Baltasar Gracián

Baltasar Gracián
Portrait of Baltasar Gracián, Graus, parish church of San Miguel.

Baltasar Gracián y Morales (Belmonte de Gracián, January 8, 1601 – Tarazona, December 6, 1658) was a Spanish Jesuit writer of the Golden Age who cultivated didactic and philosophical prose.

His works include El Criticón, an allegory of human life that is one of the most important novels of Spanish literature, comparable in quality to the Quixote or La Celestina.

His output belongs to the literary current of conceptismo. He forged a highly personal style built from brief sentences, dense, concentrated and polysemic, dominated by wordplay and witty associations between words and ideas. The result is a laconic language, full of aphorisms and capable of expressing a great wealth of meanings.

Gracián's thought is markedly pessimistic, as befits the Baroque period. The world is a hostile and deceptive space, where appearances prevail over virtue and truth. Man is a weak, self-interested and malicious being. A large part of his works are concerned with equipping the reader with the skills and resources that will allow him to make his way among the traps of life. To do so he must know how to make himself valued, be prudent and take advantage of wisdom based on experience; even dissemble, and behave according to the occasion.

All of this has earned Gracián recognition as a precursor of existentialism and of postmodernity. He influenced French freethinkers such as La Rochefoucauld, and later the philosophy of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. However, his vital thought is inseparable from the awareness of a Spain in decline, as can be seen in his maxim:

"In the Golden Age it was plainness that flourished; in this one of yerro, malice" («floreció en el Siglo de Oro la llaneza, en este de yerro la malicia»).

in which the simple wordplay in the use of "yerro" is already evident, since it can refer to error (yerro) or to iron (hierro), in both cases set against the gold and brilliance of earlier ages.

Biography

The Poet Baltasar Gracián, oil painting held in the Museo de Bellas Artes de Valencia, possibly from the first half of the 17th century (perhaps during his stay in Valencia between 1630 and 1636). Although it is a little-known portrait, it has not been questioned that it represents the writer, though its authorship has been, since it has been attributed to Velázquez (whom Gracián praised in his works) or his workshop, or else to his fellow countryman Jusepe Leonardo.

Born in Belmonte de Gracián, very near Calatayud, in 1601, very little is known about his childhood. He was the son of Francisco Gracián Garcés, a native of Sabiñán, where the ancestral house of the Gracián family is still preserved in that town of the province of Zaragoza. It is known that his father was hired by the town council of Ateca to work as a physician in 1604, so the whole family had to move to that town. Everything indicates that he studied letters from the age of ten or twelve in Calatayud, perhaps at the Jesuit college of that town. Around 1617 he must have lived for one or two years in Toledo with his uncle Antonio Gracián, chaplain of San Juan de los Reyes, where he would have learned logic and deepened his knowledge of Latin.

In 1619 he entered the novitiate of the Jesuit Province of Aragon, located in Tarragona, where he was exempted from the two prescribed years of study of the humanities owing to his excellent previous education. In 1621 he returned to Calatayud, where he studied philosophy for two years. From this period dates his esteem for ethics, which influenced all of his literary output. Another four courses of theology at the University of Zaragoza completed his religious formation.

Ordained a priest in 1627, he began teaching humanities at the College of Calatayud. It seems to have been a pleasant period, but a few years later he had serious clashes with the Jesuits of Valencia, where he was transferred in 1630. From there he went to Lérida in 1631 to take charge of the classes in Moral Theology. In 1633 he traveled to Gandía to teach Philosophy at the Jesuit college of the town, and his enmities with his former Valencian fellow religious were renewed.

In the summer of 1636 he returned to Aragonese lands, to Huesca, as a confessor and preacher. This city was of capital importance in the Jesuit's life, since with the support of the erudite patron Vincencio Juan de Lastanosa he was able to publish his first book: El Héroe (1637).

Lastanosa gathered in his house-museum an important literary and artistic circle. The palace of the Huesca nobleman, which was visited by Philip IV, was known for its exquisite gardens, for a superb armory, for its collection of medals and for a magnificent library of nearly seven thousand volumes, an extraordinary number for the time. In this favorable environment, Gracián came into contact with the Aragonese cultural intelligentsia, among whom were the poet Manuel de Salinas and the historian Juan Francisco Andrés de Uztarroz.

In 1639 he arrived in Zaragoza, appointed confessor to the Viceroy of Aragon Francisco María Carrafa, Duke of Nochera, with whom he traveled to Madrid, where he preached. Nevertheless, his stay at Court was disheartening, for although he aspired to prosper within the literary republic of the capital, his ambitions ended in outright disillusionment. Even so, he published his second work there, El Político (1640), and finished the first version of his theoretical treatise on Baroque literary aesthetics, entitled Arte de ingenio, tratado de la agudeza (1642).

From 1642 to 1644 he held the office of vice-rector of the College of Tarragona, where he gave spiritual assistance to the soldiers who would take Lérida in the Revolt of Catalonia (1640). As a result of this campaign he fell ill, and was sent to Valencia to recover. With the help of the magnificent library of the hospital, he prepared a new work, El Discreto (1646), which would be published in Huesca. Back in his Huesca refuge, he taught Moral Theology until 1650. It was in this period that he was able to devote himself most actively to literature. There then appeared the Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia (1647) and the second version of the treatise on wit and the conceit, Agudeza y arte de ingenio (1648).

Portrait of Baltasar Gracián by Valentín Carderera.

He was posted to Zaragoza in the summer of 1650 with the office of Master of Scripture, and the following year he published the first part of his masterpiece: El Criticón. With the exception of El Comulgatorio, Gracián published all of his work without the prescribed permission of the Society, which provoked formal complaints that were raised to the governing bodies of the Jesuits. Such complaints did not dissuade him, to the point that the second part of this work appeared in Huesca. Some Valencian Jesuits, as a consequence of old enmities, interpreted one of its passages as an offense against their persons, which earned him new attacks before the superiors of the Society, who pointed to the scant doctrinal content of his works, improper for a professed Jesuit, since, although all of them deal with Moral Philosophy, it is approached from a profane perspective. Perhaps in order to help clear himself he published, for the first time under his real name, El Comulgatorio (1655), a book on preparation for the Eucharist.

But the appearance in 1657 of the third part of El Criticón brought about his fall from grace. The new Provincial of Aragon, the Catalan Jacinto Piquer, publicly rebuked Gracián in the refectory, imposed on him as penance a fast on bread and water—even forbidding him to have ink, pen and paper—and deprived him of his chair of Scripture at the Jesuit College of Zaragoza. At the beginning of 1658 Gracián was sent to Graus, a village in the Pre-Pyrenees of Huesca.

Shortly afterwards, Gracián wrote to the General of the Society to request admission into another religious order. His request was not granted, but his punishment was mitigated: by April 1658 he had already been sent to carry out several minor duties at the College of Tarazona, today the Hogar Doz. These last setbacks must have hastened his physical decline, for in June he was unable to attend the provincial congregation in Calatayud, and he died shortly afterwards in Tarazona, on December 6, 1658. He was probably buried in the common grave of the college.

Work

In Gracián everything is absorbed by the life of the intellect, so that the affective is practically annulled: hence the harsh tone and the lack of human warmth from which his works frequently suffer. His conception of man (the worst of the beings of creation) and of life (perpetual deception and constant struggle) is negative and purely Baroque: a desengaño (disillusionment). All things have a double value of deceptive appearance and hidden reality. And this fits with reflecting the decline of the Spanish Empire.

His morality is a practical morality, one of combat and oriented toward triumph: one must act without rest, keeping will and intelligence under tension. Prudence, and at the same time distrust and suspicion, are inescapable conditions for this. It is expressed in the three hundred maxims included in the Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia (1647). Since life is struggle, he prepares us for combat by proposing defense as concealment and attack as the uncovering of another's soul; also, a timely retreat is worth more than a brilliant victory.

His style presents the maximum intensification of conceptismo, of which he is even a theorist. Various types of antithesis are constant (also paradoxes, litotes and oxymorons), as is wordplay (amphibologies, etc.), as well as different types of ellipsis, especially zeugma, whose aim is to achieve a dense, rapid and laconic prose. But he is distinctively characterized by three devices: wit (agudeza), allegory (especially prosopopoeia or personification) and humor.

Thematically, in his short works he proposes various human archetypes of the superior man: El héroe (1639), which establishes the conditions necessary to overcome all kinds of practical obstacles; El discreto (1646), which does the same for the courtly sphere; and El político (1640), where he proposes Ferdinand the Catholic as a model.

Viewing Baltasar Gracián's output as a whole, we can observe a close relationship with his biography. From the youthful enthusiasm for the triumph and glory of the exemplary man, shaped in El Héroe, it arrives at the disillusionment of old age and death in the last chapters of El Criticón. This is how he presents himself as a writer in 1637 in the prologue "To the Reader" of El Héroe:

How singular I wish you to be! I undertake to form a giant man with a dwarf book and, with brief periods, immortal deeds. To bring forth a supreme man; this is a miracle in perfection (...)

— El Héroe, prologue "To the Reader"

Two more treatises would continue this line of outlining the perfect man: El Político, which draws such qualities from King Ferdinand the Catholic, and El Discreto, a manual of conduct for man in society, whatever his position in it.

The first known portrait of Gracián, held at the Jesuit college of Calatayud.

On the other hand, Gracián devoted great efforts to elaborating a treatise on Baroque literary aesthetics: the Agudeza y arte de ingenio, which recasts an earlier version entitled Arte de ingenio, tratado de la agudeza. There he theorizes on the "conceit" (concepto) and proposes a new rhetoric based on Baroque praxis that distances itself, in part, from the Aristotelian tradition of the Poetics, since his analysis is grounded in texts, which in turn exemplify a classification of the different types of wit (agudeza) of his own invention.

All of Gracián's work, always concerned with its practical application to the life of man, has moral philosophy as its object. The ideas accumulated in earlier treatises on how to conduct oneself in the world are synthesized and gathered in the most laconic and sententious book of his output, the Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia. With it he culminates the project of "manuals of living" for the complete person, and in it are also probably subsumed planned books—El Discreto speaks of the "twelve gracianes", which would have been titled "El Atento" (The Attentive Man), "El Galante" (The Gallant Man)—that never saw the light.

He was admired by French moralists of the 17th and 18th centuries, and in the 19th century by Schopenhauer, who received the influence of Gracián's thought and translated the Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia into German. This version, very faithful to the spirit of the Aragonese, was known to Nietzsche, who said in one of his letters: "Europe has produced nothing finer or more complicated in matters of moral subtlety". Thanks to them, the work of the Spanish philosopher became an object of study in German universities.

All that remained for him was to try his hand at fiction: to put all his work of rhetorical research at the service of a novel that would at the same time be a treatise on moral philosophy, under the genre he himself called "agudeza compuesta fingida" (feigned compound wit), which amounts to "novelized allegory". This took shape in the three parts of El Criticón, which covers the whole cycle of the life of a man, who must, moreover, overcome the circumstances of the world in crisis of Baroque society.

The last book he would publish, perhaps as a concession to the offices proper to the Jesuit order, which did not look favorably on his treatment of the struggle for life always apart from Christian aid, was El Comulgatorio. It is the only one he published under his real name and that underwent the prescribed review by the censors of his order. However, after the appearance in 1657 of the third part of El Criticón—again without the consent of the Society and under his (by then) well-known pseudonym of Lorenzo Gracián—the Aragonese was confined to a cell and punished with a rigorous fast. The pessimistic hues that El Criticón distills run parallel to his final vicissitude in life.

El Héroe (1637)

First edition of El héroe, Huesca, Juan Francisco de Larumbe, 1637.

El Héroe (Madrid, 1639).

Main article: El Héroe

The title of El Héroe (The Hero) refers to the supreme quality of man in classical antiquity, that is, the Latin virtus or the Greek areté (αρετη). The first of the books published by Baltasar Gracián is a treatise describing the qualities of the exceptional man. Each of the outstanding gifts of which the hero is formed is authorized by mentioning its presence in an eminent historical figure, connecting with the Dicta et facta memorabilia of the Latin tradition of Valerius Maximus. This example serves as the culmination of each of the chapters, called "primores". The term alludes to the etymological sense of this word, deriving it from primus as a noun, that is, "the best", "the first".

The work also recalls Machiavelli's The Prince, since it is a doctrinal of good government, although applied to the sphere of the governance of one's own person. But, in contrast with the Italian writer, this "reason of state of oneself" does not forget to reconcile politics and morality, since in the Spain of the Counter-Reformation the Machiavellian Prince was opposed by a Christian Prince, as proclaimed by the title of the work of his contemporary Diego Saavedra Fajardo, Idea de un príncipe político cristiano (1640).

On the other hand, El Héroe connects with The Courtier of Baldassare Castiglione, although Renaissance courtly manners no longer suffice. In Gracián the courtier also needs cunning, intelligence, good discernment and even dissimulation.

Editions

• Autograph manuscript of El Héroe by Baltasar Gracián (National Library of Madrid, Ms. 6643). Reproduced in: Aurora Egido (ed.), «El Héroe» de Baltasar Gracián. Edición facsímil del autógrafo y de la impresión de Madrid, [Diego Díaz], 1639, edited by Adolphe Coster. Zaragoza, Institución Fernando el Católico, 2001. ISBN 84-7820-629-9.
• Huesca, Juan Francisco de Larumbe, 1637 (National Library of Spain, reference R/41684).
• Madrid, Diego Díaz, 1639 (National Library of Spain, copy R-13.655).
• Amsterdam, Juan Blaeu, 1659.
• Adolphe Coster, Chartres, libraire Lester, 1911.
• Luis Esteso, Madrid, editorial América, 1918.
• Antonio Bernat Vistarini, Palma de Mallorca, José J. de Olañeta ediciones, 2001. ISBN 84-7651-967-2.
• El Héroe (facsimile edition of that of Diego Díaz, Madrid, 1639), prologue by Aurora Egido, Zaragoza, Institución Fernando el Católico, 2001. ISBN 84-7820-600-0.
• El Héroe. Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia, Antonio Bernat Vistarini and Abraham Madroñal Durán (eds.), Madrid, Castalia, 2003. ISBN 84-9740-081-X.
• El Héroe (facsimile edition of that of Juan Francisco de Larumbe, Huesca, 1637), prologue by Aurora Egido, Zaragoza, Institución Fernando el Católico and Government of Aragon, 2016. ISBN 978-84-9911-391-3.

El Político (1640)

1646 edition (Huesca, Juan Nogués) of El Político.

Main article: El Político

In El político don Fernando el Católico, in the form of a thesis that argues that Ferdinand the Catholic was the greatest King of the Spanish monarchy, his political gifts and his virtues are described as an example for emulation by the political man. It is therefore not so much a biography as another treatise of practical morality, only embodied in the greatest prince, in a King.

He builds this text on the generic template of the biographical encomium, characterized as an academic speech before an audience, a model that was widely cultivated in the Renaissance and the Baroque. With it he offers a concrete model of a ruler who stands out above all past monarchs, and who constitutes a mirror in which later ones should be reflected, including Philip IV, in the line of the well-known "mirrors for princes".

Editions

• EL POLITICO/ D. FERNANDO EL CATOLICO/ DE/ LORENZO GRACIAN./ AL EX^MO SEÑOR/ Don Francisco Maria, Carafa, Castrio-/to, y Gonzaga, Duque de Nochera,/ [...]Capitan General en los Rey-/nos de Aragon, y/ Navarra. /Con Licencia, y Privilegio./ En Zaragoça, por Diego Dormer/ Año M. D. XL. Facsimile reproduction in: Aurora Egido, El Político, Zaragoza, Institución Fernando el Católico, 1985. ISBN 8400059166
• Evaristo Correa Calderón, Madrid, Anaya, 1973⁶. ISBN 84-207-0753-8
• El Héroe. El Político. El Discreto. Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia., Arturo del Hoyo (ed.), Barcelona, Plaza y Janés (Clásicos Plaza y Janés. Biblioteca Crítica de Autores Españoles, 54), 1986. ISBN 84-01-90575-3

Arte de ingenio, tratado de la agudeza (1642)

Main article: Arte de ingenio, tratado de la agudeza

Gracián wrote two treatises on wit (ingenio) and agudeza. He published the first of them in Madrid in 1642 under the title Arte de ingenio, tratado de la agudeza. The second appeared in 1648, under the title Agudeza y arte de ingenio. The theory of the conceit that he addresses in this work illuminates the literary output contemporary with Gracián. The genres employed in Gracián's various works are defined here in theoretical terms. It was later recast, revised and expanded in a definitive edition entitled Agudeza y arte de ingenio, published in 1648.

Editions

• ARTE/ DE INGENIO,/ TRATADO DE LA/ AGUDEZA./ En que se explican todos los/ modos y diferencias de/ Conceptos/ POR/ Lorenço Gracian./ DEDICALA/ al Principe Nuestro Señor./ Con Privilegio en Madrid, por Iuan/ Sanchez, Año 1642./ A costa de Roberto Lorenço, merca-/ der de libros. Facsimile reproduction in: Arte de ingenio, tratado de la agudeza (prologue by Aurora Egido), Zaragoza, IFC-Government of Aragon, 2005. ISBN 84-7820-794-5
• Emilio Blanco (ed.), Arte de ingenio, Madrid, Cátedra (series «Letras Hispánicas»), 1998.

El Discreto (1646)

El Discreto (1646).

Main article: El Discreto

This is his first fruit of full maturity. Once again we are dealing with a treatise describing what the man who wishes to become a "person" must be like: a complete gentleman, prudent, shrewd, endowed with good taste and good breeding. By discretion he means the capacity for discernment, which is after all the intelligence to choose the best and to distinguish and value what man needs in order to be a man for all hours and all circumstances.

But now heroic excellence is renounced, being content with helping to improve the man of the world so that he stands out among his fellows. The proposed model is no longer an exceptional being, a hero of fame, a ruler or a king, as was the case in his two previous treatises of similar subject matter. Now it is a matter of training a prudent man who needs many qualities not only to govern, but simply to make his way in society. With time, the pessimism of a Gracián who contemplates the malice of the world has grown sharper. His disillusionment makes the goal of the hero's triumph set out in the first little treatise a utopia. Now it is enough to become a person, that is, to be, in the classical sense, a virtuous man.

In the chapters of this treatise—now called "realces" (enhancements), in keeping with standing out, and no longer being the best, which the "primor" revealed—a great variety of genres are tried out: dialogue, apologue, emblem, satire, fable, epistle, academic discourse or panegyric, among others. In them he uses for the first time the fable or allegory, already creating a module of fiction that would serve the purposes of the "agudeza compuesta fingida", or allegorical novel, which would be his final endeavor. The last of his "realces", which bears no indication of genre, entitled «Culta repartición de la vida de un discreto», shows a scheme dividing the life of man into ages that foreshadows that of his novel El Criticón.

Editions

• EL DISCRETO / DE / LORENZO GRACIAN, / Que publica / DON VINCENCIO IVAN / DE LASTANOSA./ Y / LO DEDICA / AL / Serenissimo Señor, / DON BALTASAR CARLOS /Principe de las Españas. / Y / Del Nuevo Mundo. / Con licencia. /Impresso en Huesca, por Iuan / Nogues, Año 1646. Online facsimile edition
• Miguel Romera Navarro and Jorge M. Furt (critical ed. based on the princeps), Buenos Aires, Academia Argentina de Letras, 1959.
• Aurora Egido (critical ed.), Madrid, Alianza, 1997.
• Wikisource (es), critical edition (see its editorial criteria)

First edition of the Oráculo manual.

Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia (1647)

Main article: Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia

The Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia (1647) represents the synthesis of the earlier didactic-moral treatises. The book consists of three hundred commented aphorisms, and offers a set of rules and guidance for finding one's way in a complex society in crisis.

It has not only interested lovers of literature. Thinkers and philosophers have approached the work from its publication to the present day. The admiration that Arthur Schopenhauer showed for it led him to translate it into German, and his version was the most widely circulated of the Oráculo in that language.

This "art of prudence" written by Gracián has remained relevant even today, as shown by the fact that an English version, entitled The art of worldly wisdom: a pocket oracle, sold more than one hundred fifty thousand copies in the English-speaking world, being presented as a self-help manual for executives. In 1992 it remained eighteen weeks (two in first place) on the Washington Post best-seller list in the Nonfiction/General section.

It has been thought that this work is a mere compilation of sentences from his earlier books, but this is only true, and only in part, of the first hundred aphorisms. Glossing apophthegms from one's own works was a new procedure, since until then it had been reserved for the authority of quotations taken from the classics of antiquity, or at least from authors of recognized prestige. The fact that the Oráculo is an anthology of his maxims indicates that Gracián raises himself to the rank of the authors who made up the literary canon of the time.

The two-part phrase "oráculo manual y arte de prudencia" functions as an antithesis, since oracle has the sense of "a secret emanating from the divinity", and to this term is joined the adjective "manual", that is, "for practical and portable use". The word "arte" is used in the sense of "rules and precepts for doing things rightly", as recorded by the Diccionario de Autoridades. But prudence is set against it, since there are no certain and universal rules for the conduct of man. In conclusion, the book would be a precious and secret manual of rules of practical use for the conduct of man in a conflictive world.

The genre adopted by the Oráculo, unlike the earlier treatises, dispenses with the argumentation and the authority of historical examples that had been customary in El Héroe, El Político or El Discreto. Observation of the world and the application of these counsels in practice suffice to guarantee the validity and usefulness of these worldly oracles.

Its style is the quintessence of Gracián's expressive economy and concision. In this work the greatest intensity of semantic concentration is reached in brief and elliptical phrases, which follow one another in a chain of sentences. This character makes the Oráculo his most difficult work to read, but also the one with the greatest content of ideas, constituting a summa of his earlier thought.

Editions

• ORACULO MANUAL, Y ARTE DE PRUDENCIA. SACADA DE LOS AFORISMOS/ QVE SE DISCURRĒ/ En las obras de/ LORENÇO GRACIAN./ PUBLICALA/ D. VINCENCIO/ IVAN DE LASTANOSA,/ I la dedica/ Al Excelētissimo Señor/ D. LUIS MENDEZ/ DE HARO,/ CONDE DUQUE./ Con licencia: Impresso en/ Huesca, por Iuan No-/ gues. Año 1647. Facsimile reproduction in: Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia (prologue by Aurora Egido), Zaragoza, Institución «Fernando el Católico»-Government of Aragon, 2001 ISBN 84-7820-342-7
• Miguel Romera-Navarro (critical ed. and introductory study), Madrid, CSIC, 1954 (RFE, Anejo LXII). Reissued in 2003¹² ISBN 8400081803
• Benito Pelegrín (ed.), Zaragoza, Guara, 1983. ISBN 84-85303-94-6
• Emilio Blanco (ed.), Madrid, Cátedra (Letras Hispánicas, 395), 1995. ISBN 84-376-1349-3

Agudeza y arte de ingenio. Title page of the Antwerp edition, 1669.

Agudeza y arte de ingenio (1648)

Main article: Agudeza y arte de ingenio

With Agudeza y arte de ingenio, Gracián writes his definitive Baroque literary aesthetics. It is a treatise on rhetoric in which the figures of speech dominant in his time are analyzed.

This work represents the definitive commentary on the conceit and also a theorization of his own earlier and later literary output, and of that of his contemporaries. It is not just another rhetoric, since his analysis of the literary fact starts from examples drawn from texts, which in this version are considerably expanded, and not from a prior set of precepts.

In this revision of his laboriously worked Arte de ingenio, to a large extent a greatly expanded reissue, he included more Castilian translations of Latin texts—above all of Martial—by Manuel de Salinas. But he also reorganized the materials of 1642 and revised, corrected and polished the style.

It is in this treatise that Gracián's definition of the conceit appears:

an act of the understanding that expresses the correspondence found between objects

It is not, strictly speaking, a work on conceptismo, as Menéndez Pelayo conceived it in his Historia de las ideas estéticas en España, since the conceit in Gracián is the expression of a likeness, from a simile to a metaphor, from a dilogy to sustained allegory. And these tropes are used both by writers characterized as "conceptistas" and by the so-called "culteranistas". So much so that the largest number of examples (which support the figures he defines as conceits) are taken from the poetry of Góngora. Moreover, he gives examples from writers not only of the Spanish Baroque, but of all times. And in this way he finds ingenious conceits in the epigrams of Martial, the sentences of Seneca, the aphorisms of Tacitus, the speeches of Cicero or the exempla of Juan Manuel.

Editions

• AGUDEZA/ Y/ ARTE DE INGENIO,/ EN QUE SE EXPLICAN TODOS LOS MODOS Y DIFE-/ rencias de Concetos, con exemplares escogidos de todo lo / más bien dicho assi sacro, como humano./ POR/ LORENÇO GRACIAN./ AUMENTALA el mesmo Autor en esta segunda impresión, con un tratado de los/ Estilos, su propiedad, ideas del bien hablar: con el/ Arte de/ Erudicion y modo de aplicarla; Crisis de los Au-/ tores y noticias de libros./ ILUSTRALA/ EL DOCTOR DON MANUEL DE SALINAS Y LIZANA,/ Canonigo de la Cathedral de Huesca, con saçonadas traduc-/ ciones de los Epigramas de Marcial./ PUBLICALA/ DON VINCENCIO IUAN DE LASTANOSA/ Cavallero y Ciudadano de Huesca, en el/ Reyno de Aragón./ CORONALA/ con su nobilisima protección, el Excelentíssimo Señor/ DON ANTONIO XIMENEZ DE URREA: Conde de Aranda & Grande de España./ Con licencia. Impresso en Huesca, por IUAN NOGUES, al Coso,/ Año MDCXLVIII.
• Agudeza y arte de ingenio, en que se explican todos los modos y diferencias de concetos, con exemplares escogidos de todo lo más bien dicho, así sacro, como humano..., Amberes, en Casa de Geronymo y Iuan Baptista Verdussen, 1669. online facsimile edition
• Evaristo Correa Calderón (ed.), Agudeza y arte de ingenio., Madrid, Castalia (series «Clásicos Castalia»), 1969. (2 vols.)
• Ceferino Peralta, Jorge M. Ayala and José Mª Andreu Celma (eds.), Agudeza y arte de ingenio, Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza-Larumbe (series «Clásicos Aragoneses» Larumbe, no. 31), 2004. ISBN 84-7733-732-2
• Agudeza y arte de ingenio, facsimile edition of the first edition (Huesca, Juan Nogués, 1648), preliminary study by Aurora Egido, Institución «Fernando el Católico»-Government of Aragon, 2007, ISBN 84-7820-739-8

Title page of El Comulgatorio, Antwerp, Jerónimo and Juan Bautista Verdusen, 1669.

El Comulgatorio (1655)

Main article: El Comulgatorio

El Comulgatorio deals with the preparation of the Christian to receive Communion. As its title page reveals, the treatise "contains various meditations so that those who frequent Holy Communion may prepare themselves, receive Communion and give thanks". "Meditations" is the name the Jesuit gives to the chapters of this book, in the line of earlier works, where they were titled "primores" (El Héroe), "realces" (El Discreto), "discursos" (Agudeza y arte de ingenio) or "crisi(s)" (El Criticón). The first chapter or meditation serves for the preparation of the Christian to receive Communion, the second for the act of Communion proper, the third for the fruits obtained from receiving the body of Christ and the fourth for giving thanks. These meditations are divided into points or themes for reflection and, in turn, each point has two parts separated typographically by an asterisk.

With El Comulgatorio Gracián abandons the study of wit and devotes himself to that of the emotions, in line with the spiritual writers of the Golden Age. This is a book of a religious character, very different from those the Aragonese had written until then, both in subject matter and in style. He published it for the first time under his real name and not under that of his brother, "Lorenzo Gracián", or under an anagram such as the "García de Marlones" under which the first part of El Criticón saw the light. El Comulgatorio is more discursive and appeals to the affections. It is closer to sacred oratory than to sententious moral philosophy.

As for the genre of El Comulgatorio, critics are divided between those who think it is a piece of sacred oratory, that is, a sermon, and those who maintain that the work belongs to the genre of devotional books.

Editions

• Baltasar Gracián, El Comulgatorio, Zaragoza, Juan de Ybar, 1655. (National Library of Spain. Shelfmark R/22037.)
• A. Egido (introduction), El Comulgatorio, facsimile edition (Zaragoza, Juan de Ybar, 1655), Zaragoza, Government of Aragon-Institución «Fernando el Católico», 2003.
• Evaristo Correa Calderón (ed.), Madrid, Espasa-Calpe (series Clásicos Castellanos), 1977. ISBN 84-239-3816-6
• Miguel Batllori, Aurora Egido and Luis Sánchez Laílla (eds.), Zaragoza, Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza (series Clásicos Aragoneses Larumbe), 2003. ISBN 84-7733-644-X

El Criticón (1651-1657)

Main article: El Criticón

Title page of the first edition of El Criticón (1651).

The three parts of the Criticón, published in 1651, 1653 and 1657, undoubtedly constitute their author's masterpiece and are one of the summit works of the Spanish Golden Age. In the form of an extensive allegorical novel of a philosophical character, this novel gathers in fictional form the whole literary trajectory of its author. El Criticón combines didactic and moral prose with metaphorical fiction, and thus each "crisi" (chapter) holds a double reading—if not more—on the real and the philosophical planes. In it invention and didacticism, erudition and personal style, disillusionment and social satire are joined.

The work constitutes an extensive allegory of the life of man, represented in his two facets of impulsive and inexperienced (Andrenio) and prudent and experienced (Critilo). These two symbolic characters, in pursuit of Happiness (Felisinda, mother to Critilo and wife to Andrenio), end up traveling the whole known world in pursuit of the learning of virtue which, despite the deception the world commonly offers, will lead them to win immortality through their deeds when death arrives at the end of the novel. It is, therefore, the literary culmination of Gracián's philosophical vision of the world, in which vital disillusionment and pessimism prevail, although the complete person manages to rise above this world of malice.

From the point of view of the genre employed, the work could be seen as a great moral epic: Fernando Lázaro Carreter called it a Menippean fable. It has also been related to the Byzantine novel because of the multitude of vicissitudes and adventures the characters undergo, and to the picaresque novel because of the satirical vision of society shown throughout the pilgrimage of its protagonists Critilo and Andrenio.

First edition of the second part of the Criticón (1653).

Although El Criticón is initially conceived as a Byzantine novel, in which the two pilgrims have as their goal the search for Felisinda, this is soon revealed to be impossible, and with that the structure of the novel takes shape as a series of strung-together episodes, in the manner of the itinerant novel customary in the picaresque. After this disillusionment, the true objective of our protagonists is to attain virtue and wisdom. With that, a faint plot is soon abandoned in order to linger over successive allegorical tableaux that give rise to philosophical reflection from a satirical perspective on the world.

As for its external structure, El Criticón appeared, as we have said, in three installments. In the First Part, subtitled "In the spring of childhood and in the summer of youth", the protagonists meet on the Island of Saint Helena, they recount the life experiences that have brought them there, and they undertake the journey to Spain, beginning with the Court. The Second Part, which appears under the heading "Judicious courtly philosophy in the autumn of manhood", takes place in the lands of Aragon and France. In the Third Part, titled more plainly "In the winter of old age", they enter the lands of Germany and end up in the mecca of the Christian pilgrim, Rome, to be announced to death and reach immortality by crossing the ink waters of fame. The three volumes offer a very remarkable external structural balance. The first two parts consist of thirteen "crisis" each and the third has twelve.

The time of the narrative is configured through a chronological axis marked by the life cycle of man and associated with the seasons of the year, just as it appears sketched in the last chapter of El Discreto. The time of the novelistic fiction progresses in a linear manner, but is crossed by constant digressions and interruptions. In these backwaters a whole allegorical world is described, and they represent a halting of time, very suited to philosophical and moral generalization.

Princeps edition of the third part of El Criticón (Madrid, 1657).

It seems certain that there was a preconceived plan for the work in El Criticón, which can be seen in the fact that the opening and the ending of the work take place on an island, as Klaus Heger pointed out. The same thesis is taken up by Ricardo Senabre, who also points out the existence of structural principles based above all on antithesis. This is already present in the two core protagonists, Andrenio-Critilo, and runs through the whole work, from the different behaviors each of the protagonists shows in certain situations, to the abundance of two-part periods in sentences and even in the figure of speech of amphibology. On the other hand, if we consider the themes running through the work, we find a recurrent antinomy between deception (engaño) and disillusionment (desengaño), the thematic axis that structures the whole narrative.

Finally, Correa Calderón considers that El Criticón is nothing but a series of juxtaposed allegorical tableaux, constituted as moral fantasies, and linked only by the journey of its two protagonists, as happens in the satirical books of the time. Such was the case with works like El Diablo Cojuelo, by Luis Vélez de Guevara, which adopted a structure of small independent allegorical modules, like those strung along the thread of the road of Gracián's two pilgrims.

The author constantly displays a perspectivist technique that splits the vision of things according to the criteria or points of view of each of the characters, but in an antithetical form, and not a plural one as in Cervantes. The novel nevertheless reflects a pessimistic vision of society, with which one of its best readers, the 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, identified. It is a bitter and desolate gaze, although its pessimism harbors a hope in the two virtuous protagonists, who manage to escape the prevailing mediocrity by attaining eternal fame.

Editions

• EL CRITICÓN/ PRIMERA PARTE/ EN/ LA PRIMAVERA/ DE LA NIÑEZ,/ Y EN EL ESTÍO DE LA JUVENTUD./ AUTOR/ GARCÍA DE MARLONES./ Y LO DEDICA/ AL VALEROSO CABALLERO/ DON PABLO DE PARADA, / DE LA ORDEN DE CHRISTO,/ General de la Artillería, y Governa/ dor de Tortosa./ CON LICENCIA./ EN ZARAGOZA, por IVAN NOGUÉS, y a su costa./ Año MDCLI.

• EL CRITICÓN/ SEGUNDA PARTE./ IVYZIOSA CORTESANA/ FILOSOFÍA,/ EN EL OTOÑO DE LA/ VARONIL EDAD./ POR/ LORENZO GRACIÁN./ Y/ LO DEDICA/ AL SERENÍSIMO SEÑOR/ D. IVAN DE AVSTRIA. / CON LICENCIA,/ En Huesca: por Ivan Noguès./ Año 1653./ A costa de Francisco Lamberto, Mercader de Libros./ Vendese en la Carrera de San Gerónimo.

• EL CRITICÓN./ TERCERA PARTE./ EN/ EL INVIERNO DE LA VEJEZ./ POR/ LORENZO GRACIÁN./ Y LO DEDICA/ AL DOCTOR DON/ Lorenço Frances de Vrritigoyti,/ Dean de la Santa Iglesia/ de Siguença. / CON PRIVILEGIO./ En Madrid. Por Pablo de Val. Año 1657./ A costa de Francisco Lamberto, vendese en su casa/ en la Carrera de San Geronimo.

• El Criticón, Lisbon, Henrique Valente de Oliveira, 1st part, 1656; 2nd part, 1657; 3rd part, 1661.
• Tres partes de El Criticón (...), Barcelona, Antonio Lacavallería, 1664.
• Tres partes de El Criticón (...), Barcelona, Antonio Lacavallería, 1682.
• El Criticón, edited by Julio Cejador, Madrid, Renacimiento (series Obras maestras de la Literatura Universal), 1913-1914, 2 vols.
• El Criticón, critical and annotated edition by Miguel Romera Navarro, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 3 vols., 1938, 1939, 1940 (facsimile ed., Hildesheim-New York, Georg Olms, 1978, 2 vols.) Digitized edition in the Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, 2010. Volume one . Volume two . Volume three .

• El Criticón, edition, introduction and notes by Evaristo Correa Calderón, Madrid, Espasa-Calpe (series Clásicos Castellanos, 165-167), 1971, 3 vols.
• El Criticón, edition, introduction and bibliography by Santos Alonso, Madrid, Cátedra (Letras Hispánicas, 122), 1980 (1984, 2nd ed.). ISBN 84-376-0257-2
• El Criticón, edition, bibliography and notes by Elena Cantarino, introduction by Emilio Hidalgo-Serna, Madrid, Espasa-Calpe (Austral, 435), 1998, 840 pp.
• El Criticón, edition and introduction by Carlos Vaíllo, prologue by José Manuel Blecua, Barcelona, Círculo de Lectores, 2000.
• El Criticón (facsimile ed.), prologue by Aurora Egido, Zaragoza, Institución «Fernando el Católico» (C. S. I. C.), 2009, 3 vols. ISBN 978-84-9911-000-4
• El Criticón, critical edition by Luis Sánchez Laílla and José Enrique Laplana; annotation by María Pilar Cuartero, José Enrique Laplana and Luis Sánchez Laílla, Zaragoza, Institución «Fernando el Católico» (C. S. I. C.), 2017, 2 vols. ISBN 978-84-9911-418-7

Other works

Minor works

Preliminary writings in works by others

• Prologue and edition of Predicación fructuosa del padre Pedro Jerónimo Continente, jesuita (1652)
• Prologue and selection of Poesías varias de grandes ingenios españoles, by José Alfay (Zaragoza, Juan de Ibar, 1654).
• Approval of Entretenimiento de las musas, by Francisco de la Torre Sevil (1654).
• Approval of Vida de la infanta Santa Isabel, by Francisco Funes de Villalpando, Marquis of Osera (1655).
• Approval of La Perla. Proverbios morales, by Alonso de los Barros (1656).

Correspondence

Thirty-two complete letters by Gracián have been preserved, addressed to Vincencio Juan de Lastanosa, Andrés de Uztarroz, Manuel de Salinas, or Francisco de la Torre Sevil of Tortosa. We also have letters addressed to his Jesuit superiors and companions.

Most important are those sent to a Jesuit in Madrid in 1646, in which he refers to the battle of Lérida, where he shows himself proud of his valiant intervention. He tells us how many chaplains fell ill or were taken prisoner, and how he had to multiply his work to absolve the soldiers and give them the jubilee on the very front line, like one more combatant.

In these letters, besides providing juicy facts about his biography, he shows himself a writer in a natural style, far removed from the one he himself forged as the vehicle for his literary work. On the other hand, the approvals and prologues mentioned, written in his peculiar conceptista style, are not of so much interest, since one must also take into account their laudatory tone and obligatory formulaic character.

Bibliography of minor writings

• Cartas to the chronicler Juan Francisco Andrés de Uztarroz and to Canon Manuel de Salinas. Ms. V, 171. National Library of Spain, Madrid.
• MOREL-FATIO, A., «Liste chronologique des lettres de Balthasar Gracián dont l'existence a été signalée ou dont le texte a été publié», in Bulletin Hispanique, 1910, XII, pp. 204-206.
• Poesías varias de grandes ingenios españoles, ed. José Alfay, Institución Fernando el Católico, Zaragoza [s.n., 1946].
• Relación [...] sobre el sitio y socorro de Lérida, ed. Carlos Sánchez, Madrid, Carlos Sánchez, 1646. CCPB000418430-0.

Copies:

• Madrid. Real Academia de la Historia 9/3629(30). Formerly: T-55(30). Relacion de los felices sucessos, y vitoria que han tenido las católicas armas de su Magestad, que Dios guarde, gouernadas por el Excelentissimo señor Marques de Leganes, sobre el sitio y socorro de Lerida, Madrid, en casa de Carlos Sanchez, 1646.
• Barcelona. Biblioteca de Cataluña. F.Bon. 2129 [1]

• ROMERA-NAVARRO, M., «Dos aprobaciones de Gracián», Hispanic Review, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Jul., 1940), pp. 257-262. [2]

Editions of his complete works

• Evaristo Correa Calderón. Madrid: Aguilar, 1944.
• Miguel Batllori and Ceferino Peralta. Madrid: Atlas, 1969.
• Emilio Blanco. Madrid, Turner-Biblioteca Castro, 1993, 2 vols. ISBN 84-89794-59-6
• Luis Sánchez Laílla, introduction by Aurora Egido. Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 2001. ISBN 84-239-7893-1
• Santos Alonso. Madrid, Cátedra, 2011. ISBN 978-84-376-2845-5

Style

Arte de ingenio, tratado de la agudeza. Title page of the princeps edition, Madrid, 1642.

Baltasar Gracián's style, generally called "conceptismo", is characterized by ellipsis and the concentration of a maximum of meaning in a minimum of form, a procedure that Gracián takes to its extreme in the Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia, composed entirely of nearly three hundred commented maxims. In them words are constantly played with, and each sentence becomes a riddle through the most diverse mechanisms of rhetoric.

If the Mannerists, such as Herrera or Góngora, took as their model the oratorical style of Virgil and Cicero, Gracián—a Baroque writer—adopts the laconic style of Tacitus, Seneca and Martial, his fellow countryman. This does not mean, however, that his is a plain style, in the manner of Cervantes. Difficulty is the patrimony both of Gongorist cultists and of conceptists. The difference lies in the fact that the effort of comprehension required of the reader of the latter demands deciphering the multiple meanings hidden behind each linguistic expression. Syntactic concision, moreover, frequently forces the reader to supply elided elements, whether words with lexical meaning or logical connectors.

Autograph manuscript of El Héroe corresponding to primor 5, "Gusto relevante" (Outstanding Taste), which in its printed edition reads:

[...] children of capacity, inherited equally in excellence. A sublime wit never bred a groveling taste.

There are perfections that are suns and perfections that are lights. The eagle courts the sun, the frozen little worm loses itself for the light of a lamp, and the height of a man's worth is measured by the elevation of his taste.

It is something to have it good, it is much to have it outstanding. Tastes are caught through communication, and it is good fortune to come upon one who has it superlative.

Many take it for happiness—it must be borrowed—to enjoy what they desire, condemning the rest as unhappy, but these take their revenge by the same edges, so that half the world is to be seen [...]

— El Héroe, primor 5 (Wikisource).

Gracián's prose is made up of independent, brief clauses separated by punctuation marks (comma, period and semicolon) and not by subordinating links. Juxtaposition and coordination therefore predominate. The scarce presence of subordinate clauses in complex periods, far from making comprehension easier, makes it arduous; it becomes necessary to supply the logic of the relations between the sentences, deducing it from the sense, from the idea being expressed, which is not always easy. Gracián's depth, then, lies in the conceit and in elusion, not in syntax.

Expressive concision manifests itself in the frequent deixis of elements with an anaphoric function that are understood from the preceding linguistic context or because (as in the frequent case of connectives) the logical relation is taken for granted and left to the intelligence of the reader. Thus the ellipsis of the verb "ser" (to be) is common, as can be seen in his well-known maxim «Lo bueno, si breve, dos veces bueno. Y aun lo malo, si poco, no tan malo» ("The good, if brief, twice good. And even the bad, if little, not so bad") (Oráculo..., 105.), which is moreover a declaration of intent that can be applied to the laconism of his diction. Very frequent, with this same aim, is the use of zeugma. The ellipsis of the noun also occurs. Here we see an example of a noun omitted in zeugma: «Dieron luego conmigo en un calabozo cargándome de hierros, que este fue el fruto de los míos» ("Then they threw me into a dungeon, loading me with irons [hierros], for this was the fruit of mine"—my yerros, errors, from errar, to err, is understood: El Criticón, 1st part, crisi IV).

Semantic richness, almost always polysemic, reaches in Gracián the greatest intensity it had attained until then in Spanish literature. The main denotative meaning will never suffice; all simultaneous senses must be sought. Dilogy, semantic ambivalence, and double and even triple meanings are constant in Gracián's work. Not in order to create ambiguity, but to offer all the possibilities of knowledge and perception of the world. The double interpretation on the real plane and the allegorical or philosophical plane is what gives his work an extraordinary density. And this happens at the morphological or lexical level as well as at the sentence and text level. Thus, frequent examples of double meanings in his work are «río» (from 'reír', to laugh—"I laugh"—and 'river') or «yerro» ('metal', i.e. iron, and 'error').

In Gracián's language the verb and the noun dominate, in contrast to the scarce use of the epithet, since "the laconic style has them banished by the first law of attending to intension, not to extension" (Agudeza y arte de ingenio, discurso LX). Many of his sentences, especially in the Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia, begin with a verb, sometimes preceded by the negative particle. On many occasions the verb becomes the axis of the sentence.

On the other hand, Gracián constantly uses antithesis, contrast and paradox, reinforcing them in phrases and clauses of two-part structure, which are set against each other. This symmetry leads to an agile rhythm, a binary prose, similar to that used by Friar Antonio de Guevara in the 16th century. Notable is how he builds oppositions through the use of paronomasia, as can be seen in the doublets cielo-cieno (sky-mud), tálamo-túmulo (marriage bed-tomb), joyas-hoyas (jewels-pits), vestal-bestial or gusto-gasto (pleasure-expense). Retruécano itself often serves to express contrast: man "no longer eats to live, but lives to eat" (Criticón, I, X); the Spaniards "have such virtues as if they had no vices, and have such vices as if they had no virtues" (Criticón, II, III); "so there is everything in the world: some who, being old, want to seem young, and others who, being young, want to seem old." (Criticón, III, I).

Another stylistic feature of Gracián's prose is the search for lexical precision, for which on many occasions he resorts to the coined neologism. And it is in this field that the noun appears, the true touchstone of Gracián's style, to the detriment of adjectives, adverbs and subordinating links. Thus terms appear such as «conreyes», «descomido», «desañar», «despenado» or «reconsejo», new to the stock of the Spanish lexicon.

At other times he resorts to senses that had fallen into disuse and that he brings to the foreground (plausible=admirable, plático=practical, brujulear=to sound out someone's character, sindéresis=natural capacity for correct judgment, etc.) or to learned words brought back to enrich the language, such as «crisis» (estimation, judgment), «especiosidad» (perfection), «delecto» (capacity for discernment), «deprecar» (to ask insistently), «exprimir» (to express), «convicio» (offense), «intensión» (effectiveness). At other times he brings in proper names to create common words: «su minerva» (his intelligence or wisdom). Finally, we find Aragonese words that contribute to increasing the wealth of Spanish vocabulary: «podrecer» (to rot), «defecarse» (for wine to settle out its impurities, and by extension, to be purified, to be perfected), among others.

Very characteristic is the etymological or falsely etymological polysemy in nouns, based on outlandish etymologies of his own invention. Thus, of God (Dios) he will say "that from giving (dar) (...) the Lord took his Most Holy and Most August name of Dí-os in our Spanish tongue". In the same place (Agudeza..., XXXII), he provides another similar case: "A grave and severe man was weighing the time that comedies (comedias) steal in Spain, and he called them come-día and come-días" (day-eater and days-eater). At other times he uses procedures of derivation and composition to create unusual nominal neologisms, such as «espantaignorantes», «arrapaltares», «marivenido», reaching extremes of linguistic monstrosity, in cases such as «serpihombre» (serpent-man) or «monstrimujer» (monster-woman). The reverse process to composition also occurs, in examples such as «casa y miento» ("I marry and I lie", a perverse interpretation of the lexical roots of 'casamiento', marriage), or «cumplo y miento» ("I comply and I lie", from 'cumplimiento', compliment).

His use of maxims from the Greco-Latin and humanistic tradition and also from the popular stock of proverbs is well known, but always bringing both onto his own ground, reinterpreting their meaning or adapting it to the times and, in the case of the sayings of proverbial folklore, twisting their wording and manipulating them to his liking. Thus, one of his most apt manipulations of the common stock suits the difficulty and concision of his style: his phrase «A pocas palabras, buen entendedor» ("For few words, a good understander"), which gives a radically different meaning to the popular proverb, since it justifies his elliptical style by the intelligence of the readers who are to approach Gracián's work.

Gracián's prose is not the product of spontaneity, for the study of the autograph of El Héroe carried out by Romera-Navarro shows that he constantly corrected and polished his style. He elaborates the form as much as he cares for the ideological content, which shows his clear awareness as a writer. The search for originality and the rejection of hackneyed language make his an art for the few, distinguished and elevated; for as he says in the prologue—although under the name of Lastanosa, it is undoubtedly from his pen—"To the Readers" of El Discreto:

I say, then, that one does not write for everyone, and that is why it is done in such a way that the arcane quality of the style increases veneration for the sublimity of the matter, the mysterious manner of saying things making them more venerated. For neither Aristotle nor Seneca spoiled the two languages, Greek and Latin, with their recondite writing.

— Prologue "To the Readers", El Discreto.

Bibliography

• ALONSO, S., «Introducción» to his ed. of El Criticón, Madrid, Cátedra (series Letras Hispánicas, 122), 1980 (1984, 2nd ed.). Pp. 11-58. ISBN 84-376-0257-2
• ——, Tensión semántica (lenguaje y estilo) de Gracián, Zaragoza, Institución Fernando el Católico-CSIC, 1981.
• ANDREU CELMA, J.Mª., El ingenio como razón moral (licentiate thesis, Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca), Salamanca, 1986, 238 fol.
• ARANGUREN, J.L., «La moral de Gracián» (1958), in J. L. Aranguren, Estudios literarios, Madrid, Gredos, 1976. ISBN 84-249-0681-0 pp. 113-144 (contains «Anexo: nota sobre El Criticón», pp. 144-150).
• ——, «Baltasar Gracián. Su filosofía de la vida y su estética literaria», in Creación. Estética y teoría de las artes, 1990, pp. 82-83 (reissued as «Prólogo: Baltasar Gracián. Su filosofía de la vida y su estética literaria», in Gracián Hoy, Madrid, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid: Cuaderno Gris monographic no. 1, series III, November 1944-June 1995, pp. 5-6.
• AYALA, Jorge M., Baltasar Gracián: vida, estilo y reflexión, Madrid, Cincel, 1988.
• AZORÍN, pseud. [José Martínez Ruiz], «Baltasar Gracián», in Lecturas Españolas, Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1957 (8th ed.), pp. 54-58.
• BATLLORI, M. and C. Peralta, Baltasar Gracián en su vida y en sus obras, Zaragoza, Institución Fernando el Católico-CSIC, 1969.
• BLANCO, M., Les rhétoriques de la pointe. Baltasar Gracián et le conceptisme en Europe, Paris, Librairie Honoré Champion, 1992.
• BOUILLIER, V., «Baltasar Gracián et Nietzsche» (1926), trans. «Baltasar Gracián y Nietzsche», in Cuaderno Gris, II, 2 (1991), pp. 22-38 (reissued in Gracián hoy, 1994-95, pp. 22-39).
• CANTARINO, E., «Bibliografía de y sobre Baltasar Gracián», in J. Ayala (coord.), Baltasar Gracián. Selección de estudios, investigación actual y documentación, Barcelona (Anthropos, no. 37, March 1993), pp. 199-220.
• ——, «Bibliografía graciana (1975-1995)», Philosophia, no. 4, January 1997, Madrid. ISSN 1135-4550 [3]
• ——, «Bibliografía sobre Baltasar Gracián (1996-1998)», Contrastes, volume IV, 1999, Málaga, Universidad de Málaga. ISSN 1136-4076, pp. 235-244. [4]
• ——, «Bibliografía sobre Baltasar Gracián (1990-2000)», Boletín de la Fundación Federico García Lorca, Year XIV, number 29-30 (May 2001). ISSN 0214-3771. pp. 301-326. [5]
• CHEVALIER, M., «Conceptisme, culteranisme, agudeza», in Revue XVII Siècle, XL, 160 (1988), pp. 281-287 (trans. «Conceptismo, culteranismo, agudeza», in Cuaderno Gris, II, 11 (1994), pp. 16-23; reissued in A. Moraleja (ed. and coord.), Gracián Hoy, Madrid, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid: Cuaderno Gris monographic no. 1, series III, Nov. 1944 - Jun. 1995, pp. 107-115.
• CORREA CALDERÓN, E., Baltasar Gracián. Su vida y su obra, Madrid, Gredos, 1970.
• ——, «Introducción» to his ed. of El Criticón (3 vols.), Madrid, Espasa-Calpe (series Clásicos Castellanos, 165-167), 1971. P. XLIII.
• COSTER, A., «Baltasar Gracián (1601-1658)», Révue Hispanique, XXIX, 76 (1913), 347-754. There is a Spanish translation: Adolphe Coster, Baltasar Gracián, trans. Fernando del Arco, Zaragoza, Inst. Fernando el Católico-CSIC, 1947. Download, 6.7 MB.
• DOMÍNGUEZ LASIERRA, J., «El año en que Gracián fue best-seller en los USA», Turia, 54 (November 2000), pp. 149-154.
• EGIDO, A., «Baltasar Gracián y la Agudeza», in Enciclopedia temática de Aragón, Zaragoza, Moncayo, 1988, vol. 7, pp. 194-205.
• EGIDO, A. and M. C. Marín Pina (coord.), Baltasar Gracián: Estado de la cuestión y nuevas perspectivas, Zaragoza, Institución Fernando el Católico, 2001. ISBN 84-7820-640-X Complete download or by chapters.
• EGIDO, A., F. Gil Encabo and J. E. Laplana (eds.), Baltasar Gracián, IV Centenario (1601-2001). Actas I Congreso Internacional «Baltasar Gracián: pensamiento y erudición», Huesca, 23-26 de mayo de 2001, Zaragoza, Institución Fernando el Católico-CSIC, 2004, vol. I. ISBN 8478207297
• GAMBIN, F., Estilo y prudencia. Filosofia e pratica nel pensiero di Baltasar Gracián (Tesi di laurea, Università di Padova), Padua, 1986, 241 fol.
• Gracián y su época. Actas de la I Reunión de Filólogos Aragoneses. (Zaragoza y Calatayud, 28 de febrero, 1 y 2 de marzo de 1985), Zaragoza, Institución Fernando el Católico-CSIC, 1986. Individual download by chapters.
• GRANDE, M. and R. Pinilla (eds.), Gracián: barroco y modernidad, Madrid, Universidad Pontificia de Comillas, 2004. ISBN 84-8468-123-8
• GUARDlOLA ALCOVER, C., Baltasar Gracián: recuento de una vida, Zaragoza, Librería General, 1980.
• HEGER, K., Baltasar Gracián. Estilo y doctrina, Zaragoza, Institución Fernando el Católico-CSIC, 1982.
• HIDALGO-SERNA, E., El pensamiento ingenioso en Baltasar Gracián. El «concepto» y su función lógica, Barcelona, Anthropos (Autores, Textos y Temas, Humanismo, 2), 1993.
• IZUZQUIZA, I., «Baltasar Gracián y el pensamiento europeo», in Aragón en el mundo, Zaragoza, Caja de Ahorros de la Inmaculada, 1988, pp. 241-248.
• JIMÉNEZ MORENO, L., «Presencia de Baltasar Gracián en filósofos alemanes: Schopenhauer y Nietzsche», in J. Ayala (coord.), Baltasar Gracián. Selección de estudios, investigación actual y documentación, Barcelona, 1993 (Anthropos, no. 37, March 1993), pp. 125-138.
• ——, «El modo filosófico de Gracián», included in: «Crisis de la modernidad en el pensamiento español: desde el Barroco y en la europeización del siglo XX», in Anales del Seminario de Historia de la Filosofía, vol. 10, Madrid, Complutense, 1993, esp. pp. 103-106.
• MARAVALL, J.A., «Antropología y política en el pensamiento de Gracián» (1958); «Un mito platónico en Gracián» (1959), in Estudios de historia del pensamiento español, Madrid, Cultura Hispánica, 1984 (2nd ed.), pp. 333-373; pp. 375-383.
• MORALEJA, A. (ed. and coord.), Gracián Hoy, Madrid, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid: Cuaderno Gris monographic no. 1, series III, Nov. 1944 - Jun. 1995.
• NEUMEISTER, S. and D. Briesemeister (eds.), El mundo de Gracián. Actas del Coloquio Internacional (Berlín, 30 y 31 de mayo, 1 de junio de 1988), Berlin, Colloquium Verlag, 1991.
• NEUMEISTER, S., «Gracián filósofo», in M. García Martín (ed.), Estado actual de los estudios sobre el Siglo de Oro, II, Salamanca, Universidad de Salamanca, 1993, pp. 735-739.
• ——, «Gracián en Alemania», in J. Ayala (coord.), Baltasar Gracián. Selección de estudios, investigación actual y documentación, Barcelona (Anthropos, no. 37, March 1993), pp. 121-125.
• PELEGRÍN, B., Éthique et esthétique du baroque. L'espace jésuitique de Baltasar Gracián, Arles, Actes Sud/Hubert Nyssen, 1985.
• ——, «De una poética de la escritura a una escritura poética (De la Agudeza y arte de ingenio a El Criticón)», in Teoría del discurso poético, Toulouse, Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail, 1986, pp. 195-206.
• ——, «Física y metafísica del estilo de Baltasar Gracián», in J. Ayala (coord.), Baltasar Gracián. El discurso de la vida. Una nueva visión y lectura de su obra, Barcelona, Documentos «A»/Genealogía Científica de la Cultura (Anthropos, no. 5, February 1993), pp. 46-67.
• PERALTA, C., «Gracián y Europa», in: Baltasar Gracián. Selección de estudios, investigación actual y documentación, 1993, pp. 76-83.
• QUIRÓS CASADO, A., Baltasar Gracián: la filosofía del desengaño en el Barroco español (licentiate thesis, Universidad Complutense), Madrid, 1986.
• RALLO, A., «Arte de discreción. El ensayismo ético de Baltasar Gracián», in: La prosa didáctica en el siglo XVII, Madrid, Taurus, 1988, pp. 90-113.
• RAMOS FOSTER, V., Baltasar Gracián, Boston, Twayne Publishers, 1975, 171 pp.
• ROMERA NAVARRO, M., Estudios sobre Gracián, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1950.
• SANTOS ESCUDERO, C., «Gracián incluido en Bibliografía Hispánica de Filosofía», in: Pensamiento, XL, 179 (1989), pp. 297-383.
• SIMÓN DÍAZ, J., «Siglos de Oro: Gracián», in: Manual de bibliografía de la literatura española, Madrid, Gredos, 19803, pp. 358-366.
• SOBEJANO, G. «Gracián y la prosa de ideas», in: F. Rico (dir.), Historia y crítica de la literatura española, III, Barcelona, Crítica, 1983, esp. pp. 904-970.
• VAÍLLO, C., «Gracián y la prosa de ideas», in: F. Rico (dir.), Historia y crítica de la literatura española, First Supplement, III, Barcelona, Crítica, 1992, esp. pp. 488-513.
• VÉLEZ ESTRADA, J., «Gracián: ¿símbolo o alegoría?», in: Diálogos, XX, 46 (1985), pp. 161-185.
• VILLENA, F. de, «La inmortalidad en Gracián», in: Anthropos, 104 (1990), p. XXXI.
• VIVERO SEOANE, J.C., Método y pensamiento en Baltasar Gracián (doctoral thesis, Universidad Complutense), Madrid, 1991, 336 fol.
• WARDROPPER, N.P., «Gracián sobre la erudición y la agudeza», in: Baltasar Gracián. El discurso de la vida, 1993, pp. 75-80.
• WILMAT, K.D., The philosophy of education of Baltasar Gracián (Dissertation at the University of Kansas), Lawrence, 1979, 346 fol.
• YNDURÁIN, Francisco, «Gracián, un estilo», Homenaje a Gracián, Zaragoza, Institución «Fernando el Católico», 1958, pp. 163-188.

External links

Further information online

• Baltasar Gracián portal at the Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, produced by Luis Sánchez Laílla and José Enrique Laplana Gil, of the University of Zaragoza.
• Aurora Egido and María del Carmen Marín Pina (coord.), Baltasar Gracián: Estado de la cuestión y nuevas perspectivas, Zaragoza, IFC-Government of Aragon, 2001. ISBN 84-7820-640-X Electronic version in PDF format, 0.9 MB.
• Elena Cantarino's page on Baltasar Gracián.
• IV Centenario del nacimiento de Baltasar Gracián .
• Elena Cantarino and Emilio Blanco, «Balance general del IV Centenario de Baltasar Gracián», Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez, no. 33-2, 2003: Le temps des saints. Notices scientifiques, pp. 314-326.
• Emilio Blanco, Baltasar Gracián, Nassa N.T. Siglo XXI.S.L., 2001 Archived March 11, 2018, at the Wayback Machine ISBN 84-9714-005-2
• Baltasar Gracián in the Gran Enciclopedia Aragonesa Archived February 12, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
• Baltasar Gracián. Francisco Álvarez Hidalgo's page on Baltasar Gracián Archived September 10, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
• El carácter de Baltasar Gracián
• La actitud política de Gracián
• German-language page devoted to Gracián
• Conceptos. Revista de Investigación Graciana. Directed by Emilio Blanco.
• Various authors, Homenaje a Gracián, Zaragoza, Institución «Fernando el Católico», 1958. (Allows complete download or by articles)
• —, Gracián y su época. Actas de la I Reunión de Filólogos Aragoneses. Zaragoza y Calatayud, 28 de febrero y 1 y 2 de marzo de 1985, Zaragoza, Institución «Fernando el Católico», 1986. ISBN 84-00-06413-5 (likewise).
• Biblioteca Virtual Baltasar Gracián, studies on the author digitized by the Institución «Fernando el Católico».

Digitized works of Gracián

• Online works of Gracián digitized by the Biblioteca Virtual Cervantes.
• Digitized works of Baltasar Gracián in the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica of the National Library of Spain.
• Digitized works of Baltasar Gracián at Project Gutenberg.

Gracián bibliography

• Elena Cantarino, «Bibliografía graciana (1975-1995)», Philosophia, no. 4, January 1997, Madrid. ISSN 1135-4550.
• Elena Cantarino, «Bibliografía sobre Baltasar Gracián (1996-1998)», Contrastes, volume IV, 1999, Málaga, Universidad de Málaga. ISSN 1136-4076, pp. 235-244.
• Elena Cantarino, «Bibliografía sobre Baltasar Gracián (1990-2000)», Boletín de la Fundación Federico García Lorca, year XIV, number 29-30, May 2001. ISSN 0214-3771. pp. 301-326.
• Luis Sánchez Laílla and José Enrique Laplana Gil, «Bibliografía de Gracián posterior al IV centenario», Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, 2009.
• Aurora Egido et al., «Gracián Virtual». [Archive of digital materials on the author], University of Zaragoza.