Luis Alberto of Cuenca

Luis Alberto de Cuenca Prado (Madrid, December 29, 1950) is a Spanish poet, philologist, Hellenist, translator, essayist, columnist, critic and literary editor. He has been awarded the National Translation Award (1989) and the National Poetry Award (2015). He is a member of the Royal Academy of History, a member of the Academy of Good Letters of Granada, a member of the Royal Board of Trustees of the Prado Museum and a member of the jury for the Princess of Asturias Award for Letters.He is a declared Catholic.

Biography

Education

After graduating at the Colegio del Pilar in Madrid, he dropped out of law studies at the Complutense University of Madrid in the second year to begin Classical Philology at the Autonomous University of Madrid, where he graduated in 1973 and received his doctorate in 1976, two degrees with an extraordinary prize. He has designated two professors from the Autonomous University of Madrid as his teachers: the Latinist Antonio Fontán and the Hellenist Manuel Fernández-Galiano, director of his thesis, on Callímaco de Cirene, and, later, of his thesis, which dealt with the Hellenistic poet Euphorion of Chalcis.^{[citation needed]}

Literary research at the CSIC

His scientific production has concentrated, above all, on the translation and critical edition of works of Western literature whose chronology varies from the 2nd millennium BC. C, until the s. xx. Rather removed from the most recent methodological currents, his philological activity has focused on dissemination and his perspective towards the works he studies, being a scholar, is more artistic than academic, more transversal than specialized.

As a translator, he has translated texts in classical Greek, classical Latin, medieval Latin, medieval French, Provençal, Catalan, French, English, German, and among others, authors from the classical Greco-Latin world, such as Homer, Euripides, Callimachus, and from the European Middle Ages, such as Geoffrey de Monmouth, William of Poitiers, Chrétien de Troyes, Marie de France, Charles Nodier and Gérard de Nerval. In 1987, he won the National Translation Award for his version of the Cantar de Valtario, a Latin text by an anonymous author from the 10th century. This facet of his philological work is mixed with his artistic work in that his translations aim to to integrate the "literal" and the "literary".

In the field of ecdotics, he has critically edited, among others, Euforión de Calcis, Eurípides, Calderón de la Barca, Juan Boscán, Gabriel Bocángel, Agustín Pérez Zaragoza, Rubén Darío and Enrique Jardiel Poncela.

As a literary editor, he has directed the collections Ambitos Literarios (poetry, narrative and essays), from Editorial Anthropos; Selection of Medieval Readings, by Ediciones Siruela; and The head of Medusa, by Mondadori. Since January 2009, he has directed the Biblioteca de Literatura Universal , first in Espasa and since 2015 in Almuzara.

Career civil servant, with the category of "research professor", of the Higher Council for Scientific Research, with a position attached to the Center for Human and Social Sciences of the CSIC, where he has been head of the Department of Greco-Roman Philology and director of the Institute of Philology (1992-1993), as well as director of the Publications Department of the CSIC (1995-1996) and director of the magazine Arbor. Revista de Ciencia Pensamiento y Cultura (2012) edited by the CSIC. His editorship of the magazine lasted only a few days, due to a debate about the inclusion of unprepared writers (linked to Opus Dei) and because of the decrease in the h-index of the publication during his brief tenure as manager. Rhetorical texts on various topics without scientific evidence were also published, which contributed to the devaluation of the journal. He was replaced by José Luis García Barrientos.

Political career in cultural management

In the General State Administration, he has held the freely appointed political positions of Director of the National Library of Spain (1996-2000), of whose Board of Trustees he was appointed Chairman in 2015, and Secretary of State for Culture (2000-2004), always during the governments of the Popular Party.

In October 1997, as director of the National Library of Spain, he promoted, together with the then director of the Cervantes Institute, Santiago de Mora-Figueroa, the creation of the Universal Literature Library Foundation (BLU), with the founding objectives of the edition, complementary to the commercial editions, of a collection of works by classic authors from other languages together with the revitalization of authors in the Spanish language, and the carrying out of other activities aimed at highlighting the value of the Spanish language as a universal language of culture.

From his performance as Secretary of State for Culture, it is worth noting the estimate of the cartoonists' union for the Medal of Merit in Fine Arts.^{[citation required]}

Style

Luis Alberto de Cuenca

In his poetry the scholar and the creator merge, without any of the two facets corrupting the other. Through his collections of poems, Luis Alberto de Cuenca has been giving us what has been called in contemporary Spanish poetry a "transculturalist poetics": an ironic and elegant lyric, sometimes skeptical, sometimes carefree, in which the transcendental coexists with the everyday and the bookish is linked with the popular. He uses the free and traditional meter. Making the expression he used to define his poetry his own, the poet and critic José Luis García Martín, Luis Alberto de Cuenca labels the second stage of his poetic work as clear line, in reference to the European comic style. whose best-known example is the Tintin series by Belgian author Hergé. Exceeding his own work, de Cuenca has been giving visibility to other poets under this same name, as in the section & # 34; Línea clara & # 34; that he directed in Nueva Revista. Perhaps the contemporary poets with whom he has had the greatest stylistic and personal affinity are Miguel d'Ors, Julio Martínez Mesanza, Amalia Bautista and Jon Juaristi. In his conception of poetry, he is recognized mainly as a debtor to the Palatine Anthology, but also to Catullo, Guillermo de Aquitania, Petrarca, Garcilaso de la Vega, Francisco de Aldana, Lope de Vega, Gustavo Adolfo Becquer, Ruben Darío, the Machado brothers, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Federico García Lorca, Jorge Luis Borges and Juan Eduardo Cirlot.

Perhaps his best-known poem, read frequently at weddings and which has been the subject of selectivity exams, is "El desayuno".^{[citation required]}

In addition to his work as a poet, essayist and philologist, we must highlight his facet as a musical lyricist; his are some of the best-known lyrics of the rock group the Mondragón Orchestra. Gabriel Sopeña has put music to a selection of more than thirty of his poems, the first installment of which was performed by Loquillo on his album Her name was that of all women, released in October 2011.^{[ citation required]}

Some of his work has been translated into French, German, Italian, English and Bulgarian.^{[citation needed]}

Works

Original poems

• The portraits (Madrid: Azur, 1971)
• Elsinore (Madrid: Azur, 1972)
• Scholia (Barcelona: Bosch, 1978)
• Necrophilia (Madrid: Moratín, 1983)
• Breviora (Torrelavega: Adal, 1984)
• The silver box (Seville: Renaissance, 1985)
• Six poems of love (Malaga: Junta de Andalucía, 1986)
• The other dream (Seville: Renaissance, 1987)
• Nausícaa (Jerez de la Frontera: Municipality of Jerez de la Frontera, 1991)
• Willendorf (Malaga: El Guadalhorce Antique Library, 1992)
• The axe and the rose (Seville: Renaissance, 1993)
• Breakfast and other poems (Ponferrada: City Council of Ponferrada, 1993)
• For strong and boundary (Madrid: Visor, 1996)
• The forest and other poems (Malaga: Rafael Inglada, 1997)
• «In Wonderland», in The Extramundi and the Papers of Iria Flavia, XI (Padrón: Fundación Camilo José Cela, 1997)
• Alicia (Cuenca: Second Holy Editions, 1999)
• Insomnia (Montilla: Wine and Wine Costume, 2000)
• No fear or hope (Madrid: Visor, 2002)
• The bridge of the sword: unpublished poems (Murcia: Now, 2002)
• Ten poems and five prose (Zaragoza: Lola Editorial, 2004)
• Now and always (Córdoba: CajaSur Foundation, 2004)
• Life on fire (Madrid: Visor, 2006)
• Burning. (Cáceres: Universidad Laboral, 2006)
• The White Kingdom (Madrid: Visor, 2010)
• The woman and the vampire (Madrid: Rey Lear, 2010)
• In bed with death: 25 funeral poems (Seville: The Island of Siltolá, 2011)
• Holiday notebook (Madrid: Visor, 2014)
• Three poets one afternoon at eight (Leon: Antonio Pereira Foundation, 2016)
• Autumn Bloc (Madrid: Visor, 2018)
• After Paradise (Madrid: Visor, 2021)

He grouped his complete poetry under the title Los mundos y los días (Madrid: Visor, 1998), which has known successive extensions and reissues (2007, 2012 and 2019). The volume Complete Haikus. 1972-2018 (Madrid: editorial Los Libros del Mississippi, 2019) of which two years later, a corrected, expanded and improved 2nd edition sees the light, now entitled Complete Haikus. 1972-2021 (Madrid: Los Libros del Mississippi editorial, 2021) which includes more than 20 unpublished haikus, compared to the first edition; and Complete songs. 1980-2008 (Madrid: Reino de Cordelia, 2019) collected his contributions to these genres.

Essays

• Spanish flowers of varied cavalry: Raimundo Lulio, Alfonso X, Don Juan Manuel (Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1975)
• Need of myth (Barcelona: Planet, 1976)
• Museum (Barcelona: Antoni Bosch, 1978)
• The hero and his masks (Madrid: Mondadori, 1991)
• Etcetera (Seville: Renaissance, 1993)
• Bazaar (Zaragoza: Lola Editorial, 1995)
• Reading album (Madrid: Huerga y Fierro Editores, 1996)
• Smoke signals (Valencia: Pre-Textos, 1999)
• Yellow tiles (Madrid: Celeste, 2001)
• From Gilgamés to Francisco Nieva (Madrid: Irreverent Editions, 2005)
• Ninth art (Almeria: Tebeos Collective, 2010)
• Books against boredom (Madrid: Kingdom of Cordelia, 2011)
• Own names (Valladolid: University of Valladolid, 2011)
• History and poetry (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 2011)
• Words with wings (Seville: The Island of Siltolá, 2012)
• Master Lesson: 15 Teachings for Life (Barcelona: Platform, 2014)
• The Ways of Literature (Madrid: Rialp, 2015)
• Books to have a good time (Madrid: Kingdom of Cordelia, 2016)
• Scarface. The cut face gangster (Madrid: Kingdom of Cordelia, 2019)
• More words with wings (Seville: The Island of Siltolá, 2019)
• The golden branch (Seville: Renaissance, 2020)

Narrative

• Paper heroes (Madrid: Anaya, 1990)
• with Alex of the Church: Fragment of novel (Logroño: Alfonso Martínez Galilea Editor, 1996)

Translations

• Hot, Epigrams (1974-1976).
• Euphoration of Calcis, Fragments and epigrams (1976).
• Guillermo (IX Duke of Aquitaine) and Jaufré Rudel, Full songs (1978). Bilingual edition prepared with Miguel Angel Elvira.
• Euripides, Helena. Fenicias. Orestes. Ifigenia in Aulide. Goats. Resoir. Introductions, translation and notes by Carlos García Gual and Luis Alberto de Cuenca.
• Hot, Hymns, epigrams and fragments (1980). Next to M. Brioso Sánchez.
• Anthology of Latin Poetry (1981; 2004).
• Homer, The Odyssey (1982; 1987).
• Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, The guest of the last parties (1984; 1988). Selection and prologue by Jorge Luis Borges. Translation by Jorge Luis Borges, Luis Alberto de Cuenca and Matías Sicilia.
• Jacques Cazotte, The devil in love (1985). Selection and prologue by Jorge Luis Borges. Translation by Luis Alberto de Cuenca.
• Cantar de Valtario (1989). National Translation Award.
• A thousand and a night according to Galland (1988).
• Guillermo IX (Duke of Aquitaine), Full songs (1988). New translation.
• The old man, Images. Filter the Young, Images. Heat, Description (1993). Edition by Luis Alberto de Cuenca and Miguel Angel Elvira.
• Horace Walpole, Hieroglyphics (1995).
• Euripides, Hippolyte (1995). Bilingual edition.
• Apolonius of Rhodes, The journey of the Argonautas. Hot, Himnos (1996). Translation with Carlos García Gual.
• Virgil, Eneida (1999).
• Chrétien de Troyes, The knight of the cart (2000).
• Ramon Llull, Book of the cavalry order (2000).
• Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britania (2004).
• Perrault, Charles 1628-1703. Red Riding Hood (2011) Illustrations by Agustín Comotto, Marta Gómez-Pintado, Ana Juan... [et al.]; translation by Luis Alberto de Cuenca and Isabel Hernández.
• Euripides, Cyclops; Phoenician (2014) introduction, editing and translation of Luis Alberto de Cuenca. Madrid: Higher Council for Scientific Research.
• Perrault, Charles 1628-1703. Cinderella (2012) illustrated by Roberto Innocenti; translation by Luis Alberto de Cuenca.
• Marcel Schwob, The Child Crusade (2012).
• J.B. Priestley, Time and the Conways (2012).
• Shakespeare, William 1954-1616, Macbeth (2015). Illustrations by Raúl Arias. Translation by Luis Alberto de Cuenca and José Fernández Bueno.
• Cavafis, Constantine 1863-1933. Waiting for the barbarians (2016) illustrations by Miguel Angel Martín; translation in verse and prologue by Luis Alberto de Cuenca. Kingdom of Cordelia.
• Mary of France, Lais (2017).

Awards and distinctions

• 1985 - National Criticism Award for the Poetry The silver box.
• 1989 - National Translation Award for The Song of Valtario.
• 2004 - Grand Cross of Isabella the Catholic.
• 2005 - Melilla City International Poetry Award for Life on fire.
• 2008 - Premio Nacional de las Letras Teresa de Ávila.
• 2007 - Madrid Community Culture Award for its literary career.
• 2009 - corresponding academic of the Academy of Good Letters of Granada.
• 2009 - Manuel Alcántara Poetry Award for Evening walk.
• 2010 - Academic number of the Royal Academy of History, with the 28th medal of which he was already a corresponding academic. He entered on February 6, 2011, with an entry speech entitled "History and Poetry".
• 2010 - Poetry Editors Association Award for The White Kingdom.
• 2013 - ABC Cultural & Cultural Ambito Award.
• 2015 - National Poetry Prize for Holiday notebook.
• 2018 - AlumniUAM Award Faculty of Philosophy and Letters.
• 2021 - Federico García Lorca International Poetry Prize.

Collaboration in the press, radio and television

He was a contributor to Nueva Revista, a cultural publication founded by Antonio Fontán that brought together intellectuals from the liberal right.

A well-known cinephile, she participates in discussions on television programs directed and presented by José Luis Garci Qué grande es el cine (1997-2005), broadcast on La 2 de Televisión Española; Black and white cinema (2009-2011), on Telemadrid and LaOtra; and "Classics", aired on 13TV (2021-).

Tertuliano fixed in the radio programs directed and presented by Luis Herrero, At Herrero's house, Cowboys de medianoche and Fútbol esRadio, all of them from the radio station esRadio.

Since the 2013-2014 season, it has had a weekly literature section on Esto me suena on RNE.

Personal life

Great-grandson of the writer Carlos Luis de Cuenca, grandson of General Luis de Cuenca y Fernández de Toro, and son of the Madrid lawyer Juan Antonio de Cuenca y González-Ocampo and Mercedes Prado Estrada, he has lived all his life in the Barrio de Salamanca from Madrid. He has been married three times: with Genoveva García-Alegre Sánchez, whose sacramental nullity was declared by the ecclesiastical authority; with Julia Barella Vigal; and, only civilly, with Alicia Mariño Espuelas in 2000; A common characteristic is that all of them are philologists and teach at the university. He has two children: Álvaro (1976) and Inés (1989).