Eduardo Marquina

Eduardo Marquina Angulo (Barcelona, January 21, 1879-New York, November 21, 1946) was a Spanish journalist, poet, novelist, and playwright. He was the nephew of the poet and post-romantic playwright Pedro Marquina and father of the filmmaker and film director Luis Marquina.

Biography

Photograph by Marquina

He was the second of five children born to Eduarda Angulo, a Barcelona native of Leon origin, and Luis Marquina y Dutú, a native of Aragon living in Catalonia. He studied with the Jesuits, before studying law and philosophy at the university, but he failed the exams and abandoned those careers when his parents died, replacing his father in the chemical company where he worked as a clerk. He placed himself in the modernist and neo-romantic lyric and in the poetic historical drama with heroic praise, which some have wanted to see as patriotic nostalgia and others as criticism. In 1897 he began writing for the modernist magazine Luz; there he became friends with Luis de Zulueta and published his first translations of French symbolist poetry (Verlaine's Arte Poética); later he collaborated in Barcelona Cómica , the republican and Catalan newspaper La Publicidad and Vida Nueva . At that time, he attended the gathering of Els Quatre Gats in Barcelona, where he met Santiago Rusiñol, Ramón Casas, Pompeyo Gener and Pablo Picasso.In 1903 he married Mercedes Pichot, from whom he had his son Luis, a future filmmaker. Three years later he settled in Madrid.

In his ideological development he started from leftist postulates to go over time to more conservative positions, sharing correspondence and social gatherings with the most important names of the Spanish intelligentsia of the time: Miguel de Unamuno, Clarín, Benito Pérez Galdós or Federico Garcia Lorca. In Madrid, he lived on Calle del Barquillo, belonging to the Chueca neighborhood, Justicia district. He was, along with the writer and journalist Francisco Serrano Anguita, one of the promoters of the creation of the General Society of Authors.

Caricatured by Tovar (1907)

Marquina has gone down in literary history as the great figure of historical drama in the years around the First World War. We should add to this his fertility as a poet who starts from Catalan modernism and a very broad literary life. Of this first poetic period, Odes (1900), La vintage (1901) or Eclogues (1902) stand out.

Retreated by Compañy (Updates1908)

In theater he triumphed with Las hijas del Cid (1908), which was followed by Doña María la Brava (1909); The sun has set in Flanders (1910), perhaps the most remembered of all; The Mayor of Pastrana (1911); The Troubadour King (1911); The altarpiece of Agrellano (1913), and The dance of the captive (1921).

He later wrote prose comedies on contemporary themes, such as When the rose bushes bloom (1913). Her work as a novelist did not transcend the level of his poetic and theatrical texts, publishing Adam and Eve in dancing , El destino cruel or The two lives. In 1930 he was elected an academic of the Royal Spanish Academy, sitting in chair G. That same year he traveled to Poland with other members of the Society of Authors to participate in the XI Congress of Dramatic and Musical Authors, which was attended by more than one hundred representatives of various countries. On the proposal of the French, English and German delegates, he was elected president for the next congress. Also in that year he accepted the assistant editorship of a new conservative-oriented newspaper, Más. In 1932 he was named president of the Society of Authors. He then returned to the historical theme, with The White Monk (1930) and Teresa de Jesús (1932). He was also the author of the first official lyrics of the Spanish national anthem (Royal March), commissioned by Alfonso XIII, and he translated Alejandro Dumas, Jr.; Victor Hugo; Charles Baudelaire; Eça de Queirós, and Paul Verlaine.

When the Civil War broke out, he was in Argentina invited by the actress Lola Membrives, who was going to premiere his works; he managed to gather his entire family there and declared himself on the side of the rebels. He recited six romances with an epilogue in prose on Radio Excelsior in Buenos Aires For the love of Spain , dedicated to Franco's legionnaires, "for the benefit of the orphans of the Spanish Crusade." He returned to Spain and settled first in Burgos and later in Seville while his filmmaker's son visits the fronts and makes documentaries. Once in Madrid, he wrote three sonnets for the Crown of sonnets in honor of José Antonio, although only the first was published there. On August 3, 1939, he read his admission speech at the Royal Spanish Academy, Lope; he also wrote the screenplay for the film El Alcázar de Toledo (A Lance for Spain). Action for a film (1939), which was never filmed.

At the end of his life, he soaked up different sentiments and cultures traveling through different European and American countries, dying of a sudden heart attack in New York City, where he worked as a Spanish diplomat, on November 21, 1946.

He visited Cádiz (June 28, 1943), on the occasion of the celebration at the Gran Teatro Falla of the II Literary Fairs of the city where he gave a magnificent speech on "Christian Poetry", establishing friendship with members of the Governing Board of the Very Illustrious and Ancient Brotherhood of the Holy Christ of Vera+Cruz of the aforementioned town, accepting the distinction of being an honorary priest. He visited the corporation's Chapel, praying before the Miraculous Image of the Headline, which greatly impressed him by praising it; He asked for a photograph of the image and promised to compose a Poem in praise of the Holy Christ of Vera-Cruz. The local newspapers of the time echoed all of this.

In 1946 he was appointed extraordinary ambassador and traveled as a representative of Spain together with CN Julio Guillén to the Republic of Colombia for the inauguration of President Mariano Ospina Pérez on March 8. After a brief tour of several Spanish-American republics, Costa Rica and Puerto Rico, giving lectures, he attended the International Congress of Authors and Composers held in Washington. He was preparing to return to Spain from New York when he died of a heart attack on November 21 of that same year, his mortal remains arriving in La Coruña on December 3 on the steamer Marqués de Comillas.

Since December 7, 1946, his remains have rested in the pantheon of Illustrious Men of the Sacramental de San Justo in Madrid. Posthumous, in 1964, his memoirs were published.

Works

Marquina caricatured by Tito (Freedom1923)

• Complete Works, Madrid: Editorial Aguilar, 1944-1951, 8 vols.

Theater

• Jesus and the Devil (1898), dramatic poem.
• Emporium (1906), lyric drama in Catalan.
• The daughters of the Cid (1908)
• Doña María la Brava (1909)
• In Flanders the sun is set (1910)
• The king troubadour (1911)
• The Mayor of Pastrana (1911)
• The altarpiece of Agrellano (1913)
• When the roses bloom (1913), comedy in prose
• The flowers of Aragon (1915)
• The Great Captain (1916)
• Don Luis Mejía (1924)
• The poor carpenter (1924), tale of people in four acts and in verse
• The hermitage, the fountain and the river (1927), rural drama
• Salvadora (1929), rural drama
• The white monk (1930), altarpieces of primitive legend
• Hidden Source (1931), rural drama.
• Teresa of Jesus (1932)
• It was once in Baghdad... Las mil and one nights (1932)
• Steps and works of Saint Teresa of Jesus (1943)
• The Holy Brotherhood (1939)
• The Indian student (1942)
• Mary the Widow (1943)
• The gallon and the miracle (1947)

Lyrical

• Odas (1900)
• The harvests (1901)
• Ages (1902)
• Elegías (1905)
• Vendimion (1909)
• Songs of the moment (1910)
• Lands of Spain (1914).

Narrative

• Adam and Eve in the Dancing
• The cruel fate
• An unknown knight
• The blue mass
• anonymous stores
• The caravan
• Maternity
• The kiss in the wound
• The two lives.

Other works

• Days of childhood and adolescence. Memories of the last third of the nineteenth century, Barcelona, Editorial Juventud, 1964.

Lyrics to the hymn

Glory, glory, crown of the homeland,

sovereign light
That's gold in your pendant.
Life, Life, Future of the Homeland,
that in your eyes is
Open heart.

Purple and gold: immortal flag;
in your colors, together,
flesh and soul are.
Purple and gold: want and achieve;
You are, the flag, the sign of humankind.

Glory, glory, crown of the homeland, sovereign light
That's gold in your Pendon.
Purple and gold: immortal flag;
in your colors, together,

flesh and soul are.