Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda

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Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda (Santa María de Puerto Príncipe, Cuba, March 23, 1814 - Madrid, February 1, 1873), affectionately called «Carcajada» or «La Avellaneda», was a Cuban-Spanish novelist, playwright and poet of Romanticism. She settled in the Peninsula at the age of twenty-two, where she began to publish under the pseudonym "La Peregrina" and became known with the novel Sab, considered the first anti-slavery novel (even before Uncle Tom's Cabin, uncle Tom's cabin, by the American writer Harriet Beecher Stowe).

She is considered one of the precursors of the Spanish-American novel, along with Juana Manso, Mercedes Marín, Rosario Orrego, Júlia Lopes de Almeida, Clorinda Matto de Turner, Juana Manuela Gorriti and Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera, among others. Neoclassical training, she was valued in her time as one of the key figures of Spanish-American romanticism. The treatment she gave to her female characters made her one of the forerunners of modern feminism. Among his vast body of work, his historical novel Guatimozin, last emperor of Mexico (1846) and his plays Saúl (1849) and Baltasar (1858), the latter considered one of the masterpieces of romantic theatre.

References such as Margarita Nelken have reviewed his works, and among his contemporaries he had the admiration of his friend Alberto Lista and the politician, orator and mayor of Madrid Fermín Caballero. Both Juan Valera and Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo were great admirers of her work, considering her one of the greatest poets in the Spanish language and referring to her as "the greatest poet of modern times."

Biography

Gertrudis de los Dolores Gómez de Avellaneda y Arteaga was born on March 23, 1814 in Santa María de Puerto Príncipe, today Camagüey, in the then Spanish province of Cuba. She was the eldest daughter of the marriage formed by Don Manuel Gómez de Avellaneda and Gil de Taboada, a Spanish naval officer from the City of Constantina, province of Seville, and Francisca María del Rosario de Arteaga y Betancourt, a Creole whose ancestors came from the country Basque and the Canary Islands. Gertrudis's father had arrived in Cuba in 1809 and had two children before the marriage, and together they had five children, but only she and her brother Manuel de ella survived childhood. Her father died in 1823, and her mother remarried ten months later with the Spanish soldier Gaspar Isidoro de Escalada y López de la Peña, of Galician origin, with whom she had three children: Felipe, Josefa María de la Luz and Emilio Isidoro. Gómez de Avellaneda did not have a good relationship with his stepfather, he considered him very strict.

At 13, her maternal grandfather arranges her betrothal to a wealthy distant relative, but she breaks it off at 15, leaving herself out of his will. She spent her childhood in her hometown and resided in Cuba until 1836.

Departure from Cuba

This year his stepfather convinced his wife of the advisability of selling the properties in Cuba and settling in the Peninsula. The family sailed for Europe on April 9, 1836, and during the two-month trip, Gómez de Avellaneda composed one of his best-known poems: the sonnet "Al partir", an anthological composition par excellence, marked by existential tears, and that later it will head its production in the future. They finally arrived in Bordeaux, where they spent eighteen days, visiting the mythical Château de la Brède and the spiritual center “La solitude” of the Congregation La Sagrada Familia de Bordeaux in the vicinity of the commune of Martillac.

Stay in A Coruña

Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda y Arteaga.

Finally, back on the Peninsula, they settled for two years in La Coruña, the city where his stepfather's relatives lived, and where he wrote his first six compositions, including "A la poesía", "A las estrellas", «The serenade», «To my goldfinch». In the Galician capital, she had a love affair with the son of the Captain General of Galicia, Mariano Ricafort Palacín y Abarca, but the courtship broke down because the young Ricafort did not consider it appropriate for his girlfriend to dedicate herself to writing poetry.

Stay in Andalusia

From La Coruña he went, together with his brother Manuel Gómez de Avellaneda, to Andalusia and there, thanks to the friendship he established with Alberto Lista and the young Manuel Cañete, he published verses in various newspapers in Cádiz and Seville ( La Aureola de Cádiz and El Cisne de Sevilla) under the pseudonym La Peregrina, which earned him a great reputation. Definitely settled in Seville, it is where in 1839 she meets what will be the first great love of her life, Ignacio de Cepeda y Alcalde, a young law student with whom she lives a stormy love affair, never reciprocated in the passionate way she longed for. but that will leave an indelible mark on him. For him, she wrote an autobiography and a large number of letters, which, published after the death of her addressee, show the most intimate feelings of the writer. The originals of the aforementioned letters, as well as her autobiography and other extremely important documents for the author's study, have recently been found at the Royal Sevillian Academy of Good Letters. In the summer of 1840, she premiered in Seville her first drama entitled Leoncia .

Installation in Madrid

In the autumn of that same year, he went to Madrid, where he settled and made friends with literati and writers of the time. The following year he published with great success in Madrid his first collection of verses entitled Poesías, which contained the sonnet «Al partir» and a poem in minor art verses dedicated, as its title indicates, «To the poetry". In 1841 he published his novel Sab. In 1842 she published Two Women, a novel in which she supported divorce as the solution to an unwanted union, reaping her first detractors for the open feminism that already stands out in her work. His third novel will be Espatolino , a work of a social nature, in which he denounces the terrible situation in which the penitentiary system found itself at that time. In 1844 Alfonso Munio premiered his second play. The triumph was tremendous and the fame of the writer rises to unsuspected levels.

During those years he met, among others, the poet Gabriel García Tassara. A relationship is born between them that is based on love, jealousy, pride and fear. Tassara wishes to conquer her to be more than all the court of men who besiege her, but he does not want to marry her either. He is angry at Tula's supposed arrogance and flirtation, he writes verses that make us see that he reproaches her for her egomania, lightness, and frivolity. But Gómez de Avellaneda surrenders to that man and shortly after she almost destroys her. In 1847, she finds herself pregnant and single in Madrid in the mid-19th century. In her bitter loneliness and her pessimism, seeing what is coming to her, she writes "Farewell to the lyre", which is a farewell to her poetry. She thinks it's the end of her as a writer. But it won't be like that. In 1845 he won the first two prizes in a poetic contest organized by the Artistic and Literary Lyceum of Madrid, from which time Gómez de Avellaneda was among the most renowned writers of his time, becoming the most important woman in all of Madrid. after Elizabeth II.

In April of that year, she had her daughter María, or Brenhilde, as she prefers to call her. But the girl is born very sick and they don't give her hope that she will get over it. During this time of despair, she writes to Cepeda again:

Aged at the age of thirty, I feel like I'm lucky enough to survive my own, if at a moment of absolute annoyance I don't come out of so small, so insignificant to give happiness, and so great and so fertile to fill and pour bitterness.
Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda

The letters written by Gertrudis to Tassara asking her to see her daughter before she dies are chilling, so that the girl can feel her father's warmth before closing her eyes forever. Brenhilde dies at seven months without her father knowing her.

On May 10, 1846, she married Don Pedro Sabater, civil governor of Madrid, who became her first husband. He was a man with literary interests, wealthy, and somewhat younger than her. However, he suffers from a serious illness, and the newlyweds travel to Paris in an attempt to find a cure for the patient's ailment, but on August 1, during the return, Don Pedro Sabater dies in Bordeaux in the arms of his wife.. Gómez de Avellaneda, totally desperate, secluded herself in a spiritual center belonging to the Congregation of La Sagrada Familia in Bordeaux, where she wrote The Christian's Manual. After her first husband died, she composed two elegies that are told among the highlights of his poetic work. These, and the two poems entitled A él give an account of her personal experiences, although she did not usually use them as direct material for her lyrical production. (Madrid, 1850).

Moved by the success of her productions and welcomed by both literary critics and the public in 1853 following the death of Juan Nicasio Gallego, her great friend and mentor, she presented her candidacy for the Royal Spanish Academy, but the available chair was occupied by a man. The academic misogynists of the time did not allow a woman to occupy a chair reserved exclusively for them. It was not until 1979 that a woman, Carmen Conde, was able to enter the RAE as an academic.

Estampa de Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda

She married again on April 26, 1856, to an influential politician, Colonel Domingo Verdugo y Massieu. In 1858, following the failure of the premiere of his comedy The Three Loves (a cat was thrown onto the stage), her husband blamed a certain Antonio Riber for the alleged authorship of the incident. For this reason, they both clashed in the street and Antonio Riber seriously injured her husband.

Return to Cuba

The couple traveled to Cuba in 1859, hoping that the Caribbean climate would heal their wounds. In Cuba, Gómez de Avellaneda was celebrated and feted by her compatriots after twenty-three years of absence. At a party at the Liceo de La Habana she was proclaimed a national poet. For six months she directed a magazine in the island's capital, entitled Cuban Album of Good and Beautiful (1860). At the end of 1863 her husband died, which accentuated her spirituality and mystical devotion. to a severe and Spartan religious devotion.

Reinstallation in Madrid

In 1864 he returned to the Peninsula, after passing through New York, London, Paris and Seville. She resettled in Madrid, dying at fifty-eight years of age on February 1, 1873. Her remains rest in the San Fernando Cemetery in Seville along with those of her husband and her brother Manuel de she.

Works

Novels

Sab, Imprenta de la Calle Barco No. 26, Madrid, 1841.
Two women, (sic), Literary Cabinet, Madrid, 1842-43.
EspatolinoLa Prensa, Havana, 1844.
EgilonaImp. de José Repullés, Madrid, 1845.
Guatimozín, last emperor of MexicoImp. de A. Espinosa, Madrid, 1846.
DoloresImp. de V.G. Torres, Madrid, 1851.
The Hand of GodImp. of the Government by S.M., Matanzas, 1853.
The flower of the angel (Guipuzcoan tradition), A.M. Dávila, Havana, 1857.
The Cowboy Artist, or The Four JuneIris, Havana, 1861.
An anecdote of Cortés' life, Madrid, [s.n.], 1871 (Imprenta y Estereotipia de M. Rivadeneyra)
The ondina of the blue lake, Madrid, [s.n.], 1871 (Imprenta y Estereotipia de M. Rivadeneyra)

Poetry

To him (There is no tie already; everything is broken;)
To him (In the blending aurora)
To France (Put yourself down, O France!)
To the moonYou, driving the car overnight,)
To the moonThe one with the sad candle!)
To a cocuyo (Tell me, mysterious light,)
A young mother in the loss of her child (1868, published in the Revista de España)
To the tree of Guernica (Your golden strings in sound vibration)
To destination (It was written, yes: it breaks in vain)
To His Excellency. Mr. Don Pedro SabaterThe painting you make evident)
To the Spanish pendon (Hail, O illustrious pendant of Castile,)
The singing of Altabiscar (Subito raises a cry in the mountains)
The fisherman (1868, published in the Revista de España)
The reason for inconsequential (Against my sex you get sad)
In the death of the laureate poet Mr. Manuel José Quintana (Songs of joy and victory)
The clemency (I was tending his luccious mantle.)
Fishing in the sea (Look!)
Return to homeland (Beautiful Cuba!)
The seven words (And Mary at the foot of the cross)
The elves (Palaces and huts,)
Meaning of the word I loved (With me, I love anyone.)

Theater

Recorded by Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda published in the magazine The Spanish and American Illustration February 24, 1873.

The Prince of VianaImp. de José Repullés, Madrid, 1844.
SaulImp. de José Repullés, Madrid, 1849.
Flavio RecaredoImp. de José Repullés, Madrid, 1851.
Heart ErrorsImp. de José Repullés, Madrid, 1852.
The truth overcomes appearancesImp. de José Repullés, Madrid, 1852.
The daughter of flowers; or, All are madImp. by C. González, Madrid, 1852.
The AventureraImp. by C. González, Madrid, 1853.
Oracles of Talia, or the Duendes in palaceImp. de José Rodríguez, Madrid, 1855.
Sympathy and antipathyImp. de José Rodríguez, Madrid, 1855.
The daughter of King ReneImp. de José Rodríguez, Madrid, 1855.
BaltasarImp. de José Rodríguez, Madrid, 1858.
Catilina, Print and Library of Antonio Izquierdo, Seville, 1867.
Munio Alfonso, Madrid, Print and Estereotipia by M. Rivadeneyra, 1869.
Recaredo, Madrid, Print and Estereotipia by M. Rivadeneyra, 1869.
The millionaire and the suitcase, Madrid, Print and Estereotipia by M. Rivadeneyra, 1870.
The three lovesImp. de José Rodríguez, Madrid, 1858.
Leoncia, Type of the Journal of Archives, Library and Museums, Madrid, 1917.

Legend

The Baroness of JouxLa Prensa, Havana, 1844.
The Devil's Donation or the Night of theImp. by C. González, Madrid, 1852.
The evening of the fern or the gift of the devil, Madrid, Imprenta de las Novedades, 1857.
The Cacique of Turmequé, Madrid, [s.n.], 1871 (Imprenta y Estereotipia de M. Rivadeneyra)
The lady of Amboto, Madrid, [s.n.], 1871 (Imprenta y Estereotipia de M. Rivadeneyra)
The whole beauty and the twelve wild boars, Madrid, [s.n.], 1871 (Imprenta y Estereotipia de M. Rivadeneyra)
The fucking mountain, Madrid, [s.n.], 1871 (Imprenta y Estereotipia de M. Rivadeneyra)
The white aura, Office of the City Historian, Matanzas, 1959.

Diaries and Memoirs

Diary of love, Madrid, M. Aguilar, [1901]

Critical reception

Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda. The famous Phrase: "It is the melancholic, indecent hour, in which dreams, spaces, and in the airs, with blows of the breeze, raise their fantastic palaces."

Her poetry has been compared to that of Louise-Victorine Ackermann or Elizabeth Barrett Browning for their analysis of the emotional states derived from the experience of love. As stated, her poetry increasingly dealt with religious issues, especially following the death of Pedro Sabater and his confinement in La solitude de Martillac. This theme sought to respond to one of the constant themes of her literary career: spiritual emptiness and unsatisfied longing, already expressed in a poem prior to her wedding with Pedro Sabater:

I as you to admire born, / I as you to love created, / to admire and love give my life, / to admire and love I find nothing.

In this sense, the poems «Dedication of the lyre of God», «Soledad del alma» or «La cruz» stand out, whose metric includes a successful change from the hendecasyllable to the eneasyllable. In poems such as "La noche de inomnia y el alba" and "Soledad del alma" he also introduced innovations in the meter that announce the experimentation in this facet carried out by modernism. Thus, in the work of Gómez de Avellaneda there are verses of thirteen syllables with a caesura after the fourth; fifteen and sixteen syllables, rare in poetry in Spanish. He also used an Alexandrian verse (of fourteen syllables) whose first hemistich is octosyllable and the second hexasyllable, or where the first is pentasyllable and the second eneasyllable.

He also cultivated the narrative genres and especially the dramatic one. In Spain he wrote a series of novels, the most famous being Sab (1841), a serial that deals with anti-slavery and unrequited love themes. Two women is an invective against marriage. His fourth novel, Guatimozín, brings together a wealth of historical scholarship and is set in conquest-era Mexico. In his remaining narrative works, although they lack the vigor of the first three, the determined criticism of conventional society is still present.

As for the theater, his work occupies an important place on the Spanish stage of the period 1845-1855, when romantic drama had declined and high comedy had not yet emerged. Leoncia was premiered in Seville in 1840, was well received and had a certain originality. His first work premiered in Madrid, in 1844, was Munio Alfonso, set in the court of Alfonso VII of León and Berenguela of Barcelona, with a production of historical dramas that followed in the wake of Manuel José Quintana, and of which El príncipe de Viana (1844) and Egilona (1846) are representative samples.

But his greatest successes in the theater were obtained with two biblical dramas: Saúl (1849) and, above all, Baltasar (1858), considered his masterpiece in the dramatic realm. Both show different aspects of Romanticism. Saúl represents rebellion, while Baltasar stages vital boredom, the melancholy of the "evil of the century" that will be felt in the second half of the century by the French symbolist poets and in Hispanic modernism.

Among his comedies, it is worth mentioning La hija de las flores (1852). In 1860 he wrote La mujer, a series of articles in which he raised the intellectual equality between women and men, and even the intellectual superiority of women: "No longer the equality of the sexes, but the superiority of ours".

Legacy

Much has been discussed about the nationality of this writer. Both Cuba and Spain claim her as their own. Cubans and Spaniards alike include her in anthologies and studies dedicated to poets from their respective countries.

On the other hand, she has been considered the romantic poet par excellence; the tragic heroine who, being acclaimed in public, was terribly unhappy in her private life. Regardless of the fact that this image is based on true events, it is clear that she promoted it in her lifetime, and that many of her admirers and later critics helped to maintain it after her death. In addition, much of her work is always read and analyzed. from a biographical perspective, due to the posthumous publication of her love correspondence with Ignacio Cepeda, her biography has largely eclipsed the importance of her literary legacy.

Lucía Guerra (1985), a professor at the University of California, is one of the many writers who undertook the task of carrying out an analysis and investigation of the novel, its author and the events that led to Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda to stardom.

The feminist critique of this last decade has revealed the sui generis characteristics of female literary production, whose dynamics only now begin to be understood in terms of the hegemonic values of a pharyocentric culture, since in the historical and social plane, women always had a secondary role.
Lucia War

The importance of María Gertrudis de los Dolores Gómez de Avellaneda y Arteaga, is impregnated in each of her novels and other literary works, which undeniably gave voice and support to women, who having an almost non-existent role could emerge and engage in the literary canon. For this reason, her work has been widely studied by many in order to express her ideas to the contemporary and endure her legacy for a long time.

Fonts

Teodosio Fernández Rodríguez, «Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda en Madrid», Hispanic American Literature Analyses, n.o 22: Madrid and Spanish-American literature, Madrid, Complutense University, 1993, p. 115-126. ISSN 1988-2351
Donald L. Shaw, History of Spanish literature. The 19th century, Barcelona, Ariel, 1986, vol. 5, p. 63-66. ISBN 978-84-344-8356-9
Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, Cuadernillos de viaje y La señora de gran tono, compilation, introduction and notes Manuel Lorenzo Abdala, The books of Umsaloua, Seville, 2014. ISBN 978-84-942070-5-1
José Manuel Ramírez Olid: "Tula, la passion romantic", in Cuadernos de los Amigos de los Museos de Osuna, n.o 11, December, 2009, p. 35-40 ISSN 1697-1019

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