Fernando arrabal

Fernando Arrabal Terán (Melilla, August 11, 1932) is a Spanish playwright, poet, novelist, filmmaker and plastic creator who has lived in Paris since 1955. He founded with Alejandro Jodorowsky and Roland Topor in 1962 The Panic Movement. A friend of Marcel Duchamp, Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Tristan Tzara and Andy Warhol, he spent three years in the surrealist group in Paris led by André Breton, for which reason Mel Gussow considered him the only survivor of the "four vicissitudes of modernity» (Dadaism, Surrealism, Panic and Pataphysics). He is part of the College of Pataphysics as a Pataphysical Satrap.

Biography

Childhood (1932-1946)

Fernando Arrabal Terán is the son of Lieutenant Fernando Arrabal Ruiz and Carmen Terán González. On July 17, 1936, during the coup that caused the Spanish Civil War, Fernando Arrabal's father remained faithful to the Republic, for which the rebels sentenced him to death. The sentence was later commuted to thirty years in prison. Fernando Arrabal (father) went through the prisons of Santi Espíritu de Melilla, Monte Hacho, in Ceuta (where he tried to commit suicide), Ciudad Rodrigo and Burgos, until on December 4, 1941 he was transferred to the Burgos Hospital for an alleged mental illness.. Subsequent investigations suggest that the illness was faked to get a transfer to a less guarded place. On December 29, 1942 Fernando Arrabal (father) escaped from the hospital in his pajamas and with a meter of snow in the fields. No news of him was ever heard from again, despite the meticulous searches that were carried out later.

Arrabal has written:

Not comparing the incomparable. In the face of these things of occasion (and without it coming to account in many cases) I tend to think of a scapegoat: my father. The day that the uncivil civil war began was shut up, alone, by his fellow members, in the fourth of the flags of a quarter of Melilla; to think about it, for he risked being sentenced to death for military rebellion if he did not adhere to the ‹alzamiento›. An hour later, Lieutenant Fernando Arrabal called his ex-mates now! to tell them he didn't need to reflect anymore. Thanks to this today... it is up to me to be a witness, an example or a symbol, like him, of the most transcendent of what happens? I'm just a banisher. If it gets me out of my idolatrous figures, what surrounds me leads me to confusion (“helas!’›”) and to disconcertion and without order! I don't want to be a scapegoat like my father was, I just want to expire alive, whenever Pan wants.

Meanwhile, Arrabal's mother had returned to Ciudad Rodrigo in 1936, where she left Fernando installed and she went to work in Burgos, then the capital of rebellious Spain and seat of Franco's government. In 1937 Fernando entered the Teresianas school, until in 1940, after the Civil War, his mother settled in Madrid, specifically at number 17 Madera street. In 1941 Fernando Arrabal won a contest for "gifted children". He studied at the Colegio de los Escolapios de San Antón and later at the Escolapios de Getafe. At that time, Arrabal began his readings and experiences, which, according to his own admission, would be very useful in his life.

Youth (1947-1967)

In 1947, his mother forced him to start the preparatory courses for admission to the General Military Academy, but Arrabal did not pass the gymnastics exam at the Vallecas field of Atlético de Aviación, so in 1949 he was sent to Tolosa (Guipúzcoa), where he studied at the Theoretical-Practical School of Paper Industry and Commerce. It is at that time, in 1950, when Arrabal wrote a series of plays. In 1951 he began working at Papelera Española. He went to Valencia, where he finished high school, and then to Madrid, where in 1952 he began to study Law. During those years, Arrabal frequented the Ateneo de Madrid and the Postista poets and wrote new versions of Pic-Nic (then called Los soldados) and El triciclo (initially called The Men of the Tricycle).

In 1954 he traveled by 'hitchhiking' to Paris to see the performance of the play Mother Courage and hers her children by Bertolt Brecht that the Berliner Ensemble offered at the Sarah Bernhardt Theater in the French capital. Later, in Madrid, he met his future wife and French translator, Luce Moreau. In 1955 he obtained a three-month scholarship to study in Paris, and while living at the Colegio de España at the Cité Universitaire he relapsed, this time seriously, with tuberculosis. Arrabal has always considered this disease as an "unfortunate luck" that allowed him to settle permanently in his true homeland, that of Kundera y Vives, San Ignacio and Picasso. In 1962, in Paris, together with Alejandro Jodorowsky and Roland Topor, he founded the Panic Movement.

He was prosecuted under the Franco regime and imprisoned in 1967 for blasphemy and insulting the Spanish nation, for a dedication in a book. Tried in September of that year, he was finally acquitted for having written under heavy medication and alcohol. During the process, he had the solidarity of a considerable part of the writers of the time, from François Mauriac to Arthur Miller, as well as the request of the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, who declared: «If there is a fault, let it be seen in the light of day. great merit of yesterday and of the great promise for tomorrow and for that reason may she be forgiven». He also had the support of Spanish writers, from the anti-Franco opposition in some cases, and even in others close to the regime such as Pedro Laín Entralgo or Camilo José Cela.

Maturity

Since the mid-1970s, he achieved real recognition in his native country. His Letter to General Franco had a special impact, published during the dictator's lifetime. After Franco's death, he was in the group of the five most dangerous Spaniards with Santiago Carrillo, Dolores Ibárruri La Pasionaria, Enrique Líster and Valentín González El Campesino.^{[citation required]} Some of his pieces were consistently well received for years, such as Love letter with María Jesús Valdés at the National Theatre.

He has gained a reputation as a provocateur. In the early morning of October 5, 1989, he appeared as a guest speaker in the La Primera program on TVE El mundo por montera, presented by Fernando Sánchez Dragó, that day dealt with the subject of millenarianism. Arrabal, visibly under the influence of alcohol and barely able to articulate his speech, spent most of the program wandering around the set while rambling and interrupting the other tertulians, going so far as to sit down several times at the debate table and almost fall to the floor. many others. The following day, the TVE News Council approved removing Arrabal from the public channel for a month, as well as repeating the debate without Arrabal's presence a few days later.^{[citation required]}

Since 2002, Arrabal and Charansonnet have mutually collaborated on various artistic projects such as the Love Letter (Hermitage Theater in Saint Petersburg) or the official revival of the Architect and the Emperor of Assyria forty years after its premiere. In 2010 Fernando Arrabal starred in the feature film Regression, created and directed by Joan Frank Charansonnet.

Work

He has directed seven feature films. He has published numerous books of poetry, along with thirteen novels, several plays and several essays, including his books on chess. His novels have been translated into numerous languages.

Narrative

With his novels he won the Nadal Award and the Nabokov International Award in 1982.

• Baal Babylon (1959), ed. Julliard, Paris; Destination, Barcelona, 1977
• The burial of the sardine (the novel of Fernando Arrabal)ed. Julliard, Paris, 1960; Barcelona, Destination, 1984
• Fêtes et rites de la confusion (Arrabal celebrating the ceremony of confusion)ed. Losfeld, Paris, 1960; Barcelona, Destination, 1983
• The tower wound by lightning, Barcelona, Destination, 1983
• The Illuminated Stone (The Reverdie)ed. Christian Bourgois, Paris, 1971; Barcelona, Destination, 1983
• The red virgin, Barcelona, Seix Barral, 1987
• The daughter of King Kong, Barcelona, Seix Barral, 1988
• The extravagant cross of a castrated in love, Barcelona, Seix Barral, 1990
• The killife in the greenhouse (La tueuse du jardin d'hiver), prologue of Milan Kundera, Books of the unnamed, Zaragoza, 1993; ed. Écriture, Paris, 1994
• The Monkey, Planet, Barcelona, 1994
• Levitation (Le funambule de Dieu), Barcelona, Seix Barral, 1997, ed. Écriture, Paris, 1998
• Ceremony by an abandoned lieutenant (Porté disparu), Espasa, Madrid 1998; ed. Plon, Paris, 2000
• Champagne pour tous, Books of the unnamed, Zaragoza and ed. Stock, Paris, 2002
• Like a crazy paradise, Bruguera, Barcelona, 2008
• The circumspect, Kingdom of Cordelia, Madrid, 2016.

Poetic work

His books include:

• 1963 La pierre de la folie [The Stone of Madness]
• 1985 Humble paradis [My humble paradises]
• 1993 Liberté couleur de femme ou Adieu Babylone(Ed. Rougerie, Mortemart)
• 1997 Lettres à Julius Baltazar (Ed. Rougerie, Mortemart)
• 1997 Ten panic poems and a story (Amphora Nova)

By May 2016, his complete poems will be published in Spain, gathered in a single volume entitled Credo quia confusum (Huerga y Fierro editores). Foreword by Raúl Herrero.

Artist Books

Arrabal has also published artist books with Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Roland Topor, Enrico Baj, Antonio Saura, Gustavo Charif, Yue Minjun, Alekos Fassianos, among others, including:

• 1975 L'odeur de Saintetéwith Antonio Saura (Ed. Yves Rivière, Paris).
• 1980 Cinq sonnets, eaux-forteswith Julius Balthazar (Ed. André Biren, Paris).
• 1991 Sous le flux libertinwith Jean Cortot (Ed. Robert and Lydie Dutrou, Paris).
• 2004 Triptyquewith Catherine Millet and Michel Houellebecq (Ed. Menu, Cuenca).
• 2008 Clitoris, poem with 56 translations (such as the Czech version of Milan Kundera).

Dramatic work

He has written numerous plays, including:

• Picnic (1952)
• The tricycle (1953)
• Fando and Lis (1955)
• Prayer (1957)
• The car cemetery (1958)
• First communion (1958)
• Guernica (1959)
• The bicycle of the condemned (1959)
• The great ceremonial (1963)
• The architect and emperor of Assyria (1966)
• The garden of delights (1967)
• The maze (1967)
• Erotic bestiality (1968)
• Heaven and shit (1972)
• Young barbarians today
• ...and put handcuffs to the flowers
• The tour of Babel
• Inquisition
• Love letter (as a Chinese supposition)
• The night is also a sun
• Delights of the flesh
• Dalí versus Picasso

His complete theater has been published in two volumes, totaling more than two thousand pages, in the “Clásicos Castellanos” collection of the editorial Espasa (edition and introduction by Francisco Torres Monreal) in 1997, updated in 2009.

Arrabal has won two National Theater Awards and is currently the most represented playwright.

Fernando Arrabal is the author of a great, brutal, surprising and joyfully provocative theater. A dramaturgical potlatch where the scrap of our "advanced" societies is charred on the festive track of a permanent revolution. He inherits the lucidity of a Kafka and the humor of a Jarry; for his violence he gets worse with Sade or Artaud. But he's probably the only one to take the irrision so far. Gomentedly playful, rebellious and bohemia, his work is the syndrome of our age of wires: a way to stay alert.

Dictionnaire des littératures (Éditions Bordas)

Cinematographic work

Fernando Arrabal (Pasolini film award winner) has made seven feature films as a director.

For all his films, Arrabal also wrote the scripts:

• 1970 Long live coproduction Isabel-Films (Paris) and S.A.T.P.E.C. (Tunis), with Nuria Espert, Ivan Henriques and Anouk Ferjac.
• 1972 J'irai comme un cheval fou (I'll go like a crazy horse) produced by S.G.P.-Babylone Films, with Emmanuelle Riva, Hachemi Marzouk and George Shannon.
• 1975 The tree of Guernica produced by C.V.C. Communication, with Mariangela Melato and Ron Faber.
• 1980 L'odyssée de la Pacific (The Odyssey of the Pacific or The Emperor of Peru) produced by Babylone Films, with Mickey Rooney and Monique Leclerc.
• 1981 Le cimetière des voitures (The car cemetery) co-production Antenne 2 and Babylone Films, with Alain Bashung and Juliette Berto.
• 1992 Adieu, Babylone! production Antenne 2 -Cinecim, with Lélia Fischer and Spike Lee.
• 1998 Jorge Luis Borges (A Life of Poetry) production Aphaville/Spirali (Italie), with Lélia Fischer and Alessandro Atti.

Arrabal has made three short films:

• 1978 Sang et or (Blood and gold1978. Une producción "Antenne 2" with Edgar Rock and Josua Watsky.
• 1990 Echecs et Mythe (Chess and myth1990. Une producción "Antenne 2" with Joël Lautier, Roland Topor, Julie Delpy and Gabriel Matzneff.
• 1991 New York, New York! (The Gulf War1991. Une producción "Antenne 2" with Tom O'Horgan, Melvin Van Peebles and Tom Bishop.

Operas

"Only five of my librettos for operas have been written and they were always as complex as they were not self-conscious":

• Apokaliptikawith music by Milko Kelemen (1979).
• L’opéra de la BastilleMarcel Landowski.
• Guernicawith Otfried Büsing (1996).
• Picknick im Feldewith Constantines Stylianou (2009).
• Faustballwith music by Leonardo Balada (2009).

«[...] I have only directed, in October 1985 and at the Royal Belgian Opera, two operas (La vida breve by Falla and Goyescas by pomegranates). By the way, in those directions the members of the choirs acted naked but panickedly covered with mud for greater scenic precision».

Painting

• Fernando Arrabal has often said he is “a frustrated painter.” In his own family, in addition to his father, they stand out Angel (1874-1926), Carmen, Lélia, and especially Julio Arrabal “a great oil retratist”, according to the writer. In his few artistic tours he painted half a hundred paintings and performed a hundred drawings, and another of collages exhibited in museums such as Paris Art Center, Bayeux or Carlo Borromeo in Milan.

• His main activity in painting is that of collaborator with painters. Artists (from Luis Arnaiz to Rafael G. Crespo) able to perform large oils from the detailed chromquis that he proposes them.

• The first painting of this collection of a hundred oils (from Luis Arnaiz) was published in 1962 by André Breton in his surreal magazine “La Brèche”.

• At present he collaborates very especially with the 'plasticienne/vidéaste' Christèle Jacob with which he has made a dozen videos and a series of photomontages such as "The Artilleros of Chess and Literature" inspired by Henri Rousseau.

Essays

• The dubious light of the day
• El Greco
• Letter to General Franco. Reissued in 2009 by Editorial Séneca
• 1984: Letter to Fidel Castro
• Letter to Stalin
• A slave named Cervantes
• Goya-Dalí
• Le frénétique du spasme (1991)
• Houellebecq! (2005)
• The Panic. Manifesto for the Third Millennium (2007)
• Dictionary panic (2008)
• Creepy Universes (2009)
• Defence of Kundera (2009)
• The Return of the Wise (2013)VV.AA Colab. « Imaginary conversation between Ba' al Z'v^uv and Fernando Arrabal. Annex to Jose Ignacio Carmona Sánchez»

Forewords

• 2016 Toledo: Jews, curiosities, myths and enchantersby José Ignacio Carmona Sánchez (Editorial Dauro)
• 2013 Flhuidosof César Augusto Cair (ed. Seleer, Malaga)
• 2008 Beast of love, by José Manuel Corredoira Viñuela (Ñaque Editora, Ciudad Real; 2a ed. Presses universitaires de Strasbourg, 2018)

Chess

Arrabal, a great fan of chess, has written:

• Echecs et mythes ^{[chuckles]When?]}
• Fêtes et défaites sur l'échiquier ^{[chuckles]When?]}
• Les échecs féériques et libertaires ^{[chuckles]When?]}
• Bobby Fischer, the fucking king ^{[chuckles]When?]}

Awards and recognitions

Tribute to Fernando Arrabal1994

Despite being one of the most controversial writers of his time, he has received international acclaim for his work (French Academy Grand Theater Prize (1993), the novel Nabokov, the essay Espasa, the Mariano de Cavia of journalism, the World's Theater, the Wittgenstein, the Pasolini of Cinema, the Alessandro Manzoni of poetry, etc.).

In 2010 the College of Pataphysics has distinguished him with the title of "Transcendent Satrap" (equivalent to the Nobel for this college). A distinction that in the last half century has been received by forty personalities such as Marcel Duchamp, Ionesco, Man Ray, Boris Vian, Dario Fo, Jean Baudrillard and Umberto Eco.

He was a finalist for the Cervantes Prize in 2001, with the support of Camilo José Cela. Le Mage assures that he was a finalist for the 2005 Nobel Prize, a prize that various institutions and personalities have requested for the author. On July 14, 2005, he was awarded the legion d'honneur and in 2007 he was named doctor honoris causa of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

He was awarded the Mariano de Cavia journalism award for his contributions to Generación XXI, La Voz de Miróbriga, l'Express, El Mundo, Village Voice, Excess, The Nameless, El País and ABC.

Cyril de La Patellière made a bust of him during the presentation of one of his works in Nice in June 1992. This bust was part of a traveling exhibition in Europe under the title: Parigi l'avanguardia. In 1994, the sculptor Mustafa Arruf made a bronze bust ( Homenaje a Fernando Arrabal ) in recognition of the city of Melilla for the long and universal projection of him as a playwright.

The Council of Ministers approved in 2019 to grant the Grand Cross of the Civil Order of Alfonso X the Wise to the playwright from Melilla, Fernando Arrabal for his professional career.