Leopoldo Alas, Clarin

Leopoldo Enrique García-Alas y Ureña, known simply as Leopoldo Alas and nicknamed Clarín (Zamora, April 25, 1852-Oviedo, June 13, 1901), was a Spanish writer and jurist. Professor first at the University of Zaragoza and later at the University of Oviedo, he worked as a literary critic in the periodical press of the time, from where he attacked many contemporary writers with stinging articles. His novel La Regenta (1884) is considered the masterpiece of Spanish realism literature and the best novel in Spanish of the century XIX.

Biography

He was born on April 25, 1852 in Zamora, where his family had moved from Oviedo when his father, Genaro García-Alas, received the appointment as governor of the city. Leopoldo was the third child of the couple. One of his brothers was Genaro García-Alas y Ureña.

At home they talked constantly about Asturias and her mother, Leocadia, with a certain nostalgia, told stories of that land of her ancestors (although she also had deep Leonese roots). This environment greatly influenced the spirit of the child Leopoldo, who had always felt more Asturian than Zamorano, although throughout his life he retained a special affection for the lands where he was born.

At the age of seven he began to study at the Jesuit school located in the city of León in the San Marcos building (current tourist hostel). From the beginning he knew how to adapt to the rules and discipline of the center of in such a way that after a few months he was considered a model student. His classmates knew him by the nickname (nickname) "the Governor", alluding to his father's profession. His biographers assure that this student stage engendered in Leopoldo the religious feeling and the principle of great moral discipline that were the basis of his character. In this first school year he won a blue band award and literary trophy. He kept it all his life and it was among the most beloved objects in the family museum.

In the summer of 1859 the whole family returned to Asturias. Leopoldo discovered with his own eyes the Asturian geography that he had heard so much about from his mother. During the following years Leopoldo is free on the lands of Guimarán, owned by his father, where he will learn directly from Nature and from the books he finds in the old family library, where he comes into contact for the first time with two authors who will be His teachers: Cervantes and Fray Luis de León.

On October 4, 1863, at the age of eleven, Leopoldo entered the University of Oviedo in what were called «preparatory studies», enrolling in the subjects of Latin, Arithmetic and Christian Doctrine. He finished the course with an A grade and made three good friends: Armando Palacio Valdés, Tomás Tuero (who was also a writer, translator and literary critic) and Pío Rubín (writer).

Clarín was the father of Leopoldo García Alas Argüelles, rector of the University of Oviedo, who was shot by the rebels in February 1937 and great-grandfather of the jurist Leopoldo Tolivar Alas. The latter and his sister, Ana Cristina Tolivar Alas, gave the Principality of Asturias a free deposit in March 2010 of the family library and archive they kept, among whose documents is the manuscript of La Regenta .

Leopoldo Alas was the uncle-in-law of doctor Alfredo Martínez García-Argüelles, minister during the Second Republic, and uncle-great-grandfather of Leopoldo Alas Mínguez, also a writer, who died on August 1, 2008.

Arrival in Madrid

After finishing his studies at the University, the future Clarín moved to mid-century Madrid XIX, to do his doctorate, staying at an inn on Calle de Capellanes. There he met his friends from the Asturian capital, Tuero, Palacio Valdés and Rubín, a group that became known as "those from Oviedo" at the Cervecería Inglesa in Madrid, where the gathering that would end up lighting up the Bilis club would meet.

During that first course, Clarín came into contact with Krausism and secular liberalism. Years before, the jurist, educator and philosopher Julián Sanz del Río, who had been a disciple of Karl Krause in Germany, had translated and introduced the philosophy of Krausism to Spain. As a professor of Philosophy of Law, he exercised such admiration among his students that it would lead them to to launch an unprecedented intellectual ideological movement, which culminated in a great reform in free education, other changes related to society and politics, and the creation of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza in 1876 which, dead in 1869, Professor Sanz del Río did not get to know.

Clarín in his youth

In gratitude for his work of Europeanization and renewal, Sanz del Río, an upright and religious man, but considered a threat to the teaching monopoly of the Catholic Church and a recalcitrant heretic, was expelled from his chair by the conservative forces, with harsh (although legally inconsistent) campaigns orchestrated by sectarians of "neo-Catholicism", a new faction promoted by the recent encyclical of Pius IX. Such harassment and persecution, in the image and likeness of the processes of the Inquisition, would lead to a reaction of rejection against the government teaching establishments among the disciples of Sanz del Río, later prominent krausists such as Joaquín Costa, Francisco Pi y Margall, Rafael María de Labra, Emilio Castelar, Nicolás Salmerón and Adolfo Camus. It was in the chairs of these last two where Leopoldo reaffirmed his philosophical and religious-traditional skepticism, which he would later lead to the field of literary naturalism. At the end of that year, Clarín himself comments that & # 34; his spirit had strengthened & # 34;.

Solfege

In December 1874, the First Republic ended with the fall of Emilio Castelar thanks to the coup of Manuel Pavía. Shortly after the coup, Martínez Campos began the monarchical Restoration in the figure of Alfonso XII, son of the dethroned Isabel II.

In March 1875, Antonio Sánchez Pérez founded a newspaper with the name El Solfeo. On July 5, a few young people entered its newsroom, including Leopoldo Alas. The newspaper went completely unnoticed and was not even mentioned by the chroniclers of the time. His director wanted his collaborators to take the name of a musical instrument as a pseudonym and that is how Leopoldo chose the bugle, which from then on would be the alias with which he would sign all his articles. The column where he wrote had the title "Azotacalles de Madrid" (Notes on the wall). On October 2, 1875, the writer signed for the first time as Clarín, inaugurating the space with the verse that the reader can see below. In this way Leopoldo Alas entered the literary life of the time and from his column began to launch harsh criticism full of irony against the political class of the Restoration.

I'm opening in verse
My Madrid magazines,
with a modest romance
to have his retinue;
And I'm gonna tell you
what I want to tell you,
through God, and through
the civilian governor.

Clarín began to enjoy popularity at the same time that many dislikes and many enemies reached him. Each new article becomes a new scandal, criticized or praised in the gatherings of the English Brewery or the Ateneo on Calle de Arenal. Clarín continues in his style, assuring that "the critic who tells the truth does not thrive" and that the poet, even if he is bad, "arrives from round to round to head of business." Along with this literary activity, he continues with his studies, preparing for his doctorate.

Magazine of Asturias

Apart from the journalistic genre, Clarín feels the need to cultivate other literary genres. Félix Aramburu (poet and notable criminal law writer), a close friend of Leopoldo's, was the director and editor in Oviedo of a magazine called Revista de Asturias. This friend not only encouraged him to write other types of stories, but also offered him a place in his own edition. In the summer of 1876, Clarín wrote his first short stories and some poems that months later would be published in the Revista from Oviedo. With these collaborations, the great writer became known.^{[citation required]}

PhD and chair

Retreated by Ramón Miró in 1891 on the pages La Esquella de la Torratxa

On July 1, 1878, Leopoldo Alas obtained the title of doctor in civil and canon law, with the qualification of outstanding. He presented his doctoral thesis on the subject Law and morality in which edition you can see the dedication "To Don Francisco Giner del Río, his sincere friend and recognized disciple of him." It is the first book by Leopoldo to come out of a printing press and the only one in which his pseudonym Clarín does not appear.

After a long vacation in the lands of Guimarán, Alas returns to Madrid to briefly prepare his presentation to the oppositions that would be held in November in Salamanca to fill the vacant position of the chair of Political Economy and Statistics in University. The successive exercises were a continuous success for Leopoldo and he even won first place in the list of opponents. The Madrid newspapers covered these successes and the news was also reported in the Revista de Asturias (Oviedo, no. 40, 5.XII.1878, section «Ecos y rumours»). But there was a serious obstacle to the definitive success: Queipo de Llano, Count of Toreno, was at that time Minister of Public Instruction and enjoyed the right of final election of the candidate. The Count of Toreno had been the target of Clarín's terrible satires in El Solfeo , something he never forgot and dispossessed Clarín of the chair he had won, to the benefit of number two of the list of opponents, the Mr. Mantecon. Leopoldo Alas wrote an open letter of protest to the minister and years later he would remember these events with bitterness writing:

I learned from them (Salmeron and Giner) to respect convictions, and the greatest outrage that made me, perhaps without knowing it, the count of Toreno, by denying me a chair that was mine, was the implicit suspicion that I was a free thinker like the Homais de Flaubert, able to stone and take off with the heresies that occurred to me.

Four years later, the Legislation and Jurisprudence Magazine published in reparation and with all honors the work that Clarín had presented in the Salamanca competitive examinations under the title «Analytical Program of Political Economy and Statistics».

The year 1882 was a lucky year for Clarín. On July 12, he was able to read in the Official Gazette his appointment to the chair of Political Economy and Statistics, granted to the University of Zaragoza, and on August 29 his wedding took place with Onofre García-Argüelles, in the Asturian town of La Laguna (Langreo valley), in the palace of the García-Argüelles family. The following year he returned to Oviedo as a professor of Roman Law and later he also took over the chair of Natural Law at the University of Oviedo.

Clarín as a teacher

It was said among his contemporaries that to get to know Clarín it was necessary to attend his chair of Natural Law. According to his own words, he was in favor of suggesting to his students a habit of reflection that was better than teaching a science outright and he was not satisfied with teaching a series of precepts to be applied in the future. His lessons used to begin with a Justinian precept and continued with quotes from Quixote or Saint Teresa, ending with Tolstoy, Renan or Saint Francis of Assisi. Many of his students did not understand this system and accused Clarín of being a "bone" (serious, strict, demanding and generally with a reputation for failing). Clarín esteemed his students when they were able to understand the spirit of his teachings rather than the letter. He had a very strict sense of justice when it came to qualifying and never accepted bribes or recommendations; he was accused of lacking any kind of benevolence. The chair was for Clarín a great responsibility and a constant concern (according to his own words) and he gave himself to it with all honesty. ^{[citation needed ]}

Literary caciquismo

Almost all of Clarín's biographers agree on this point: his literary caciquismo, somewhat tyrannical. Since his retirement in Oviedo, he has come to be feared and respected in Madrid and is known in Europe and America. He was a universal provincial, although his city, Oviedo, never understood his universality. He was considered a nervous and myopic little man, who taught at the University and played ombre in the Casino in the afternoons. Students feared him for his severity and society considered him a liberal atheist.^{[citation needed]}

Literary work

Sancha Caricatured Clarín for Madrid while writing one of his “paliques”

During the free time left to him by the university chair, Clarín wrote articles for the newspapers El Globo, La Ilustración and Madrid Cómico. He sends to the newspapers El Imparcial and Madrid Cómico his satirical and scathing "Paliques" that will provide him with some additional enemies.

In 1881 the book Solos de Clarín was published, which included the articles of literary criticism. The prologue is by Echegaray. That same year, in October, he published in La Ilustración Gallega y Asturiana the article «The University of Oviedo», in which he praised the restored cloister and made up of professors Buylla, Aramburu and Diaz Ordonez, among others.

At the age of thirty-one, Clarín wrote his masterpiece La Regenta. In June 1885 the second volume of this composition of literary art came out. In 1886 his first book of short stories was published with the title Pipá. In 1889 he finished a biographical essay on Galdós, within a series entitled «Contemporary Spanish Celebrities». At the end of June 1891, the publisher Fernando Fe brought out Clarín's second long novel: His only son by him .

Portrait of Clarín (1893)

In 1892 Clarín went through a personality and religious crisis in which, according to his words, he tried to find his self and God. Shortly after he reflected this crisis in his story Cambio de Luz , whose protagonist Jorge Arial represents the author and his concerns, his religious doubts and his philosophical skepticism. Clarín defines this character as a "shameful mystic." At this time he also collaborated with the magazine Los Madriles .

In 1894 his interest in the theater was awakened by the influence of his friends, the actress María Guerrero and the playwright Echegaray. Biographers say that he is a contradiction in a man who is a lover of reality and an enemy of farce. That is why his first play Teresa (dramatic essay in one act and in prose) is a real page from his own life. It was published and premiered on March 20, at the Teatro Español in Madrid, as a tribute to actress María Guerrero. The play was a resounding failure, critics arguing that it lacked stage architecture and that it had all the faults of a novice writer.

During the last years of his life, Clarín received a large number of offers for collaborations as well as requests for authorization to translate his work in new editions. In 1900, the Casa Maucci in Barcelona commissioned him to translate Émile Zola's novel Work. The remuneration is good and Clarín thinks that a translation will not give him as much work as writing. But the technicalities and difficult words of the French writer, together with the perfectionism of Clarín, make the work last for months, exhausting the little health he had in those years. He translates day and night to meet the deadline indicated by the publisher, exhausted but happy to be able to contribute to publicizing the "most outraged thinker of the entire century XIX ».

Illness and death

Clarín had been suffering from his illness for years and in the first months of 1901 he already felt exhausted. In the month of May he traveled to León, invited by his cousin Ureña, on the occasion of the festivities that were celebrated for the completion of the reconstruction of the cathedral. In this city he relived his childhood and was entertained and loved by many personalities. On his return he commented: "In León I spent truly happy hours."

Once back in Oviedo, he felt his illness very close again. There he was constantly accompanied by his nephew, the young doctor Alfredo Martínez García, who diagnosed him with intestinal tuberculosis.

On June 13, 1901, at seven in the morning, Leopoldo Alas died, at the age of forty-nine. The coffin was veiled in the cloister of the university where professors, friends and relatives of the writer attended. The next day he was buried in the El Salvador cemetery.

In Madrid, the writer Bonafoux (a mediocre writer according to Clarín and other colleagues of the time), a faithful enemy until death, prepared the obituary article in which he added these words: «I have been the first to rejoice at the death of Clarion. […] At his funeral, the silence heard at the funerals of tyrants was heard ».

His masterpiece: The Regent (1884-1885)

Cover La Regenta (1884-1885)

Long novel whose action takes place in Vetusta, a Spanish provincial capital behind whose name "Clarín" to the Asturian capital, Oviedo. Some critics and Hispanists note a certain similarity with Madame Bovary, by Flaubert, and Anna Karenina, by Tolstoy, possible influences to which naturalism and Krausism should be added. (philosophical current that proposed through the Institución Libre de Enseñanza and some university cadres the cultural and moral regeneration of Spain).

La Regenta stands out for its great wealth of characters and secondary shots, as well as the use of the flow of memories technique, while the portrait of the protagonist is delicately out of focus and vague. On the other hand, here the fall of the provincial lady takes place between two very different suitors: the most seductive gallant of the city, who ends up triumphing, and a canon of the cathedral. The portrait of this canon is a key piece of the book.

To describe the provincial environment and the fabric of collective life, Clarín uses techniques such as the internalized monologue and the free indirect style, which make the story narrated by the characters through their thoughts and allow us to penetrate into their interiors. Thanks to these techniques and a careful study of the character in the environment (that is, the society in which he lives) the characters acquire a certain psychological depth.

For the writer Ricardo Labra, author of the work "El caso Alas «Clarín». Memory and the Literary Canon" the reception of "La Regenta" in the city of Oviedo it was disastrous and terrible. The theocratic conduct of Bishop Ramón Martínez Vigil, the early oblivion into which Clarín's work fell, the ignominious execution of Rector Alas, the vile and iconoclastic vexation of the memory of the author of La Regenta contributed to this., the unfortunate story of his bust and his monument, the long night of Francoism with its explicit or surreptitious censorship to which with honesty, farsightedness and pertinacity some intellectual forces from home and abroad tried to oppose and resist& #3. 4;. He considers that Clarín and his work were victims of an active damnatio memoriae, although there were also efforts by some university students such as José María Martínez Cachero, and institutions such as Archivum or the Institute of Asturian Studies that vindicated Clarín's work as well as the resilience of his family that allowed him to revive his figure and his work from the 1980s.

Anecdotes

It seems that the nightmare of all Clarín's friends and acquaintances was his unintelligible handwriting. For this reason he often received constructive criticism, some mockery or some complaint:

• Perez Galdós: in a letter addressed to Clarín he says, "How beautiful to receive a paper full of scribbles and prepare for the pure enjoyments of divination! Go conquering syllable to syllable the mysterious kingdom of his Chaldean writing»
• Emilia Pardo Bazán: "I already wanted to see your delicious scribble."^{[chuckles]required]}

Clarín continually received letters to praise him, to insult him or to ask for advice and approval on other novels. On one occasion Clarín had written in his Paliques that in Spain in those years there were only two and a half poets: Campoamor, Núñez de Arce and Manuel del Palacio (who was supposed to be the "middle"). The latter, feeling offended and humiliated, sent a long epistle written in triplets and full of insults to the Guimerán farm where Clarín was on vacation. The response was harsh and overwhelming. He composed another epistle with an approximate number of verses to those of Palacio that he titled "A 0'50 poeta (epistle in verses with notes in clear prose)". All of Spain read it and all of Spain spoke of Manuel del Palacio as the "half poet." It was the joy of Madrid gatherings. The aforementioned did not reply and that was the end of the matter.^{[citation required]}

In 1891, Clarín was elected Republican councilor of the Oviedo City Council by universal suffrage. During the appointment meeting, Clarín remained silent, but his nerves shot up when he heard a & # 34; haiga & # 34; in the mouth of another councilor who read the minutes. The professor fell upon him with such dialectical fury that the councilor, embarrassed by the laughter of his classmates and the audience, immediately resigned from him. Clarín intervened again and got him to withdraw his resignation.^{[citation required]}

At the end of February 1937, after shooting his son Leopoldo García-Alas García-Argüelles, "a phalanx, a better horde of young men, dedicated themselves to the cultural task of destroying the monument to Clarion" inaugurated on September 21, 1908. They put a donkey's head on the seated Clarín monument and then destroyed it. Another affront came in 1953 when the then mayor of Oviedo Alonso de Nora commissioned Víctor Hevia to make a new bust of Clarín, which due to doubts and interests against the writer was not finished until 1968 since " On the one hand, Clarín was very uncomfortable, but on the other, if they did not restore it, they declared themselves participants in that horrible event of its destruction". They also avoided creating a rear relief on the original monument, an allegory by the sculptor Manuel Álvarez Laviada that represented "The Truth devoid of all Hypocrisy" in an allegory with a half-naked woman.

Works

Essays

• Solos of Clarín (1880).
• Literature in 1881 (1882).
• Lost Sermon (1885).
• New campaign (1887).
• Rehearsals and magazines (1892).
• Palique (1894).

Novels

• Cuesta down (1890-1891).
• La Regenta (1884-1885).
• His only child (1890).
• Pelayo's hug (1889)

Stories

Perhaps the facet that is least talked about is his role as a great cultivator of short stories, short stories and short stories, forms that developed in an extraordinary way in European literature from the middle of the century XIX. Among Clarín's most outstanding works, chronologically, we can point out the short novels Pipá, Doña Berta, Cuervo, Superchería, of the stories and stories The Lord and the rest are stories , Moral Tales , The Rooster of Socrates , posthumous work, and Doctor Sutilis.