Francisco Gavidia

Francisco Antonio Gavidia Guandique (San Miguel, December 29, 1863-San Salvador, September 22, 1955) was a Salvadoran writer, educator, historian, political scientist, speaker, translator, and journalist. His vast work reached encyclopedic dimensions, and he is known for being Rubén Darío's mentor in adapting Alexandrian verse to Castilian metrics, as well as dabbling in short stories, poetry, theater, and essays.

Biography

The son of Francisco Antonio Gavidia and Eloísa Guandique de Gavidia and great-grandson of the hero Gregorio Melara, he was born in the municipality of Cacahuatique, today Ciudad Barrios, department of San Miguel, El Salvador. Due to the loss of the original birth certificate, there was a debate about the year of his birth. According to Hugo Lindo, the year 1865 was chosen because there were indications that supported this theory, but there are other data that bring the year closer to 1863. In fact, according to a Decree of the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador, the latter is recognized as the date of his birth.

Due to the death of his mother, when he was 8 years old, Francisco Gavidia moved to his father's farm located in the north of the department of San Miguel, in the current municipality of Ciudad Barrios. In 1880 He obtained a Bachelor's degree in Sciences and Letters, and then moved to San Salvador where he entered the Faculty of Jurisprudence at the University of El Salvador. However, he dropped out after a year to become self-taught.By 1882, he was a member of the literary group La Juventud, and already then showed a strong interest in French verse. It was in that same year, according to numerous sources, that he met Rubén Darío. The two developed a strong friendship to the point that in 1890, Gavidia was best man at Darío's wedding.

Rubén Darío, great friend of Gavidia since his youth

Francisco Gavidia by Valero Lecha.

Innumerable books in Spanish and French passed through his hands. In order to recover from the illness caused by overwork and mental fatigue resulting from his intense intellectual activity, he was sent to Paris by order of President Rafael Zaldívar. Gavidia had a wide cultural heritage and it is mentioned that he dominated the German, French, English, Italian, Portuguese, Hebrew, Latin and Greek to perfection, as well as Maya-Quiché, a language for which he developed a grammar in order to popularize the language. He also developed a language, called «Salvador», which he sought to become universal, but received very little support from the intellectuals of his time, despite everything, Gavidia published some poems in «Salvador Language», among which are The Argonauts and A Marconi.

In 1887 he married the daughter of journalist Carlos Bonilla. A year later, he founded the newspaper El semanario noticioso, which came out every Thursday, as well as the Academy of Sciences and Fine Arts of San Salvador. After the overthrow of General Francisco Menéndez, Gavidia went into exile from the country, and continued his journalistic activity in Costa Rica, where he was director of La Prensa Libre between 1891 and 1892; and later in Guatemala he worked as co-editor of El bien público of the city of Quetzaltenango.

When he returned to El Salvador, he served as editor of the Official Gazette (1894), Director of Primary Public Education (1896), and Minister of Public Instruction (1898). In 1895 he founded the Parliamentary Party, and also served as a professor at the Normal School for Young Ladies, the National Institute for Men, and the University of El Salvador. In 1904 he founded the magazine Los Andes, of which only four issues were seen.From 1906 to 1919, he held the position of Director of the National Library. In 1912, he became a member of the Ateneo de El Salvador.

The Salvadoran government declared Francisco Gavidia a "very meritorious Salvadoran" in 1933, and in 1939 the city of San Miguel paid him a tribute that included naming the city theater after him. In 1937, Gavidia was member of the Commission for Intellectual Cooperation of El Salvador, a dependency of the League of Nations, and in 1941 the University of El Salvador awarded him the Doctorate Honoris Causa. At the end of his life, he was awarded the highest national decoration of El Salvador, the "José Matías Delgado" order, which he received from the President of the Republic Oscar Osorio on his sickbed at the Rosales Hospital, a few days Before die.

On February 7, 1945, the Ministry of Public Instruction agreed to reorganize the National Folklore and Salvadoran Typical Art Investigation Committee with Francisco Gavidia as president of the committee.

Francisco Gavidia tomb in Los Ilustres cemetery

Work

Francisco Gavidia accompanied by also writer Juan Felipe Toruño

Francisco Gavidia Theatre in San Miguel

Bust of Francisco Gavidia located at Francisco Gavidia University (UFG) in El Salvador

Gavidia's work reaches encyclopedic proportions. He worked in poetry, drama, history, music, essays, pedagogy, philosophy, politics, journalism, literary criticism, and translation. His vast knowledge was nourished by classical literature, the Spanish golden age, French culture and its language, and the reading of German, Italian and Oriental authors. He came to create a new language to be universally understood, which was intended to name "Salvador Language". In addition, he was a pioneer in the treatment of indigenous issues, and ideologue of Central American unionism.

In a country whose art received a strong European influence, Gavidia honored Salvadoran ethnic identity and values, broke with that pattern and from him, other writers decided to follow that literary line; his influence can be observed in artists such as Salarrué, Claudia Lars and Arturo Ambrogi. He introduced the story with a literary identity of his own reality, an amalgamation of pre-Columbian indigenous themes such as legends and myths, he is also considered the precursor of Salvadoran theater. Among his dramaturgy, Ursino, The Ivory Tower and Jupiter stand out. The desire for identity, freedom and justice is also embodied in his poetry, which at the time many were unable to assimilate, since the desire to universalize the Salvadoran idiosyncrasy was an incomprehensible fact for his time and for his contemporaries.

He is also known for being the mentor of the poet Rubén Darío, a student who shared joys and sorrows with the Salvadoran maestro,and who learned about Gavidia's experiment to adapt Alexandrian verse to Castilian metrics, which gave rise to the modernist renewal of Spanish-American poetry. Darío wrote in his autobiography:

It was with Gavidia, the first time I was in that Salvadoran land, with whom they penetrate in fervent initiation, in the harmonious blossom of Victor Hugo; and of the mutual reading of the Alexandrians of the great French, that Gavidia, the first surely, rehearsed in Spanish in the French way, arose in me the idea of metric renewal, which should expand and realize later.

The Life of Ruben Darío: XVIII

In his work Versos, he makes use of some of the main lexical, rhythmic and metric characteristics that, shortly after, Rubén Darío would masterfully codify and consecrate. Subsequently, Gavidia evolved in the particular modulation of his own poetic voice, until reaching the cultivation of a conceptual reflection that reaches its maximum splendor in the collection of poems entitled Sóteer o Tierra de preseas (1949), a modern epic song that, to a large extent, constitutes his masterpiece and his great literary legacy. But between that initial romantic stage and this deep lyrical introspection of his age, there is a copious creative and essay production that went through many different stages and was infected with multiple aesthetic trends.

In fact, also as a playwright, Gavidia knew how to evolve from a late romanticism (or a hint of pre-modernism) present in dramas such as Júpiter (1885) or Ursino (1889), to a conceptual epic manifested in the dramatic poem entitled La princesa Citalá (1944). On average, there are some plays that are as different from each other as Conde de San Salvador or The God of Things (1901), Lucía Lasso or Los piratas (1914), The Ivory Tower (1920) or Héspero (1931).

Some of his works are:

• Poetry (poetic booklet, 1877).
• Verses (poetry, 1884).
• Ursino (teatro, 1887).
• Jupiter (teatro, 1895).
• Comprehension' and other stories (1901)
• Study and Summary of Speech on the Method of Descartes (1901).
• Traditions (on the homonymous work of Ricardo Palma, 1901).
• Count of San Salvador or the God of Las Casas (novela, 1901).
• 1814 (assay, 1905).
• Works (tomo I, 1913).
• Modern history of El Salvador (two tomos, 1917 and 1918).
• 19th Century Songbook (1929-1930).
• Tales and narrations (1931).
• Happy (theater, 1931).
• Speeches, studies and conferences (1941).
• Princess Citalá (teatro, 1946).
• Marine tale (1947).
• Soteer or Earth of preseas (1949).