most prominent representatives of the social-realist current in Spain. He collaborates with Octubre, Nueva Cultura, Leviatán, Literary Front and the newspaper Mundo Obrero and publishes two novels framed in the so-called socialist realism: The poor against the rich —praised by Enrique Azcoaga in the magazine Literary Sheet and by Eduardo de Ontañón in the newspaper Luz— and Reparto de tierras (1934) —reviewed by Eusebio García Luengo in the left-wing socialist magazine Leviatán —; in both novels he reflected the situation of the Spanish village in the period of the revolutionary boom of the Spanish peasantry, offering "the image of a republican Spain incapable of overcoming the residues of a feudalism that imposes its law in rural areas". another novel, Río Tagus, which won the National Literature Prize, and which would be published in Moscow in 1970 and in Spain in 1978, in which he carried out an epic exaltation of the popular cause during the Civil war.

Exile and death in Moscow

With the defeat of the Republic in 1939, he took the path of exile and settled in Moscow. There he was an enthusiastic promoter of the great Spanish literature, that of the so-called Golden Age, as is the case of La gitanilla , which, adapted by Arconada, met with success at the Gypsy Theater in Moscow. He was director of the Spanish edition of the magazine Soviet Literature in which he published articles and poetry; He was also linked to the Editorial Progreso of Foreign Languages. They were the sources of his emoluments, which allowed him to live with some ease. He wrote a low-profile theatrical drama Manuela Sánchez (it was staged in some theater and was broadcast in fragments by Radio Moscow). The Great Soviet Encyclopedia collects a notable review of his activity as a writer. Pointing out that the writers Maksim Gorki, Konstantin Fedin and others exerted a great influence on the creation of Arconada. Together with Fiódor Kelyin, he translated into Spanish the work Song of the Hosts of Igor and a series of poems by Aleksandr Pushkin, Lermontov and Nekrásov. He wrote two books of short stories, Spain is invincible (1941) and Cuentos de Madrid (1942), some plays and the long poem Dolores (1945).

He married the exiled María Cánovas, much younger than him. María, when they arrived in the Soviet Union in 1939, was almost a girl, of extraordinary beauty, a native of the Balearic Islands, and bilingual speaker; she was fluent in Russian and fond of poetry; Arconada had an intelligent collaborator in it.

There are still books to be published by César Muñoz Arconada: for example, a biography of José Díaz (general secretary of the Communist Party of Spain) and a report on Mao Tse Tung's China. According to Gonzalo Santonja, these are "books, I reiterate, not notebooks" that are still unpublished.

In an article entitled «Red sunsets behind the western mountains» —published in number 9 of the magazine Caminar Conociendo— Jacinto Barrio, who treated him in Moscow, wrote: «He died in Moscow, in the spring of 1964. It was a piece of Spain that left us ».

Work

Poetry

• Urbe. Málaga, Imprenta Sur, 1928.
• We live in a dark night. Paris/Madrid, Publications Izquierda, 1936, 92 pp.
• War Romances. Santander, Editions Unit, 1937, 75 pp.
• Many more Arconada's poems were published loose, most in Soviet Union magazines and others in various compilations on Spanish exile literature. The magazine Exils et migrations ibériques au XXe siécle, edited in Paris, dedicates its No. 9 (2000) largely to the work of Arconada, with a wide selection of poems written in his exile in Moscow.

Essay and non-narrative prose

• Around Debussy. Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1926, 264 pp.
• Life of Greta Garbo. Madrid, Editions Ulises, 1929, 256 p. Translation into Portuguese, Lisbon, Tip. de Emprêsa Nacional de Publicidade, 1932. There is re-edit in Madrid, Castellote Editor, 1974, which includes a text by Javier Maqua (“Preliminares”) and two articles by Arconada from the 1930s on cinema.
• Three cinema comics. Madrid, Editions Ulises, 1931, 288 pp. Reedición: Madrid, Miguel Castellote editor, 1974, 344 p. New edition by Nigel Dennis and Francisco Soguero: Seville, Renaissance, Col. Rescue Library, 2007, 373 p.

Narrative prose

• The turbine. (Novela). Madrid, Editions Ulises, 1930. Reedición: Madrid, Turner, 1975, collection «The Spanish social novel, with Gonzalo Santoja prologue.
• « Humility», account included in the collective book The seven virtues. Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1931.
• The poor against the rich. Paris / Madrid, Left Publications, 1933, 286 p. Reissued in Havana, Editorial Arte y Literatura, 1977, 314 p.
• Land distribution. Paris / Madrid, Left Publications, 1934, 223 pp. Republished by the Provincial Council of Badajoz, 1987, with a prologue by Gregorio Torres Nebrera.
• "Xuan the musician." Story appeared in the magazine HelpNo. 8 and 9 (1936), and reproduced in volume Spanish social novelists (1928-1936). Anthology, edition of Gonzalo Santonja and José Esteban, Barcelona, Anthropos.
• Rio Tajo [1938]. First Spanish edition, Madrid, Akal, 1978, with prologue by Juan Antonio Hormigón, 337 p. (Before, in 1964, a Czech translation had appeared Řeka Tajo, Praha / Státní nakladatelství krásné literatury a umění.
• Madrid Tales. Natalia Kharitónova Edition, Seville, Renaissance, Col. Exile Library, 2007, 229 p.

Theater

• Three plights for puppets. Paris/Madrid, Publications Izquierda, 1936. (It contains “The Lieutenant Hunters”, “God and the Blessed” and “Great Dance in La Concordia”.)
• The conquest of Madrid. (Dramatic phase), 1937.
• New Carmen. Published in Moscow in No. 7 (1944) of the magazine International literature. In Spain, it was published in the magazine Sevillana RebirthNo. 27-30 (2000), in Natalia Kharitónova edition.
• Spanish Theatre in the School. In collaboration with Josefa Gómez-Ganivet. Moscow, Uchpedguiz, 1953, 74 pp. (It contains the following short works: Mamita Clara, To the People's Congress for Peace, Vienna, Andrés, Generous don of others and The Lazarillo).

Translations

• The East Wind. Novel of S. Zeromski; Madrid: editions Ulises, 1931 (direct translation of the Polish by Mauricio Amster and C. M. Arconada).

Compilations

• Selected works. Volume I: The poor against the rich and Land distribution. Volume II: Rio Tajo. Moscow, Editions Progreso, 1969, with prologue of Inna Tiniánova.
• The War of Asturias (Chronicles and romances). Edition by Gonzalo Santonja. Madrid, Ayuso, 1979, 127 pp.
• From Astudillo to Moscow. Journalistic work. Introduction and selection of Christopher H. Cobb. Valladolid, Ambit, 1986, 359 pp.

Unpublished work

• José Díaz. Biography of the Spanish Communist leader.
• Manuela Sánchez. Theatrical drama.
• Andanzas por la nueva China. Journalistic reports
• Spain invincible. Stories.
• Wise Spanish women!. Theatre