Eduardo Marquina

Eduardo Marquina
Photographed by Audouard (c. 1911)
Born	(1879-01-21)January 21, 1879 Barcelona
Died	November 21, 1946(1946-11-21) (aged 67) New York
Children	Luis Marquina
Writing career
Language	Spanish
Genres	Poetry, novel, theater
Movement	Modernismo
Signature

Eduardo Marquina Angulo (Barcelona, January 21, 1879 – New York, November 21, 1946) was a Spanish journalist, poet, novelist and playwright.

Eduardo Marquina was the nephew of the post-Romantic poet and playwright Pedro Marquina and the father of the film director Luis Marquina.

Biography

Eduardo Marquina Angulo was the second of five children of Eduarda Angulo, a native of Barcelona of Leonese origin, and Luis Marquina y Dutú, an Aragonese settled in Catalonia.

He studied with the Jesuits before studying law and philosophy at university, but he failed his examinations and abandoned those degrees when his parents died, taking his father's place at the chemical company where he had worked as an office clerk.

He placed himself within modernist and neo-Romantic lyric poetry and within poetic historical drama with heroic loas, which some have chosen to see as patriotic nostalgia and others as criticism. In 1897 he began writing for the modernist magazine Luz; there he became friends with Luis de Zulueta and published his first translations of French Symbolist poetry (Verlaine's Art poétique); he later contributed to Barcelona Cómica, the republican and Catalanist daily La Publicidad and Vida Nueva. At that time he frequented the tertulia at Els Quatre Gats in Barcelona, where he met Santiago Rusiñol, Ramon Casas, Pompeu Gener and Pablo Picasso.

Photograph of Marquina

In 1903 he married Mercedes Pichot, with whom he had his son Luis Marquina, the future filmmaker. Three years later he settled in Madrid.

In his ideological development he started from leftist positions and gradually moved over time toward more conservative stances, sharing correspondence and tertulias with the most important names of the Spanish intelligentsia of the time, such as Miguel de Unamuno, Clarín, Benito Pérez Galdós and Federico García Lorca.

In Madrid, he lived on the Calle del Barquillo, in the Chueca neighborhood, Justicia District. Together with the writer and journalist Francisco Serrano Anguita, he was one of the promoters of the creation of the Sociedad General de Autores.

Marquina has gone down in literary history as the great figure of historical drama in the years around the First World War. To this should be added his fruitfulness as a poet, starting from Catalan modernisme, and a very extensive literary life. From this first poetic period, Odas (1900), La vendimia (1901) and Églogas (1902) stand out.

Caricatured by Tovar (1907)

Portrayed by Compañy (Actualidades, 1908)

In the theater he triumphed with Las hijas del Cid (1908), which was followed by Doña María la Brava (1909); En Flandes se ha puesto el sol (1910), perhaps the best remembered of all; La alcaldesa de Pastrana (1911); El rey trovador (1911); El retablo de Agrellano (1913); and La danza de la cautiva (1921).

He later wrote prose comedies on contemporary themes, such as Cuando florezcan los rosales (1913). His work as a novelist did not reach the level of his poetic and theatrical texts; he published Adán y Eva en el dancing, El destino cruel and Las dos vidas.

In 1930 he was elected a member of the Real Academia Española, taking seat G. That same year he traveled to Poland with other members of the Sociedad de Autores to take part in the XI Congress of Dramatic and Musical Authors, attended by more than one hundred representatives from various countries. On the proposal of the French, English and German delegates, he was elected President for the following congress. Also that year he accepted the post of deputy director of a new newspaper of conservative orientation, Más.

In 1932 he was appointed President of the Sociedad General de Autores. He then returned to historical themes, with El monje blanco (1930) and Teresa de Jesús (1932). He also translated Alexandre Dumas, son; Victor Hugo; Charles Baudelaire; Eça de Queirós; and Paul Verlaine.

When the Civil War broke out, he was in Argentina at the invitation of the actress Lola Membrives, who was going to premiere his works; he managed to gather his whole family there and declared himself on the side of the insurgents. On Radio Excelsior of Buenos Aires he recited six ballads with a prose epilogue, Por el amor de España, dedicated to Franco's legionnaires, "for the benefit of the orphans of the Spanish Crusade".

He returned to Spain and settled first in Burgos and later in Seville, while his filmmaker son visited the fronts and made documentaries. Once in Madrid, he wrote three sonnets for the Corona de sonetos en honor a José Antonio, although only the first was published there.

On August 3, 1939, he read his admission speech at the Real Academia Española, Lope; he also wrote the screenplay for the film El Alcázar de Toledo (Una lanza por España). Acción para una película (1939), which was never shot.

He visited Cádiz on June 28, 1943, on the occasion of the celebration at the Gran Teatro Falla of the city's II Literary Jousts, where he delivered a magnificent speech on "Christian Poetry". He struck up a friendship with members of the Governing Board of the Most Illustrious and Ancient Brotherhood of the Most Holy Christ of the Vera+Cruz of that city, and accepted the distinction of being honorary prioste. He visited the Chapel of the brotherhood, praying before the Miraculous Image of its Titular, which greatly impressed him and which he praised; he asked for a photograph of the image and promised to compose a Poem in praise of the Most Holy Christ of the Vera-Cruz. All of this was echoed by the local newspapers of the time.

At the end of his life he absorbed different feelings and cultures, traveling through various European and American countries, and died of a sudden heart attack in the city of New York, where he was working as a diplomat for Spain, on November 21, 1946.

Since December 7, 1946, his remains have rested in the pantheon of Illustrious Men of the Sacramental de San Justo in Madrid. His memoirs were published posthumously in 1964.

Works

Marquina caricatured by Tito (La Libertad, 1923)

• Obras Completas, Madrid: Editorial Aguilar, 1944–1951, 8 vols.

Theater

• Jesús y el Diablo (1898), dramatic poem.
• Emporium (1906), lyric drama in Catalan.
• Las hijas del Cid (1908)
• Doña María la Brava (1909)
• En Flandes se ha puesto el sol (1910)
• El rey trovador (1911)
• La alcaldesa de Pastrana (1911)
• El retablo de Agrellano (1913)
• Cuando florezcan los rosales (1913), prose comedy
• Las flores de Aragón (1915)
• El Gran Capitán (1916)
• Don Luis Mejía (1924)
• El pobrecito carpintero (1924), village tale in four acts and in verse
• La ermita, la fuente y el río (1927), rural drama
• Salvadora (1929), rural drama
• El monje blanco (1930), tableaux of primitive legend
• Fuente Escondida (1931), rural drama.
• Teresa de Jesús (1932)
• Era una vez en Bagdad... Láminas de Las mil y una noches (1932)
• Pasos y trabajos de Santa Teresa de Jesús (1943)
• La Santa Hermandad (1939)
• El estudiante endiablado (1942)
• María la Viuda (1943)
• El galeón y el milagro (1947)

Lyric poetry

• Odas (1900)
• Las vendimias (1901)
• Églogas (1902)
• Elegías (1905)
• Vendimión (1909)
• Canciones del momento (1910)
• Tierras de España (1914).

Narrative

• Adán y Eva en el Dancing
• El destino cruel
• Un caballero desconocido
• La misa azul
• Almas anónimas
• La caravana
• Maternidad
• El beso en la herida
• Las dos vidas.

Other works

• Días de infancia y adolescencia. Memorias del último tercio del siglo XIX, Barcelona, Editorial Juventud, 1964.

Lyrics of the anthem

Eduardo Marquina was also the author of the first official lyrics of the Spanish national anthem (the Marcha Real), commissioned by King Alfonso XIII

Glory, glory, crown of the Homeland,

sovereign light
that is gold in your banner.
Life, life, future of the Homeland,
which in your eyes is
an open heart.

Purple and gold: immortal flag;
in your colors, together,
flesh and soul are.
Purple and gold: to will and to achieve;
You are, flag, the sign of human striving.

Glory, glory, crown of the Homeland, sovereign light
that is gold in your Banner.
Purple and gold: immortal flag;
in your colors, together,
flesh and soul are.

See also

• Spanish literature of Modernismo

External links

• Diary, 1918–19, full text

• Lyrics of the Marcha Real, on Wikisource

• Digitized works of Eduardo Marquina in the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica of the Biblioteca Nacional de España.

• MARQUINA, Eduardo: Las flores de Aragón, historical comedy in romancesco style about Isabella and Ferdinand and the unity of Spain; it premiered at the Teatro de la Princesa on Nov. 30, 1914.
  • Performance offered by TVE in the Dec. 11, 1970 broadcast of Estudio 1, with performances by Manuel Galiana, Amparo Pamplona, José Manuel Martín, Félix Navarro and Carlos Lemos.
    • Another copy.
    • Another copy.

• MARQUINA, E.: La Santa Hermandad (1939).
  • La Santa Hermandad, in the July 16, 1970 broadcast of Estudio 1, in the adaptation by Félix Ros, directed by Gustavo Pérez Puig, with performances by Luis Prendes, Gemma Cuervo, Fernando Guillén, Rafael Arcos, Pedro Mari Sánchez, Silvia Tortosa, Félix Navarro, Enrique Cerro, Roberto Llamas, Rogelio Madrid, Ángel Terrón, Magda Rotger, Beatriz Savón, Maite Tojar, José Manuel Cervino, Jaime Nervo, Mercedes Prendes, José Orjas and Manuel Alexandre.
    • Another copy.
  • See "Santa Hermandad".