Gonzalo Torrente Ballester

Gonzalo Torrente Ballester (Serantes, Ferrol, June 13, 1910-Salamanca, January 27, 1999) was a Spanish professor and writer, one of the most acclaimed of his generation. He was awarded the Cervantes Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature, and the National Narrative Award.

Biography

Childhood and youth

Gonzalo Torrente Ballester was born in the town of Serantes, currently part of Ferrol. He began his studies at the Colegio de Nuestra Señora de la Merced, now Colegio Tirso de Molina de Ferrol. He studied high school in La Coruña, as a free student. In 1921 his myopia prevented him from starting a military career in the Navy, his father's job. The following year his grandfather Eladio died, a man who greatly influenced his formation; They gave him his first Don Quixote as a consolation. He turned out to be a restless and voracious reader, and in 1926 he enrolled free of charge at the University of Santiago de Compostela. He burned his youthful writings and read Friedrich Nietzsche and Oswald Spengler.

For family reasons, he moved to Oviedo, where he studied Law, and there he had his first contacts with the literary avant-garde. He began his journalistic activity in the Oviedo newspaper El Carbayón. In 1928 he went to Vigo, living in Lavadores, and read James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Miguel de Unamuno and José Ortega y Gasset. He would travel to Madrid, where he settled in 1929; there he frequented the gathering of Valle-Inclán and began studies of Philosophy and Letters. He also began to work in the anarchist newspaper La Tierra ; the newspaper closed in 1930 and he returned to Ferrol. In 1931 he moved with his family to Bueu (Pontevedra) and in 1932 he married Josefina Malvido. He started reading Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire and Stéphane Mallarmé. After a stay in Valencia, he returned to Galicia because of Josefina's asthma. In 1933 he established his residence in Ferrol and worked at the Rapariz Academy, teaching grammar, Latin and history for sixteen hours a day. He enrolled, again for free, in the Faculty of Letters of the University of Santiago and joined the Galeguista Party. In 1935 he graduated in History from the University of Santiago de Compostela and served as Local Secretary of the Galician Party. In 1936 he approved the opposition for assistant professor at the University of Santiago in the specialty of Ancient History. Between 1934 and 1938 the first four children of his very long offspring were born.

War and Post-War

Presentation of the sculpture in memory of Torrente Ballester at the Café Novelty of Salamanca in the year 2000. From right to left, the director of the RAE, Víctor García de la Concha; the widow of the writer, Maria Fernanda Sánchez-Guisande Caamaño, the Galician writer Carlos Casares and the sculptor, Fernando Mayoral.

Before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, he traveled to Paris with the intention of doing his doctoral thesis and there he was surprised by the coup d'état on July 18, 1936. After hesitating, he returned to Spain in October to be with his family. From the bus that was taking him home, he saw the corpses of victims of the repression in the ditches. His father exclaimed by way of greeting: "Don't you know that many of your friends have been shot?" He followed the recommendation of a priest he trusted and joined the Falange. In 1937 he met Dionisio Ridruejo and the other Falangist intellectuals of the Burgos Group (Pedro Laín Entralgo, Luis Rosales, Luis Felipe Vivanco...) in Pamplona. He published the essay Reason and Being of Future Drama in the magazine Hierarchy , a publication with which he would collaborate. He also collaborated with the Falangist newspaper Arriba España , edited in Pamplona by Fermín Yzurdiaga.

In 1938 he went to Burgos and there he published El viaje del joven Tobías. A miracle that can be represented in seven colloquiums, in Ediciones Hierarquía. In 1939 he joined the University of Santiago as an assistant professor. He won the Premio Nacional de Autos Sacramentales for El casamiento engañoso , published by Ediciones Escorial. He also published Political ideas: liberalism and Historical background of universal subversion , in the National Editor. In 1940 he prepared the opposition to secondary education and won the position in Ávila, but he remained in Santiago on a commission of service. He published Lope de Aguirre , in the magazine Vértice . In 1941 he took part in the founding of the Escorial magazine, together with Ridruejo, Laín, Vivanco and Rosales and the rest of the Burgos Group. In 1942 he moved to Ferrol, where he began teaching at the Concepción Arenal Institute. He published Baratarian Republic. Theomachy in three acts, the first divided into two paintings and Seven essays and a farce, in Ediciones Escorial.

In 1943 he published his first novel, Javier Mariño, in the National Publishing House, but it was kidnapped by government censorship twenty days after leaving. In 1944 she published the stories Gerineldo in the Diario Arriba , and Cómo se fue Miguela , in the newspaper El Español . In 1946 she published The Return of Ulysses. Ella comedia , in the National Editor, and The coup d'état of Guadalupe Limón , in Ediciones Nueva Época. She translated, prefaced and annotated the Duino Elegies , by Rainer María Rilke, in New Epoch , in collaboration with the German Metchild von Hesse Podewils.

Madrid

In 1947 he moved to Madrid as a professor of Universal History at the Naval War College, a position he held until 1962. In 1948 he attended lectures by José Ortega y Gasset in Madrid and began his activity as a theater critic at the Diario Arriba. He published Compostela , in Afrodisio Aguado. In 1949 he began his activity as a theater critic on Radio Nacional de España. He published Contemporary Spanish Literature , in Afrodisio Aguado. He participated in the script for the film Arrival at night , by José Antonio Nieves Conde, and El cerco del diablo , by the same director (premiered in 1952). In 1950 he wrote The sleeping princess goes to school , which he did not find a publisher until 1983, and published Iphigenia , in Afrodisio Aguado, and Atardecer en Longwood , in Haz Editions. In 1951 he wrote the script for the film Surcos by José Antonio Nieves Conde, and in 1953 for the film Rebeldía , by the same director. In 1954 he published Farruquiño, in Cid (La novela del sábado).

In 1957 he published El señor llega, the first volume of the trilogy Los gozos y las sombras, and Contemporary Spanish Theatre for Arion publishing house., in Guadarrama Editions. In January 1958, his wife, Josefina Malvido, died, and shortly after, in February, his father, Gonzalo Torrente Piñón. He received the Fundación Juan March Novel Prize in 1959 for El señor llega . He traveled to Majorca to continue the trilogy and there he wrote the second part of The Joys and the Shadows , Where the Air Goes Around . In January 1960 he met María Fernanda Sánchez-Guisande Caamaño and traveled to Paris and Germany. He bought his first tape recorder in Ferrol; since then he will use them in his work. In May he married Fernanda. He published Where the air turns in Arion. In 1961 he published Panorama of contemporary Spanish literature in Guadarrama. She was also born this year the first of the seven children from his marriage to Fernanda.

In 1962 he signed a manifesto in defense of striking Asturian miners, which cost him the loss of his job at the Naval War College and his collaborations as a critic on Radio Nacional and Arriba. He published Sad Easter , the last part of the trilogy Joys and Shadows . In 1963, the poor reception of his Don Juan (his most beloved character and, according to his son Gonzalo Torrente Malvido, his best novel), published in Destino, and his fight with censorship to defend this work, they discouraged him from writing. He then lived on translations. He took part in the Madrid Writers Congress.

Pontevedra

In 1964 he requested re-entry into secondary education and was assigned to Pontevedra, where he was a professor at the Institute. In this period he began his collaboration in Faro de Vigo with a column titled «Amodo» (in Galician: slowly). In 1965 he published Man's Apprentice , in Doncel. Currently one of the Institutes of Pontevedra bears the name of Torrente Ballester in homage to the writer, closely linked to Pontevedra where he lived on Arzobispo Malvar street and which served as inspiration for the creation of the mythical Castroforte del Baralla, the town where the novel takes place ''The saga/fugue of J. B.'' This work was a literary renewal due to the use of metafiction and the knowledge of literary theory that he acquired as a teacher in the United States.

United States: roundtrip

In 1966 he was invited to teach at the State University of New York, in Albany, New York, as a distinguished professor. In August he embarked with the family (now there are five children of the couple) and all their belongings, including a growing library, for the United States. In 1968 he received visits in Albany from Dionisio Ridruejo, Ramón Piñeiro and Dámaso Alonso. He finished his novel Off-side, written with a grant from the Fundación Juan March, and began writing Campana y piedra, the germ of The saga/fuga de J. B. Ediciones Destino published Off-side in 1969. On this date, two more children had already been born, in the United States, the last ones.

In 1970 his mother, Angela, died. He returned to Spain and was assigned to the Orcasitas Institute (Madrid) when he requested reentry into teaching. In 1971 he returned to Albany temporarily and finished writing The J.B. Saga/Fuga, one of the great novels written in Spanish in the XX. He published the book in Fate and in 1972 he spent some time in Albany. He received the Critics and the City of Barcelona award for The saga / fugue of J. B. In 1973 he left teaching in the US and was assigned to the La Guía institute, in Vigo. He started the column Cuadernos de La Romana in the newspaper Informaciones . In 1975 he was elected a member of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE).

Acknowledgment

Estatua dedicated to Torrente Ballester, in the centenary literary Café Novelty in Plaza Mayor de Salamanca, work of the sculptor Fernando Mayoral.

He moved to Salamanca to teach at the Torres Villarroel Institute. During the almost twenty-five years that he lived in Salamanca, he gathered around him the cultural life of the university city, and it was common to see him in the hundred-year-old Novelty literary café, in the Plaza Mayor of Salamanca, where there is now, in his memory, a statue, made by his friend the sculptor Fernando Mayoral. He published his essay Don Quixote as a game , in Guadarrama, and the column Cuadernos de La Romana , appeared in a book in Destino. In 1976 he suffered a heart attack, but published Nuevos cuadernos de La Romana , a continuation of the Information column, in Destino. In 1977 he read his admission speech at the RAE, in which he occupied the capital E chair, with the title About the novelist and his art . He was answered by Camilo José Cela. He published Fragmentos de Apocalipsis and the first volume of a Complete Works project came out on Fate, which will not continue. In 1978 he began writing stories for Las sombras recuperadas , a book that he published in 1979 in Planeta. In 1980 he retired from teaching and received a tribute from the city of Salamanca. In 1981 he won the National Literature Award for The Island of Cut Jacintos and began the series of articles Popcorn in the Gulf , in the newspaper ABC . He published a Curriculum, in a way , in the magazine Triunfo . He supervised the script and production of the TV series Los gozos y las sombras , based on his trilogy. In 1982 he received the Prince of Asturias Award for Letters, ex aequo with Miguel Delibes Setién. His students from the Torres Villarroel Institute paid him a tribute in 1983, and gave him a handwritten copy of the first part of Don Quixote .

In 1982, the series Los gozos y las sombras was broadcast on TV, which obtained a resounding success from critics and audiences. She published Critical Essays , in Destino; The notebooks of a lazy bard, in Plaza & Janés, and Dafne and dreams, in Fate. In 1983 he was named Ferrol's favorite son and finally published The Sleeping Princess goes to school , in Plaza & amp; Janes. In 1984 he was named adoptive son of Salamanca. He published Perhaps the wind will carry us to infinity , in Plaza & amp; janes; he reprinted Don Quixote as a play and other critical works, in Fate. In 1985 he received the Miguel de Cervantes Prize for Literature: he was the first Spanish novelist to obtain it; He also received the Lifetime Prize of the Pedro Barrié de la Maza Foundation for all of his work. He published The wind rose , in Destino. In 1986 he made trips abroad as a lecturer (Holland, Denmark, Argentina...). He published Popcorn in the Gulf , in Destino. A version of a play of which he is the author was performed for the first time: Oh, Penelope! , based on his play The Return of Ulysses . In 1987 he was named doctor honoris causa by the University of Salamanca and published: I am not me, evidently .

The honors continue; in 1988 he was named doctor honoris causa by the universities of Santiago de Compostela and Dijon, and named an Honorary Knight of Arts and Letters of the Republic of France. He won the Premio Planeta with Filomeno, despite my regret , and published Iphigenia and other stories , in Destino. In 1989 he underwent cataract surgery. The Provincial Council of La Coruña instituted the Torrente Ballester Narrative Prize. Then another of his hits was published, Crónica del rey aspamado , in Planeta, and Santiago de Rosalía Castro , in the same editorial. In 1990 he received the Libro de Oro award from the Spanish Booksellers Confederation, and was awarded the Gold Medal for cultural merit of Santiago de Compostela. He supervised the script for the film El rey aspamado , written by his son, Gonzalo Torrente Malvido, and Juan Potau. In 1991 he published Extraordinary Islands in Planeta. The film The Stunned King is released, based on his work and directed by Imanol Uribe; won eight Goya Awards from the Spanish Film Academy. In 1992 he traveled to Cuba to inaugurate the Chair of Galician Culture at the University of Havana and met with Fidel Castro. In addition, he was named doctor honoris causa by the University of Havana. A plaza named after him was inaugurated in La Coruña and he published La muerte del dean , in Planeta, and Torre del Aire , published by the Diputación de La Coruña, where he collected the articles signed under that title. In 1993 a week of studies on his work took place at the University of Vigo. In 1994 he received the Azorín Novel Prize for Pepe Ansúrez's novel , in Planeta, a satire of provincial literary circles. In 1995 he published Chon Recalde's wedding , in the same editorial. He received the Castilla y León de las Letras Award the following year. He traveled to Luxembourg for a meeting with the translators of his work (Claude Bleton, Colin Smith and António Gonçalves). In 1997 he visited the César Manrique Foundation, in Lanzarote, and took the opportunity to visit José Saramago. He participated in a tribute to Dámaso Alonso, in Lugo. He was admitted to the hospital for two weeks in September with pneumonia. He obtained the Rosalía de Castro Award, which was awarded to him by the Galician Pen Club. He was named adoptive son of Santiago de Compostela, Pontevedra, Nigrán (Pontevedra) and Fene (La Coruña). He published Memoria de un inconformista , in Alianza, a compilation of the articles published under the title Amodo , in Faro de Vigo . He published The undecided years in Planeta. In 1998 he was admitted to the hospital in July and in September. He was named Knight of the Order of Santiago de la Espada (Portugal), the highest award for Arts of the Republic of Portugal. Part of his work was republished in the Biblioteca de Autor collection, in Alianza Editorial. In 1999 he passed away, on January 27, in Salamanca. He was buried in the Serantes cemetery, in a ceremony in which the notes of "Negra sombra" played by Carlos Núñez on the bagpipe could be heard.

Torrente Ballester has recognised, on more than one occasion, the fundamental influence of Galician oral narrative from the beginning of the XX century. He cites sailors who recounted, for example, a fight in Hong Kong. These narrations were in Spanish, although with Galician syntax.

As a narrator, Torrente stands out for the profoundly ironic approach and resolution of his narratives. This irony is based on the perception of the real in the marvelous and of the marvelous in the real, which is why it has sometimes been described as the Spanish response to Spanish-American magical realism, which Torrente rejected.

Torrente Ballester, in an interview published at the end of his days in the Madrid newspaper El País, stated: «No novel ever gave me as much satisfaction as seeing each one of my children grow up healthy ». Among the eleven born in his two marriages are the aforementioned novelist Gonzalo Torrente Malvido, the musicologist specializing in Spanish Baroque and professor at the Complutense University of Madrid, Álvaro Torrente Sánchez-Guisande (current president of the Gonzalo Torrente Ballester Foundation)., the historian Juan Pablo Torrente Sánchez-Guisande, the journalist Luis Felipe Torrente Sánchez-Guisande and the professor at the University of Studies of Florence Francisca Ángela Torrente Sánchez-Guisande.

Between 2007 and 2008, the publishers Punto de Lectura and Alfaguara have republished part of his work. Specifically, ten titles have appeared in Punto de Lectura, among which are his main novels: The saga / fugue of J. B. , Don Juan or Fragments of Apocalypse . The Alfaguara publishing house published the trilogy Los gozos y las sombras in a careful edition in a single volume.

2010: centenary of his birth

Gonzalo Torrente Ballester Bust in Ferrol (La Coruña Province)

The State Society for Cultural Commemorations (SECC) and the Gonzalo Torrente Ballester Foundation organized an itinerant exhibition on the occasion of the writer's centenary that toured the following cities throughout 2010: Salamanca (February–March), Ferrol (March– April), Logroño (May–June), Santiago de Compostela (June–September), Pontevedra (October–November). The exhibition continued in other Spanish, European and American cities throughout 2011 in collaboration with the Cervantes Institute.

The documentary video GTBxGTB was also produced, directed by journalists Luis Felipe Torrente and Daniel Suberviola.

On the occasion of the centenary of his birth, some of his works were republished. Among others, the facsimile edition of Compostela stands out, a book written and published in 1948 to commemorate that year xacobeo (Gonzalo Torrente Ballester Foundation and Santiago Consortium, 2010). The Madrid publishing house Salto de Página wanted to recover the author's second novel, El coup d'état de Guadalupe Limón, published for the first time in 1946. On the other hand, the publishing house Ézaro Ediciones brought to bookstores a new edition of Chon Recalde's wedding and Sirena's tale. The latter is a small jewel illustrated by the Galician artist Miguelanxo Prado. The story Farruquiño was also republished by a small publishing house from Ferrol. And almost forty years after its publication, the publishing house Castalia brought to the market the first critical edition of La saga/fuga de J.B., by Carmen Becerra Suárez and Antonio Jesús Gil González.

Another of the acknowledgments given to Gonzalo Torrente Ballester on his centenary was the issuance of an official Post Office stamp that was put into circulation on October 8, 2010 with a value of 0.34 euros. The stamp reproduces a photographic portrait of the author made in 1988 by his son José Miguel Torrente.

Works

Novel

• Javier Mariño. History of a conversion (1943)
• The coup d'etat of Guadalupe Limón (1946)
• Ifigenia (1949)
• Trilogy Joys and shadows (1957-1962), constituted by:
  • The lord arrives (1957), Novela Award of the Juan March Foundation.
  • Where the air turns (1960)
  • The sad Easter (1962)
• Don Juan (1963)
• Off-side (1969)
• The saga/fuga of J. B. (1972), Barcelona City and the 1972 Critics Awards.
• Fragments of Revelation (1977), Critics Award
• The Island of the Corated Jacinths (1980), National Literature Award
• Dafne and dreams (1982)
• The Sleeping Princess goes to school (1983)
• Maybe it takes the wind to infinity. (1984)
• The rose of the winds (1985)
• I'm not me, obviously. (1987)
• Philomeno, in my sorrow (Planet 1988)
• Chronicle of the fallen king (1989)
• The extraordinary islands (1991)
• The Death of the Dean (1992)
• The Friendly Gods' Hostel (1993)
• The novel by Pepe Ansúrez (1994), Azorín Award.
• Chon Recalde's wedding (1995)
• Undecided years (1997)
• Domenica (1999)

Theater

• The Journey of Young Tobias (1938)
• The deceptive marriage (1939)
• Aguirre Lope (1941)
• Barataria Republic (1942)
• The return of Ulysses (1946)
• Longwood sunset (1950)

Essay

• Panorama of Contemporary Spanish Literature (1956)
• Contemporary Spanish Theatre (1957)
• Seven trials and a charade (1972)
• The Quixote as game (1975)
• The notebooks of a vague (1982)
• Working papers 1942–1947 (1982)
• My internal jurisdiction (2011)

Journalism

• Cuadernos de La Romana (1975)
• New Cuadernos de La Romana (1977)
• Cottages in the Gulf (1986)
• Air tower (1993)
• Memory of an unconformist (1997)

Miscellaneous

• Compostela and his angel (1948)
• Lunch (1954)
• The shadows recovered (1979) (includes Fragments of memories: The Mermaid Tale, Farruco, the misfortune and Lunchand Stories of humor for scholars: My kingdom for a horse (false English novel) and The Hostal de los Dioss Amables)
• The notebooks of a vague (1982)
• Santiago de Rosalía Castro (1989)
• The best of Gonzalo Torrente Ballester (1989)
• Imaginary worlds (1994)

Accommodations

• Caesar and Cleopatra (1958), by Bernard Shaw

Bibliography and studies about the author

• Simon Valcárcel Martínez, The world maker. A study of the literary work of G. Torrente Ballester2012, 483p.
• Gonzalo Álvarez Perelétegui, Las Ficciones de Gonzalo Torrente Ballester. Valladolid, Congress of Hispanic Philology Students. The Word is future, philologists of the new millennium: records of the First Congress of Hispanic Philology Students. -- Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, Secretariado de Publicaciones e Intercambio Editorial, D.L. 2002. -- P. 419-434
• Carmen Rivero Iglesias (ed.) Realism in Gonzalo Torrente Ballester: power, religion and myth. Madrid: Ibero-American; Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert, 2013