Tomas de Iriarte

Tomás de Iriarte y Nieves Ravelo (Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife, September 18, 1750-Madrid, September 17, 1791), Spanish fabulist, translator, playwright and poet of the Enlightenment and neoclassicism, he was also an amateur musician, brother of the diplomats Bernardo de Iriarte and Domingo de Iriarte and nephew of the humanist, bibliographer and poet Juan de Iriarte.

Biography

Iriarte came from a highly educated family, several of whose members distinguished themselves as writers and humanists, well-known Spanish aristocrats. He was born in Puerto de la Cruz, on the island of Tenerife, on September 18, 1750, the son of Bernardo de Iriarte Cisneros and Bárbara Cleta Marcelina de las Nieves-Ravelo and Hernández de Oropesa. His family, however, was not from the Canary Islands, but from the Basque Country, since his grandfather, Juan de Iriarte y Echeverría, was a nobleman from Oñate. However, the service to the Crown, typical of the Iriarte family, took his father to Puerto de la Cruz.

Tomás moved to Madrid at the age of fourteen along with his uncle Juan de Iriarte. He studied the Greek and French languages under his direction and, being already familiar with Latin and a scholar of Castilian literature, he succeeded his uncle in his position as official translator of the first Secretary of State, after his death, in 1771. From that year until 1774 were, for Iriarte, the most tiring of his life, since in addition to the tasks of his job, the arrangement of his uncle's library and papers, the translation or composition of the numerous dramas he wrote, the translation of those appendices and other little works (mostly poetic) that he wrote for his own pleasure, such as a little Latin and Spanish poem that he printed on the occasion of the birth of the infante don Carlos (who would eventually be Carlos III), in 1777, he took care of the three editions of his uncle's Grammar, which he recognized very carefully, and of the compilation and publication of the two volumes of loose works of that writer, translating many of the epigrams that are inserted there, some of the Latin poems and others various essays.

His literary career began as a translator for French theater. He also translated the Poetic Art of Horace.

Tomás de Iriarte was the first playwright who managed to come up with a formula that united the demands of literary Neoclassicism writers with the tastes of the public. In 1770 he had published his comedy Make We Do, a comedy of character that portrays a "fachenda", the perfect busybody who never really does anything. La librería, written in 1780, was not released until 2018: it is a comedy in one act, with something of a farce of manners but with the peculiarity of being written in prose, a form that will not be repeated again its author in the following works, which follow the typical versification system of comedies: octosyllabic romance with a rhyme in each act. In 1788 he premiered The Pampered Gentleman . Iriarte repeated the formula and the success with La señorita malcriada, written and published in 1788 and premiered in 1791. With Guzmán el Bueno (1791) he introduced the form of the melologist or scene one-man drama with orchestra accompaniment, theatrical subgenre created by Jean Jacques Rousseau.

As a translator, fortune was not on his side, as his version (1777) of Horacio's Arte poética was much discussed, of which Manuel José Quintana wrote: "The text is reproduced, poetry doesn't." As a satirist, he composed the prose booklet The writers in Lent (1773).

But he is best known for his Fábulas literarias (1782), edited as the "first collection of entirely original fables" in whose prologue he claims to be the first Spaniard to introduce the genre, which led to a long dispute with the one who had been long-time friend, Félix María Samaniego, since the latter had published his collection of fables in 1781, a fact well known to Iriarte. His best-known fable is that of "The two rabbits", This is where the popular expression "they are greyhounds or podencos" comes from, which censures getting entangled in petty discussions, leaving aside the main point of the matter.

Iriarte was above all the prototype of the eighteenth-century courtier, elegant, educated, cosmopolitan and a good conversationalist; He led an intense literary and social life in Madrid. He was one of the most regulars at the gathering at the San Sebastián inn, a friend of Nicolás Fernández de Moratín and, above all, of José Cadalso. With the latter he maintained a long correspondence.

Literature was not the only art that Iriarte mastered. He also became inclined towards the musical realm, specializing in playing the violin and viola. He was also a composer of symphonies (today lost) and of the music for his monologue Guzmán el Bueno . As a consequence of this hobby, he wrote his didactic poem La música (1779) in five songs of silvas, translated into several languages and praised by Pietro Metastasio himself.

“Or how much you get,
Old Hispanic Church!
It's not my song anymore, no, who celebrates you,
Without the same immortal works
From Patiño, Roldán, García, Viana,
De Guerrero, Victoria, Ruiz, Morales,
From Liters, San-John, Durón and Nebra. ”

His idea of poetry was typical of the Enlightenment: "Peoples that lack poets lack heroism; poetry lastingly commemorates great deeds and great virtues."

He died of gout in Madrid on September 17, 1791.