Jacinto Benavente

Jacinto Benavente (Madrid, August 12, 1866 – July 14, 1954) was a Spanish playwright, director, screenwriter, and film producer. A prolific playwright, in 1922 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Biography

Early Years

A municipal plaque, on the façade of number 27 Calle del León, in Madrid, recalls that Jacinto Benavente was born on the main floor of the building on August 12, 1866. He was the third child of Venancia Martínez and Mariano Benavente, a pediatrician, a profession that the eldest son, Avelino, would follow. Baptized in the nearby parish of San Sebastián, he was educated at the Colegio de San José on Barrionuevo street. After finishing high school, after passing the conventional and compulsory exam for free At the Instituto de San Isidro (official center to which his school was assigned), Benavente undertook his law studies in the San Bernardo mansion, headquarters of the primitive Madrid university. The writer himself reflects it this way in his 1885 diary: «DAY 13. University. Civil and Criminal Classes. Fornos. Newspaper reading. Walk. Evening. Writing".

With the death of his father in 1885 and thanks to the economic relief that his inheritance gave him, he abandoned law studies to dedicate himself to literature and travel around France and Russia. For a time he was a circus entrepreneur and some biographers, such as Fernando Lázaro Carreter and Ángel Lázaro, suggest that he even worked in it, because he was in love with an English trapeze artist, "Bella Geraldine", which he always denied. It has been said that Benavente, who never married, was homosexual, although he never declared himself as such, and his works were censored for a period after the Civil War for this reason and for having been a co-founder in 1933 of the Association of Friends of the Soviet Union.

Beginnings and rise

In 1892 he published his first play, Fantastic Theatre, which was followed by a book of poems, Versos, and another of short stories, Vilanos, and one for criticism, Letters from Women, all of which appeared the following year.

The friendship of the actor and theater manager Emilio Mario opened the theaters for him. The first premiere dates from 1894: El nido ajeno, which was not successful. Fernando Lázaro Carreter points out in this regard that "the work failed because the public and critics were blind to understand its important novelties", and adds that Azorín was the only one who knew how to value the first works of the playwright. He, for his part, recognized: "Poorly received by the public and much worse by critics." Throughout his life he will write more than one hundred and seventy pieces. In Known People (1896) he attacked the upper classes of Restoration society, but this criticism was diluted by a kind rebuke in his subsequent works, such as The Food of the wild beasts (1898).

Caricatured by Sancha (1904)

In 1899, he founded the Artistic Theater in Madrid, in which Valle Inclán collaborated and whose objective was to represent a repertoire guided by the exclusive interests of art and by its regenerationist intention in all the breadth of the term. The most immediate reference for him was, as in other cases, the Free Theatre, created years before by André Antoine in Paris. Among their purposes, they allude to the staging of minority works and a certain inbred elitism is perceptible in their proposals. At the age of thirty-two he was already a well-known author and, after fighting with Valle-Inclán in the gathering at the Café de Madrid, he formed his own apart at the English Brewery on Carrera de San Jerónimo.

Success came with the new century: Saturday Night (1903), Autumn Roses (1905) and Vested Interests (1907), considered his masterpiece. Carreter writes that "the public takes it materially out of the theater on its shoulders, some opening nights" and obtains "the acquiescence of critics as difficult as Unamuno and Ortega y Gasset".

He entered the Royal Spanish Academy in 1912; At the end of 1913, she concluded her greatest success, the rural drama La malquerida . During the First World War he declared himself a Germanophile, and that attracted him certain animosities, for example that of Ramón Pérez de Ayala from the pages of El Imparcial ; and he occupied a seat in the Congress of Deputies in 1918.

Photographed in 1920 in San Sebastian

After the death of his mother, in 1922, he went to Argentina as artistic director of a theater company and it was precisely during his trip that he learned of the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Returning to Spain from Havana in July 1923, he received numerous tributes (including Madrid's favorite son, 1924) and later traveled to Egypt, the Holy Land, the Middle East and Russia, where he spent several months. He was a co-founder, on February 11, 1933, of the Association of Friends of the Soviet Union, created at a time when the right held a condemnatory tone in relation to the stories about the conquests and the problems of socialism in the USSR.

Civil war and last years

Caricature of Jacinto Benavente by Eleuterio Mendoza and signed by D. Jacinto Benavente (with COA of authenticity).

During the Civil War, Benavente stayed first in Madrid and then in Valencia, where the authorities of the Popular Front government paid him homage repeatedly and where he even acted on stage playing the role of Crispín in Vested Interests . Once the conflict ended, this created serious difficulties for him, although he repeatedly claimed that his positions had been imposed on him under threat of death.

His contradictory attitude led him to publish an article in Valencia entitled Traidorzuelos in which he ironically criticized the flight of Carlos Arniches from Spain in 1936; However, a few months later he asked Juan Negrín for permission to leave the country, which the then President of the Government denied him for reasons of preserving the morale of the population.

Due to his attitude close to the Republic, during the post-war Franco regime he went to the curious extreme of allowing his works to be staged, but without indicating his name, which happened to be "by the author of La spoiled”. However, he did not spare demonstrations of adherence to the new regime in pieces such as The Incredible (1940), Aves y Pájaros (1941) and Grandfather and grandson (1941); What's more, in Valencia he went up to the presidential rostrum to attend the parade of the "national" troops and his presence in the Plaza de Oriente in Madrid in the great pro-Franco demonstration of 1946 —a presence abundantly commented on and photographed in the press— ingratiated him appreciation of the regime and ended the official silence that censorship had imposed on his person and his works. In that same year, he also received the Mariano de Cavia Prize for journalism for his article "Al dictation", published in ABC. He was president, with an honorary title, of the Association of Spanish Writers and Artists during the period from 1948 to 1954. A friend of Mary Carrillo, he was godfather to the Hurtado sisters. He lived his last years with this family in Galapagar, and rests in the cemetery of this Spanish town. He died in his house on Atocha street in Madrid on July 14, 1954.

Work

Jacinto Benavente in 1896, photographed by Franzen while reading People known Ms. Cobeña and Mr. ThuillierWhite and Black31 October 1896)

He tackled almost all the theatrical genres: tragedy, comedy, drama, sainete. All environments found their place and full expression in her scene: the rural and the urban, the commoner and the aristocrat. His theater constitutes a whole gallery of human types. The typical, traditional, modern, incisive comedy from Benavente is a reaction against the exorbitant melodramatism of Echegaray. Far from the gimmicky apparatus of the latter, Benavente builds his works based on life. Realism, naturalness and verisimilitude are the three assumptions from which his art departs, without excluding in many moments a certain breath of poetry or exquisite irony. He perfectly knows all the stage resources and knows how to give dramatic relief to the most inconsequential actions. In fact, it can be said that with his first play featuring him, El nido ajeno (1894), in which he raises a problem of jealousy between brothers, he opens a new period in Spanish dramaturgy..

In Cartas de mujeres (1893) his interest in female psychology is already noticeable, a characteristic that will appear in all his work; El nido ajeno, Known People (1896) and The Food of the Beasts (1898) constitute a reaction against the moralizing theater of Manuel Tamayo and Baus or Benito Pérez Galdós.

Maria Guerrero in a scene The evil one. (1913)

From 1901, his theater acquired greater depth with works such as Saturday Night (1903), a stage novel impregnated with poetry; The Fire Dragon (1903), and Vested Interests (1907), a skilful combination of satire and humor, where his innovative art culminates. In it, the characters of the Italian commedia dell'arte are set in motion, with Spanish psychology, and a subtle and insightful critique of the prevailing positivism in contemporary society is made. The work achieved such an enthusiastic reception that the ecstatic public will carry its author on their shoulders to his home, at the end of its performance at the Lara theater in Madrid.

In 1908 he premiered La fuerza bruta, founding the following year, together with the actor Porredón, a theater for children. In other works, educational principles are mixed with fantastic settings and motifs (The prince who learned everything from books, 1909). Señora ama (1908) and La malquerida (1913) belong to the subgenre of rural drama. They are inspired by a town in the province of Toledo, Aldea en Cabo, where he spent long periods of time and present female characters sexually dominated by men of low moral standing as central characters.

In total, he would have written 172 works when he died. He also cultivated poetry (Versos, 1893), short stories, journalism and other literary modalities (Letters from women, 1893; Thoughts, 1931) with great success. Theater critic in the newspaper El Imparcial, he collected his articles in De sobremesa (1910, 5 volumes), El teatro del pueblo, Annotations (1914) and Chronicles and dialogues (1916).

Movie adaptations

Aware of the innovation that putting stories into images represented for the world of theater and literature with the advent of the cinematograph, he commanded an adaptation of his famous Los intereses creados in 1911 which, according to film historians, is the best translation to the screen of one of his works. If no other masterpiece has been made with his stories, a couple of appreciable titles remain in the memory: La malquerida (1949, Emilio Fernández); Crossed Lives (1942, Luis Marquina); Saturday Night (1950, Rafael Gil); Pepa Doncel (1969, Luis Lucia Mingarro).

Styling Comments

His penetration and knowledge of the Spanish language are outstanding, introducing skilful criticism of the misuse that is made of it in everyday environments. That is why his texts have a great page quality. His especially subtle handling of irony stands out, which he uses to denounce manipulation from legal, political or information media with the alteration of syntax and lexicography (see the conclusion of Los intereses creados, where an accusatory sentence becomes exculpatory, with the simple transposition of a comma), and his witty dialogues sometimes bring him closer to the expressive art of Oscar Wilde.

Limitations of his work

Monument to Jacinto Benavente in the Jardines del Retiro de Madrid, work by Victorio Macho.

The Spanish theater of the early 20th century is far from the theatrical events in the rest of Europe, where an innovation has already taken place with directors such as André Antoine or Konstantín Stanislavski and authors such as Henrik Ibsen and Antón Chéjov. The Spanish dramatic art continues to be for these years a product consumed by the wealthy bourgeoisie that attends the theaters to see and be seen.

In Spain, Benavente takes over from Echegaray and his post-romantic theater. His works dominate the Spanish stages of the first third of the XX century and his presence will continue until the middle of the century, being the author most valued by the public of his time. His best theater, in the opinion of scholars, is that of his first stage, which runs from the end of the XIX century to the 1920s. This stage represents a break with post-romanticism and what it has of declamatory theater, incorporating realistic theater into the Spanish scene. It is a prose theater with a naturalist style and the works are divided into three acts, in keeping with the trend of other authors of the moment.

«The Bethlehem of Don Jacinto»The Liberal, 1909)

Benavente mastered the theatrical springs, the theatrical carpentry. Critics of his work coincide in highlighting "his triple status as satirist, relentless critic and subtle analyst of society, as well as his full mastery of the formal resources of the construction of the play." However, in the opinion of his critics, his theater has a series of limitations that derive from its excessive rhetorical verbosity to the detriment of dramaturgy and action; its stagnation in the theatrical formulas of the beginning of the XX century and its focus on the consumption of the bourgeoisie, the public that then it filled the rooms, not crossing the threshold of a criticism that it could bear.

Pérez Ayala led the criticism of his theater and, according to his opinion, highlighted "not only the limitations derived from his servitude to such a poor conception of realism but also the low intellectual height of his approaches". Ayala considered that Benavente's theater stagnated in a naturalist canon when that stage was already passed.

Gonzalo Torrente Ballester would write about his theater: «The Benaventina technique is the weakest part of his dramatic work, and in this sense his influence was disastrous. In a general way, it can be defined as the scamoteo technique. Wisdom, Benavente's trade, are undoubted and sometimes he exercises them in a positive way, others in a naive way and most of all, in an entirely negative way... What does this negativity consist of? In the systematic replacement of action by narration or illusion; in the concealment of the strongly dramatic moments, which always occur offstage or between act and act". novel feature; more than showing, it counts, it makes illusion. The dialogue is often made up of a series of long replies, purely rhetorical in nature, well composed, but without any dramatic tension. He also pointing out: "There is, in short, in Benavente a moralizing attitude that is difficult to bear."

José Monleón points out about his work: «In the first Benavente —the best— there are glimpses of a twilight theater. We only glimpse it, because the Chekhovianism of such works is usually pulverized by trivial thought and by the sentimental concessions that, finally, it offers to the public".

Although Benavente connected with his audience, his theater dies with the society for which it was intended. As Monleón says, «Benavente's triumph today gives his texts the value of a document. Valle's failure, and its explanation through the grotesque —of his text, its theatrical structure and its critical and agonizing basis—, is also another historical fact. With the difference that Benavente, for dying with his society, is only history, while Valle, for facing it and living it tragically, is and will always be extraordinary theater." César Oliva concludes:

A century later, just if it represents more than a reputation that few deny, but almost no one supports from the scenarios. Salvo Interests created, and some other rural drama, little pervive of an author that was all in the Spanish theater.

Ideology

The different and highly varied political and ideological attitudes that Jacinto Benavente adopted define him as fundamentally accommodative, bourgeois and conservative. During World War I he declared himself a Germanophile. He supported Antonio Maura in The happy and confident city (1916) and his collusion with the Primo de Rivera dictatorship earned him the contempt of the intelligentsia. He responded with the same coin: if in The Illuminated Night (1927) he embraced an avant-garde space that the generation of '27 liked so much, then he made fun of those same avant-garde stage attempts in Literature (1931). If he defended the Soviet revolution in Holy Russia (1933), it was in exchange for expressing shameless fascism in his post-war works from 1940. The Civil War caught him in the republican zone (Barcelona) and he made statements in favor of the republican government, which he later claimed were forced by the authorities and which he continually retracted in pieces such as Aves y pájaros (1940), Grandfather and grandson (1941), La enlutada (1942) or La ciudad doliente (1945), also attending not a few official acts of the Franco regime, which, after being reticent with his works, ended by accept them as samples of the theater of the victors.

All works

See what a man does! in The Weekly Tale (1909), cover of Augustine.

Italics in Los Contemporáneos (1913), portada de Pedrero.

The slab of dreams in La Novela Teatral (1921), cover of Tovar.

Accommodations

Between parentheses, the original work or the author on which they are based.

• Love story (1899); Night of kings of Shakespeare)
• Freedom! (1902; Santiago Rusiñol)
• Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle (1903; Alexandre Dumas father)
• Richelieu (1904; Edward Bulwer-Lytton)
• Manon Lescaut (1905; adaptation of the novel by Prévost, in collaboration with Alonso Danvila)
• Good wedding. (1905; A beau mariage Emile Augier)
• King Lear (1911; King Lear of Shakespeare)
• Destiny rules (1914; Le destin est maître by Paul Hervieu)
• The yellow robe (1916; George C. Hazelton and Harry Benrimo)
• The bold (1919; adaptation of the homonymous novel by Benito Pérez Galdós)

Other works

• Fantastic theater (1892, dramatic sketches)
• Verses (1893)
• Figulines (1898), tales and dramatic sketches.
• Letters of women (1893)
• Summer nights (1900) dramatic sketch.
• Vilanos (1905), stories and dramatic sketches.
• Fast theatre (1906), dramatic sketches.
• The prince who learned everything in the books (1909)
• The Theatre of the People (1909), critique.
• Words, words, words (1911), chronicles and criticisms.
• Acotations (1914), criticism, first series.
• About me (1910-1916), chronic and critical, 6 vols.
• Chronicles and dialogues (1916)
• Study Plan for a School of Scenic Art (1916)
• The Germanophilic year (1916), prologue.
• Pulsing my lira (1944) by Luis María Burillo, a prologue.
• Aromas of a vergel (1949) by Luis María Burillo, a prologue.

Awards and distinctions

• Nobel Prize in Literature, 1922
• Adoptive Son of New York, 1923
• Predilect Son of Madrid, 1924
• Great Cross of Alfonso X el Sabio, 1944
• Gold Medal to Merit at Work, 1950
• Adoptive Son of Galapagar, 2016

Pop Culture

The group Los Gandules mentions his name over and over again in Polichinela's Song, in Polichinela Returns and in Polichinela Strikes Again to the rhythm of the Jaruco conga.

Toponymy

• Plaza de Jacinto Benavente, Madrid.

Jacinto Benavente Street, Pepino (Toledo)