Ramon J. Sender

Ramón José Sender Garcés (Chalamera, Huesca, February 3, 1901-San Diego, January 16, 1982), known as Ramón J. Sender, was a Spanish writer. During the civil war, in which his first wife, Amparo Barayón, and his brother, Manuel Sender, were shot by the rebels, he went into exile. Among his novels were titles such as Mister Witt in the canton , Requiem for a Spanish peasant and Crónica del alba .

Biography

The son of wealthy landowners (his mother was a teacher and his father a town hall secretary), he spent his childhood in the Aragonese towns of Chalamera, Alcolea de Cinca and Tauste, where his father worked. Ramón never managed to tune in to the authoritarian attitude of his father, as he recounts in his novelized memoirs Crónica del alba . At the age of ten (1911) he began high school as a free student; the chaplain of the convent of Santa Clara de Tauste, Mosen Joaquín, directed his studies, of which he was examined at an Institute in Zaragoza. Later, his father sent him to the boarding school of the friars of San Pedro Apóstol de Reus. The family moved to Zaragoza and there he attended the fifth and sixth year of high school, but when the student riots broke out, he was unfairly blamed and all subjects were suspended, so that he had to finish his studies in Alcañiz (Teruel); there he kept working as a pharmacy boy, because he had fallen out with his father.

After finishing high school, in 1918 (at the age of seventeen) he moved to Madrid, alone and without money, so he had to sleep in the open on a bench in the Retiro for three months, washing in the fountains and showering in the showers from the Ateneo, where he went daily to read and write. He began in literature at that age, writing articles and stories that he published under a pseudonym in El Imparcial, El País, España Nueva and La Tribuna, in which her first work appeared, the story Las brujas del compromiso. To complete such a small income, he began to work again as a pharmacist's youth. At that time he enrolled in Philosophy and Letters in Madrid, but he could not sustain that routine and discipline and he abandoned his studies to train himself by reading voraciously in libraries and buying books when he could; he shared that vocation as a writer with his political vocation and revolutionary activities with groups of anarchist workers.

But his father José Sender went to Madrid and took his precocious son out of that life, legally forcing him to return home, since he was a minor. In Huesca he then dedicated himself to directing a newspaper, La Tierra , which was part of the Association of Farmers and Ranchers of Alto Aragón; he was not old enough to direct it, so the nominal direction was carried out by a lawyer friend of his.

Moroccan War

When he turned twenty-one (1922) he had to join the army, where he went from soldier to corporal, from corporal to sergeant, from sergeant to non-commissioned officer and from non-commissioned officer to second lieutenant in the Moroccan war between 1922 and 1924 Upon returning from Morocco free from military service, he joined the editorial staff of the prestigious newspaper El Sol as editor and proofreader from 1924 to 1930. He also collaborated in La Libertad and in the libertarian newspaper Solidaridad Obrera (of the National Labor Confederation) while he was a militant in anarchism, so that he ended up in the Modelo Prison in Madrid in 1927 at the age of twenty-six for his activities against the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. By this time he was already a highly valued journalist, and his novel Imán (1930), based on the war in Morocco, had been translated into several languages. Obtaining the National Prize for Literature in 1935 for Mister Witt in the canton marked his literary consecration.

Civil War

The Civil War caught him spending the summer with his wife, Amparo Barayón, and their two children, Ramón, two years old, and Andrea, six months old, in San Rafael, a Segovian town in the Sierra de Guadarrama. When the insurgents occupied this area, they decided to separate: her wife and children went to Zamora with her family and he riskedly crossed the front line and joined a Republican column that was arriving from Madrid to the Sierra de Guadarrama as a soldier. In October, his wife was shot in Zamora, while he was an infantry non-commissioned officer, according to the Gaceta de Madrid, although Sender did not hear about it until two months later, in December 1936. Little later he had a relationship with Elizabeth Sauzon, with whom he had a son in 1937 —she assured that they got married at the end of 1936— and whom he ended up abandoning. His brother Manuel Sender had been shot on August 13, 1936 in Huesca for the rebels.

When her children were abandoned in the Francoist zone, already in 1937, she went to France and recovered them in Bayonne through the International Red Cross. There he left them under the protection of two Aragonese girls and went to Barcelona, asking to be sent to the Aragon front, on the Segre river, with the anarchist troops of the National Labor Confederation (CNT), but the communists were fighting with the unionists and distrusted Sender, so they did not allow it.

According to Líster, the origin of this distrust would have taken place on October 29, 1936. Enrique Líster recalls that Sender was his chief of staff of the 1st Mixed Brigade on the Villaverde front. At the moment of the greatest intensity of the enemy attack, Líster was about to be surrounded and Ramón J. Sender, considering the fight lost, would have abandoned his post and gone to his apartment in the center of Madrid to rest peacefully. The following day he would have appeared at the Fifth Regiment headquarters on Francos Rodríguez street with a second colonel's star that Líster would have given him before he died. But Líster had not died and would have exposed this ruse with which Sender would seek to achieve an undeserved promotion. Líster's generosity would have prevented him from being court-martialed and his cowardice would have resulted in a drop in the military ranks.

However, for the Hispanist Donatella Pini Moro, the previous narrative is a montage. Her main proof is that two months after the alleged incident, on December 31, 1936, the Bulletin of the First Mixed Brigade glowingly glossed Sender on its front page. The reason for said assembly, after December 31, 1936, would have been Sender's refusal to faithfully follow the communist propaganda guidelines.

In any case, when Sender learned of Amparo's death, he withdrew from the army, marched to Barcelona and from there managed to travel to France and spend two months with his children. The Republican government sent him to the United States to give a series of lectures at universities and other centers to present the cause of the Republic. He then was entrusted with the founding in Paris of a war propaganda magazine entitled La Voz de Madrid and he never returned. He was living in Orsay, near Paris, of the copyrights that he had deposited abroad and although he offered his services to the communists several times, they no longer had him;^{[citation required]} only when Barcelona fell into the power of Franco did he decide to go into exile in Mexico.

Exile

After passing through a concentration camp, he arrived in New York in 1939 and entrusted his children to the West couple; he went alone to Mexico, where he founded and directed Ediciones Quetzal. In this editorial he published several of his novels. In 1942 he returned to the United States with a Guggenheim fellowship. He first was in Santa Fe (New Mexico) and collaborated in a Hispanic-Inter-American research project at the University of New Mexico in Las Vegas. On August 12, 1943, he married again, this time with Florence Hall, an employee of the Inter-American Affairs office of the US Department of State in Washington and had two more children, but constant infidelities on his part caused the dissolution of the marriage. That same year he was named a Corresponding Member of the Hispanic Society of America. During the 1943-1944 academic year he taught at the universities of Denver, Colorado, and Harvard, and in 1944-1945 he taught Spanish literature at Amherst College in Massachusetts. The next two years he spent in New York with his children. In 1946 he became a naturalized American and in September 1947 he took possession of the Chair of Spanish Literature at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, which he held for sixteen consecutive years and where he had the writer Lucia Berlin as a student. He also taught summer courses at other universities (Ohio in 1951, Puerto Rico in 1961 and 1962, Washington in 1967, and Michigan in 1968). In September 1963 he divorced Florence Hall and left Albuquerque, but returned to teaching at the University of Southern California in San Diego between 1965 and 1971. In 1968 he made his first visit to Spain, which he later repeated; but in 1981 he is still in San Diego.

During his stay in the United States, between 1950 and 1954 he suffered from the witch hunt with which the far-right senator Joseph McCarthy wanted to "cleanse the country of reds". Ramón J. Sender was forced to sign a furious anti-communist manifesto in order not to lose his job at the University of San Diego.

Revealing about this last period of his life is the active correspondence he exchanged with the writer Carmen Laforet, whom he met when she traveled to the United States in 1965; There, the greatness and generosity of Sender and the difficult or impossible adjustment of him to the reality of old age are attested.

At this stage his literary production increased considerably. Converted to apolitical so as not to be purged by McCarthy (he would say to Laforet "I only hold a grudge against that little Caesar"), he returned to Spain when he was awarded the Planeta Prize for In the life of Ignacio Morell (1969) (Franco had decreed an amnesty that year for all crimes committed in the Civil War). In May 1974, after the ban on his works was lifted, he returned to visit and declared his intention to return again to establish his residence in his native country. In 1980 he applied from San Diego to recover Spanish nationality and renounce US nationality. He died two years later in the United States, on January 16, 1982.

Work and ideology

His first novels uphold revolutionary ideologies and constitute reports of the agitated social milieu: Imán (1930), a novel about the war in Morocco; Public order, prison novel (1932); Seven Red Sundays, based on the history of the Spanish anarchist movement (1932); Viaje a la aldea del crimen (1935) on the government repression against the libertarian day laborers of Casas Viejas and Mister Witt in the canton (1935), on the cantonalist movement in Cartagena led by Roque Barcia, for which he received the National Literature Award. He co-founded on February 11, 1933, 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 Soviet Union.

In 1935 he published a magazine called Tensor of literary information and communist orientation during the months of August, September and October.

Florentino Pérez Embid, General Director of Information (in charge of censorship) of the Francoist Ministry of Information and Tourism, shows an ideological profile of Sender in 1956, from the censor side:

Ramón Sender, whom I have met in person, was a fine communist, coming from the petty bourgeois leftist, that is, the masonry-vegetarianism-fraternity sector. For the years of the Republic, a novel of his name was “Seven Red Sundays” or something. It had quite popularity between the “chíbiri” sector and today is almost completely forgotten.

Review of some works

He dedicated works to the subject of the civil war: Counterattack (1938), The King and Queen (1947), The Five Books of Ariadne (1957) and Réquiem por un campesino español (first printed as Mosén Millán in 1953, and then with the final title in 1960), as well as the latest three novels from his ennealogy Crónica del alba (1942-1966), which is also and as a whole an autobiographical novel and bildungsroman or learning novel that describes childhood, adolescence and political commitment of a boy who bears the name of José Garcés (Ramón J. Sender's full name was Ramón José Sender Garcés). The nine books are grouped into three volumes of three short novels each:

• 1. Alba Chronicle, Violent Hypogriph, La Fifth Juliet
• 2: The young man and the heroes, The ounce of gold, The levels of existence
• 3: The terms of omen, The shore where madmen smile, Life begins now

Volume I of the Enealogy begins with the homonymous novel Crónica del alba. The first volume covers the childhood of the protagonist, José Garcés, in an Aragonese town in pre-war Spain, where he met to the great love of his life, Valentina, a love that her parents, with narrow bourgeois criteria, hinder as best they can, but that the boy finds a way to continue through homing pigeons and flag messages. The author sometimes comes close to magical realism when describing an excursion to the castle of Sancho Abarca. The publication of volume I was rejected on May 5, 1956 by Franco's censorship, at the request of the general director, Florentino Pérez Embid, despite the prior approval of the censor reader. In the second book, the boy is an inmate in a Jesuit school, where he befriends the "lay brother", a cordial man who cultivates a certain vanity in his favorite pastime, sculpture. Now the point of view is that of a teenager in love. Pepe meets religion and discovers how important it is. He then returns to his parents' house in Zaragoza; he begins to work as a pharmacist's youth and, despite still being in love with Valentina, he has a relationship with a proletarian girl; he discovers social injustices and unionism. He later he will be involved in the Civil War. ^{[citation needed ]}

The work has been made into movies and television and, along with The Forge of a Rebel by Arturo Barea, it is possibly the best narrative book of Republican literary exile. It also has autobiographical content Monte Odina (1981).

Then he turned to the historical novel and autobiography. Apart from the already mentioned works on the Civil War, sometimes he cultivated American themes, as in Epitalamio del prieto Trinidad (1942) and other times the historical novel, as in The equinoctial adventure of Lope de Aguirre (1964), Byzantium (1958), about the expedition of Roger de Flor's mercenary Almogavars to the Byzantine Empire of Andrónico II Palaiologos in the middle of the Middle Ages, Carolus Rex (1963), about the reign of Charles II of Spain, or The Teenage Bandit (1965), about the outlaw Billy the Kid and his captor, Pat Garrett. El Mechudo y la llorona (1977).

Other of his works are: The affable executioner (1952), In the life of Ignacio Morell, for which he won the Planeta Award in 1969 —and which is considered among his best works—and Nancy's Thesis (1969), a humorous novel whose comedy derives from the contrast between the American mentality and customs and the traditional Spanish mentality and customs, and which, given its success, the author decided to continue with Nancy, doctor in gitanería (1974) and Nancy and the crazy Bato (1974). He also cultivated short stories, which he brought together in the collections Mexicayotl (1940), La llave (1960), Exemplary Novels of Cíbola (1961), Cabrerizas Altas (1966), Cervantes' Chickens and Other Parabolic Stories (1967), The Strange Mr. Photynos and Other American Stories (1968), Novels of the Other Thursday (1969) and Border Stories (1970).

Works

Narrative

1930s

• Imam (1930)
• The verb became sex: Teresa of Jesus (1931)
• O.P. (Public Order) (1931)
• Seven Red Sundays (1932)
• Travel to the village of crime (1934)
• The night of the hundred heads (1934)
• Mister Witt in the canton (1935)
• Proverb of death (1939). In 1947 it was edited under the title The Sphere. In 1969 the final edition appeared The Sphere
• Counterattack (1938)
• The place of a man (1939), revised in 1958

1940s

• Mexicayotl (1940)
• The wind of the Moncloa (1940)
• Alba Chronicle (1942-1966)
  • I - Alba Chronicle. Violent hypocrite. The "Quinta Julieta".
  • II - The mancebo and the heroes. The ounce of gold. The levels of existence.
  • III - The terms of the omen. The shore where the madmen smile. Life begins now.
• Epitalami of the Prieto Trinidad (1942)
• The Sphere (1947)
• The king and the queen (1948)

1950s

• The affable executioner (1952)
• Mosén Millán (1953) (After renamed as Requiem for a Spanish peasant in 1960)
• Byzantium (1956)
• The five books of Ariadna (1957)
• The Laurels of Anselmo (1958)
• Emen Hetan (1958)

1960s

• The key (1960)
• Number of copies of Cíbola (1961)
• The moon of dogs (1962)
• Carolus Rex (1963)
• The fools of the Conception (1963)
• Jubilee in the Zocalo (1964)
• The equinoccial adventure of Lope de Aguirre (1964)
• The teen bandit (1965)
• High Cabrerizas (1965)
• The Hens of Cervantes and other parabolic narratives (1967)
• Three Teresian novels (1967)
• The saturnian creatures (1968)
• Strange Mr. Photynos and other American narratives (1968)
• Novels from the other Thursday (1969)
• Nancy's thesis (1962), followed by:
  • Nancy, D.A. (1974)
  • Nancy and the Crazy Bato (1974)
  • Gloria and vejamen of Nancy (1977)
  • Epilogue to Nancy: under the sign of Taurus(1979)
• Night of the 14th (1969)
• In the life of Ignacio Morell (1969)

1970s

• Border records (1970)
• Zu, the amphibian angel (1970)
• The Beforeala (1971)
• Tanit (1972)
• The fugitive (1972)
• Tupac Amaru (1973)
• A Virgin knocks at your door (1973)
• Cronus and the lady with rabo (1974)
• The three deaf (1974)
• The table of the three moiras (1974)
• La Efemérides (1976)
• Arlene and gay science (1976)
• The gold fish (1976)
• Yaurí elongate (1977)
• Mechudo and llorona (1977)
• Adela and I (1978)
• The survivor (1978)
• Solanar and lucernario aragoneses (1978)
• The immobile look (1979)
• Why do whales kill themselves? (1979)

1980s

• Ramú and the enabling animals (1980)
• Doll in the vitrine (1980)
• Monte Odina (1980)
• The zodiacal in the park (1980)
• A fire in the night (1980)
• The Cisterna de Chichen Itzá (1981)
• Chandra in the Plaza de las Cortes (1981)
• Orestíada de los pengüinos (1981)
• The bad bear (1981)
• The crime of the three ephesians (1981)
• The rider and the night mare (1982)

Posthumous works

• Secret X-ray album (1982)
• Hughes and eleven black (1984)
• Cube (1985)

Essay

• The religious problem in Mexico; Catholics and Christians (1928)
• Madrid-Moscow, travel narratives (1934)
• Moscow Charter on Love (1934)
• Unamuno, Valle Inclán, Baroja and Santayana (1955)
• Examination of wits. The nineties. (1961)
• Valle Inclán and the difficulty of the tragedy (1965)
• Tests on the Christian violation (1967)
• Three examples of love and a theory (1969)
• America before Columbus (1930)
• Mass theater (1932)
• Proclamation of the smile (1934)

Theater

• The key (“theatre of war or urgency”).
• The secret (“theatre of war or urgency”).
• The photograph (“theatre of war or urgency”).
• The house of Lot (“theatre of war or urgency”).
• Hernán Cortés (1940).
• The Diantre, tragicomedia for cinema according to a story by Andreiev (1958).
• Antophogastas, where marijuana grows (1967).
• Don Juan in the manceby, liturgical drama in four acts (1968).
• Where marijuana grows.
• The Laurels of Anselmo (1958) “Scenic novel”.
• Jubilee in the socket (1966) “Scenic novel”.

Lyrical

• Migratory images (1960)
• Harmonizing Book of Poetry and Mushroom Memories (1973)