Mauricio Bacarisse

Mauricio Bacarisse Casulá (Madrid, August 20, 1895 – ibid., February 4, 1931) was a poet, narrator, essayist, translator and collaborator in the Spanish press, cousin of the composer Salvador Bacarisse.

Trajectory

He studied in the capital of Spain, specifically at the Collège de la Société Française (now the French Lyceum). An economic failure of the family jewelry business forced him to abandon his studies and look for work. In 1911 he entered the insurance company La Unión y el Fénix as meritorious. He combined professional work with high school studies and, later, as a free student in the Philosophy section of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Madrid, where he obtained the Extraordinary End of Degree Award in 1922. He held the chair of philosophy by opposition in the institutes of Mahón, Lugo and Ávila.

His first book was El esfuerzo (1917), still in the wake of Modernism and Juan Ramón Jiménez. El paraíso disdained (1928) and Myths (1930) already present forms and themes anchored in the realm of pure poetry and the influence of Ultraism. It was included by Gerardo Diego in the second edition of his anthology Contemporary Spanish Poetry (1934). In 1989 his Complete Poetry was published. His narrative production is reduced to Las tinieblas floridas (1927) and Los terrible amores de Agliberto y Celedonia (1931) (National Literature Award 1930), the work of typically avant-garde technique and content. Today it has, above all, epochal value. A regular at the Café Pombo gathering, he appears portrayed by José Gutiérrez Solana in his famous canvas, Pombo Café Gathering .

As a translator, we can cite The cursed poets and Yesterday and Yesterday, both by Paul Verlaine, and Oedipus the King, by Sophocles (in collaboration with Luis Fernández Ardavín).

He was the cousin of the Spanish composer Salvador Bacarisse Chinoria.