Leopoldo Alas "Clarín"

Leopoldo Alas "Clarín"

Leopoldo Alas, nicknamed Clarín (Zamora, April 25, 1852 – Oviedo, June 13, 1901), was a Spanish writer and jurist. A professor first at the University of Zaragoza and later at the University of Oviedo, he worked as a literary critic in the periodical press of the time, from which he attacked many contemporary men of letters with sharp articles. He is known for his novel La Regenta (1885), considered one of the masterpieces of 19th-century Spanish literature.

Biography

He was born on April 25, 1852, in Zamora, where his family had moved from Oviedo when his father, Genaro García-Alas, was appointed governor of the city. Leopoldo was the couple's third child. One of his brothers was Genaro García-Alas y Ureña.

In the household, Asturias was talked about constantly, and his mother, Leocadia, with a certain nostalgia, told stories of that land of her ancestors (although she also had deep Leonese roots). This atmosphere greatly influenced the spirit of the young Leopoldo, who always felt more Asturian than Zamoran, although throughout his life he kept a special fondness for the land of his birth.

At the age of seven he began studying at the Jesuit school located in the city of León in the building of San Marcos (today a parador hotel). From the beginning he adapted to the rules and discipline of the school so well that within a few months he was considered a model pupil. His classmates knew him by the nickname of "the Governor," in allusion to his father's profession. His biographers assert that this period as a student instilled in Leopoldo the religious feeling and the principle of strong moral discipline that were the foundation of his character. In this first school year he won a blue sash as a prize and literary trophy. He kept it all his life, and it was among the most cherished objects of the family museum.

In the summer of 1859 the whole family returned to Asturias. Leopoldo discovered with his own eyes the Asturian landscape he had heard so much about from his mother. During the following years Leopoldo roamed freely through the lands of Guimarán, his father's property, where he learned directly from Nature and from the books he found in the old family library, where he came into contact for the first time with two authors who would be his masters: Cervantes and Fray Luis de León.

On October 4, 1863, at the age of eleven, Leopoldo entered the University of Oviedo in what were called "preparatory studies," enrolling in the subjects of Latin, Arithmetic and Christian Doctrine. He finished the course with a grade of outstanding and with three good friends: Armando Palacio Valdés, Tomás Tuero (who was also a writer, translator and literary critic) and Pío Rubín (a writer).

Arrival in Madrid

After finishing his studies at the University, the future Clarín moved to the Madrid of the mid-19th century to do his doctorate, lodging at an inn on Calle de Capellanes. There he met his friends from the Asturian capital, Tuero, Palacio Valdés and Rubín, a group that became known as "the Oviedo crowd" at the Cervecería Inglesa of Madrid, where the tertulia met that would eventually give birth to the Bilis Club.

During that first academic year, Clarín came into contact with Krausism and secular liberalism. Years earlier the jurist, educator and philosopher Julián Sanz del Río, who had been a disciple of Karl Krause in Germany, had translated and introduced the philosophy of Krausism into Spain. As professor of Philosophy of Law he inspired such admiration among his students that it would lead them to launch an unprecedented intellectual and ideological movement, which culminated in a great reform of free education, other changes concerning society and politics, and the creation of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza in 1876, which Professor Sanz del Río, who died in 1869, did not live to see.

Clarín in his youth

As a reward for his work of Europeanization and renewal, Sanz del Río, an upright and religious man, but considered a threat to the teaching monopoly of the Catholic Church and an obstinate heretic, was expelled from his chair by the conservative forces, through harsh (though legally inconsistent) campaigns orchestrated by sectarians of "neo-Catholicism," a new ultra faction fostered by the recent encyclical of Pius IX. Such harassment and persecution, in the image and likeness of the trials of the Inquisition, would lead to a reaction of repudiation against the governmental teaching establishment among the disciples of Sanz del Río, later prominent Krausists such as Joaquín Costa, Francisco Pi y Margall, Rafael María de Labra, Emilio Castelar, Nicolás Salmerón and Adolfo Camús. It was in the classes of these last two that Leopoldo reaffirmed his philosophical and religious-traditional skepticism, which he would later carry into the terrain of literary naturalism. At the end of that year, Clarín himself remarked that "his spirit had been strengthened."

El Solfeo

In December 1874 the First Republic came to an end with the fall of Emilio Castelar owing to the coup of Manuel Pavía. Shortly after the coup, Martínez Campos would begin the monarchical Restoration in the figure of Alfonso XII, son of the dethroned Isabella II.

In March 1875, Antonio Sánchez Pérez founded a newspaper named El Solfeo. On July 5 a number of young men joined its editorial staff, among them Leopoldo Alas. The newspaper went completely unnoticed and was not even mentioned by the chroniclers of the time. Its director wanted his contributors to take the name of a musical instrument as a pseudonym, and that is how Leopoldo chose the clarín (bugle), which from then on would be the alias with which he signed all his articles. The column he wrote was titled "Azotacalles de Madrid" (Notes on the wall). On October 2, 1875, the writer signed as Clarín for the first time, inaugurating the space with the verse the reader can see below. In this way Leopoldo Alas entered the literary life of the time, and from his column he began to launch harsh criticisms full of irony against the political class of the Restoration.

I am going to inaugurate in verse
my reviews of Madrid,
with a modest ballad
that has its little sting;
and I am going to tell you
what I want to tell you,
God willing, and with the leave
of the civil governor.

Clarín began to enjoy popularity at the same time as abundant troubles and quite a few enemies came his way. Each new article became a new scandal, criticized or praised in the tertulias of the Cervecería Inglesa or of the Ateneo on Calle del Arenal. Clarín carried on in his style, asserting that "the critic who tells the truth does not prosper" and that the poet, even a bad one, "rises from redondilla to redondilla to head of department." Alongside this literary activity, he continued his studies, preparing his doctorate.

Revista de Asturias

Apart from the journalistic genre, Clarín felt the need to cultivate other literary genres. Félix Aramburu (a poet and notable writer on criminal law), a dear friend of Leopoldo, was the director and publisher in Oviedo of a magazine called Revista de Asturias. This friend not only encouraged him to write other kinds of narratives but also offered him a place in his own publication. In the summer of 1876, Clarín wrote his first short stories and some poems, which months later were published in the Oviedo Revista. With these contributions the great writer gradually made himself known.

Doctorate and professorship

Portrayed by Ramón Miró in 1891 in the pages of La Esquella de la Torratxa

On July 1, 1878, Leopoldo Alas obtained the degree of doctor in Civil and Canon Law, with a grade of outstanding. He presented his doctoral thesis on the subject El derecho y la moralidad (Law and Morality), in whose edition one can see the dedication "To Don Francisco Giner del Río, his sincere friend and grateful disciple." It is the first book by Leopoldo to come off a printing press and the only one in which his pseudonym Clarín does not appear.

After a long holiday in the lands of Guimarán, Alas returned to Madrid to prepare briefly for the competitive examinations that would be held in Salamanca in November to fill the vacant chair of Political Economy and Statistics at the University. The successive exercises were a continuous success for Leopoldo, and he even obtained first place in the shortlist of three candidates. The Madrid newspapers covered these successes, and the news was also reported in the Revista de Asturias (Oviedo, no. 40, 5.XII.1878, section "Ecos y rumores"). But there was a serious obstacle to definitive success: Queipo de Llano, Count of Toreno, was at that time Minister of Public Instruction and enjoyed the right of final choice of the candidate. The Count of Toreno had been the target of Clarín's terrible satires in El Solfeo, something he never forgot, and he stripped Clarín of the chair he had won, in favor of the number two on the shortlist, Mr. Mantecón. Leopoldo Alas wrote an open letter of protest to the minister, and years later he would recall these events with bitterness, writing:

I learned from them (Salmerón and Giner) to respect convictions, and the greatest outrage the Count of Toreno did me, perhaps without knowing it, in denying me a chair that was mine, was the implicit suspicion that I was a freethinker like Flaubert's apothecary Homais, capable of stoning and smashing, with whatever heresies occurred to me, the glass case in which my students kept their faith.

Four years later, the Revista de Legislación y Jurisprudencia published, in redress and with full honors, the work Clarín had presented at the Salamanca examinations under the title "Programa analítico de Economía política y Estadística."

The year 1882 was a lucky year for Clarín. On July 12 he was able to read in the Gaceta Oficial his appointment to the chair of Political Economy and Statistics, granted for the University of Zaragoza, and on August 29 his wedding to Onofre García-Argüelles took place in the Asturian locality of La Laguna (Langreo valley), in the palace of the García-Argüelles family. The following year he returned to Oviedo as professor of Roman Law and later also took charge of the chair of Natural Law at the University of Oviedo.

Clarín as a professor

It was said among his contemporaries that to know Clarín it was necessary to attend his class on Natural Law. In his own words, he preferred to instill in his students a habit of reflection rather than to teach a science pure and simple, and he was not content with teaching a series of precepts to be applied in the future. His lessons usually began with a precept of Justinian and continued with quotations from the Quixote or from Saint Teresa, ending with Tolstoy, Renan or Saint Francis of Assisi. Many of his students did not manage to understand this system and accused Clarín of being a "hueso" (literally "bone": serious, strict, demanding and generally known for failing students). Clarín esteemed his students when they were able to understand the spirit of his teachings rather than the letter. He had a very severe sense of justice when grading and never accepted either bribes or recommendations; he was accused of lacking any kind of benevolence. The professorship was for Clarín a great responsibility and a constant concern (in his own words), and he devoted himself to it with complete integrity.

Literary caciquismo

Almost all of Clarín's biographers agree on this point: his literary caciquismo, somewhat tyrannical. From his retreat in Oviedo he came to be feared and respected in Madrid and became known in Europe and in America. He was a universal provincial, although his city, Oviedo, never understood his universality. He was regarded as a nervous, nearsighted little man who taught classes at the University and who in the afternoons played tresillo at the Casino. Students feared him for his severity, and society considered him a liberal atheist.

Literary work

Clarín caricatured by Sancha for Madrid Cómico while writing one of his "paliques"

During the free time left to him by his university chair, Clarín wrote articles for the newspapers El Globo, La Ilustración and Madrid Cómico. He sent his satirical and biting "Paliques" to the newspapers El Imparcial and Madrid Cómico, which would earn him some additional enemies.

In 1881 the book Solos de Clarín was published, collecting his articles of literary criticism. The prologue is by Echegaray. That same year, in October, he published in La Ilustración Gallega y Asturiana the article "La Universidad de Oviedo," in which he praises the restored faculty formed by the professors Buylla, Aramburu and Díaz Ordóñez, among others.

At the age of thirty-one Clarín wrote his masterpiece La Regenta. In June 1885 the second volume of this work of literary art came out. In 1886 his first book of short stories was published under the title Pipá. In 1889 he finished a biographical essay on Galdós, within a series titled "Celebridades españolas contemporáneas." At the end of June 1891, the publisher Fernando Fe brought out Clarín's second long novel: Su único hijo.

Portrait of Clarín (1893)

In 1892 Clarín went through a personal and religious crisis in which, in his words, he tried to find his self and God. Shortly afterward he reflected this crisis in his short story Cambio de Luz, whose protagonist Jorge Arial represents the author and his concerns, his religious doubts and his philosophical skepticism. Clarín defines this character as a "shamefaced mystic." During this period he also contributed to the magazine Los Madriles.

In 1894 his fondness for the theater was awakened through the influence of his friends the actress María Guerrero and the playwright Echegaray. His biographers say it is a contradiction in a man who loved reality and was an enemy of farce. That is why his first play, Teresa (a dramatic essay in one act and in prose), is a real page from his own life. It was published and premiered on March 20 at the Teatro Español in Madrid, at a tribute being held for the actress María Guerrero. The play was a resounding failure, with critics arguing that it lacked stage architecture and had all the defects of a novice writer.

During the last years of his life, Clarín received a great number of offers for contributions as well as requests for authorization to translate his work in new editions. In 1900, the Casa Maucci of Barcelona commissioned him to translate Émile Zola's novel Travail (Trabajo). The pay was good, and Clarín thought that a translation would not take as much work as writing. But the technical terms and difficult words of the French writer, together with Clarín's perfectionism, made the work drag on for months, exhausting what little health he had in those years. He translated day and night to meet the date set by the publisher, exhausted but happy to be able to help make known "the most outraged thinker of the entire 19th century."

Illness and death

Clarín had been suffering from his illness for years, and in the first months of 1901 he already felt exhausted. In May he traveled to León, invited by his cousin Ureña, on the occasion of the festivities held to mark the completion of the reconstruction of the cathedral. In this city he relived his childhood and was feted and cherished by many prominent figures. On his return he remarked: "In León I spent truly happy hours."

Once back in Oviedo he again felt his illness, now very close. There he was constantly accompanied by his nephew, the young physician Alfredo Martínez García, who diagnosed him with intestinal tuberculosis in its final stage, an incurable disease at that time.

On June 13, 1901, at seven in the morning, Leopoldo Alas died at the age of forty-nine. His coffin lay in state in the cloister of the university, where professors, friends and relatives of the writer came. The following day he was buried in the cemetery of El Salvador.

In Madrid, the writer Bonafoux (a mediocre writer according to Clarín and other colleagues of the time), a faithful enemy until death, prepared the obituary article in which he added these words: "I have been the first to rejoice at the death of Clarín. […] At his funeral one heard the silence that is heard at the funerals of tyrants."

His masterpiece: La Regenta (1884–1885)

Cover of La Regenta (1884–1885)

Main article: La Regenta

A long novel whose action takes place in Vetusta, a Spanish provincial capital behind whose name "Clarín" disguised the Asturian capital, Oviedo. Some critics and Hispanists note a certain resemblance to Madame Bovary, by Flaubert, and Anna Karenina, by Tolstoy, possible influences to which should be added those of naturalism and of Krausism (a philosophical current that proposed, through the Institución Libre de Enseñanza and some university circles, the cultural and moral regeneration of Spain).

La Regenta stands out for its great wealth of characters and secondary planes, as well as the use of the technique of the flow of memories, while the portrait of the protagonist remains delicately blurred and vague. Moreover, here the fall of the provincial lady takes place between two very different suitors: the most seductive gallant of the city, who ends up triumphing, and a Canon of the cathedral. The portrait of this canon is a key piece of the book.

To describe the provincial atmosphere and the fabric of collective life, Clarín uses techniques such as interior monologue and free indirect style, which allow the story to be narrated by the characters through their thoughts and make it possible to penetrate their inner lives. Thanks to these techniques and a meticulous study of the character in his environment (that is, the society in which he lives), the characters acquire a certain psychological depth.

Anecdotes

It seems that the nightmare of all of Clarín's friends and acquaintances was his unintelligible handwriting. Because of this he quite often received constructive criticism, some mockery or some complaint:

• Pérez Galdós: in a letter addressed to Clarín he tells him, "How much more beautiful to receive a paper full of scrawls and to prepare oneself for the pure joys of divination! To go on conquering, syllable by syllable, the mysterious kingdom of your Chaldean script."

• Emilia Pardo Bazán: "I was longing to see your delightful little scrawls."

Clarín constantly received letters, whether to praise him, to insult him, or to ask for advice and approval of other novels. On one occasion Clarín had written in his Paliques that in Spain in those years there were only two and a half poets: Campoamor, Núñez de Arce and Manuel del Palacio (who was supposed to be the "half"). The latter, feeling offended and humiliated, sent to the Guimerán estate where Clarín was on holiday a long epistle written in tercets and full of insults. The reply was harsh and overwhelming. He composed another epistle with a number of verses close to that of Palacio's, which he titled "A 0’50 poeta (epístola en versos con notas en prosa clara)" ("To a 0.50 poet (epistle in verse with notes in clear prose)"). All of Spain read it, and all of Spain spoke of Manuel del Palacio as the "half poet." It was the delight of the Madrid tertulias. The person alluded to did not reply, and that was the end of the matter.

In 1891, Clarín was elected republican councilor of the City Council of Oviedo by universal suffrage. During the meeting for the act of appointment, Clarín remained silent, but his nerves snapped when he heard a "haiga" (instead of "haya") from the mouth of another councilor who was reading the minutes. The professor fell upon him with such dialectical fury that the councilor, ashamed by the laughter of his colleagues and of the audience present, immediately submitted his resignation. Clarín intervened again and managed to get him to withdraw his resignation.

Clarín was the father of Leopoldo García Alas Argüelles and is the great-grandfather of the jurist Leopoldo Tolivar Alas. The latter and his sister, Ana Cristina, deposited free of charge with the Principality of Asturias, in March 2010, the family library and archive they had kept, among whose documents is the manuscript of La Regenta.

Leopoldo Alas was the uncle by marriage of the physician Alfredo Martínez García-Argüelles, a minister during the Second Republic, and the great-great-uncle of the writer Leopoldo Alas Mínguez, who died on August 1, 2008.

Works

Essays

• Solos de Clarín (1880).
• La literatura en 1881 (1882).
• Sermón perdido (1885).
• Nueva campaña (1887).
• Ensayos y revistas (1892).
• Palique (1894).

Novels

• Cuesta abajo (1890–1891).
• La Regenta (1884–1885).
• Su único hijo (1890).
• El abrazo de Pelayo (1889)

Short stories

Perhaps the facet least spoken of is his role as a great cultivator of the novella, the tale and the short story, forms that developed extraordinarily in European literature from the middle of the 19th century. Among Clarín's most outstanding works one can list chronologically the novellas Pipá, Doña Berta, Cuervo, Superchería, and of the short stories and tales, El Señor y lo demás son cuentos, Cuentos Morales, El gallo de Sócrates, a posthumous work, and Doctor Sutilis.

• ¡Adiós, Cordera!; ¡Adiós, Cordera! (full text).
• Amor’è furbo.
• Boroña.
• Cuentos morales.
• Cuervo.
• De la Comisión.
• Doble vía.
• Doctor Angelicus.
• Don Paco del empaque.
• Doña Berta.
• Dos sabios.
• El dúo de la tos.
• El gallo de Sócrates.
• El Señor y lo demás son cuentos.
• El doctor Pértinax.

• El libro y la viuda.
• El oso mayor.
• El sombrero del cura.
• En el tren.
• En la droguería.
• Medalla... de perro chico.
• Pipá.
• Speraindeo.
• Superchería.
• Tambor y gaita.
• Teresa.
• Un candidato.
• Un repatriado.
• Un voto.

See also

• Spanish literature of Realism: Realism in the Spanish literary context.
• Realism: Overview of the movement.
• Literature of Spain: Evolution of Spanish literature.
• Film adaptation of La Regenta.
• Television adaptation of La Regenta.

Bibliography

• Obras selectas de Leopoldo Alas «Clarín». Biblioteca Nueva, Madrid, 1966. Legal deposit: M. 17673. Author of the biographical data: Juan Antonio Cabezas, Madrid, 1947.
• BOTREL, Jean-François: «'Clarín' y Giner: El 'eterno discípulo' y el 'maestro', en 1892». Ínsula: Revista de Letras y Ciencias Humanas 659 (Nov. 2001), pp. 12–13.
• BRENT, Albert: Leopoldo Alas and “La Regenta”. The University of Missouri Studies, v. 24, n. 2. Columbia, Missouri: The Curators of the University of Missouri, 1951.
• DURAND, Frank: “Structural Unity in Leopoldo Alas’ La Regenta”. Hispanic Review 31 (1963), pp. 324–335.
• GRAMBERG, Eduard J.: «Integralismo», en fondo y forma del humorismo de Leopoldo Alas, «Clarín». Oviedo: Instituto de Estudios Asturianos, 1958.
• KRONIK, John W.: “Leopoldo Alas, Krausism and the Plight of the Humanities in Spain”, MLS, 2.3 (Fall 1981), pp. 3–15.
• LA RUBIA-PRADO, Francisco: «Sensualidad pervertida: Trabajo, tabú y vida en Cuervo, de Leopoldo Alas». Ojáncano: Revista de Literatura Española 22 (Oct. 2002), pp. 3–20.
• Lissorgues, Yvan (2006). "Genaro Alas Ureña, un ilustrado asturiano en la España de la segunda mitad del siglo XIX". Genaro Alas, militar, ingeniero y periodista (in español). Oviedo: KRK Ediciones. pp. 13–23.
• LISSORGUES, Yvan: Leopoldo Alas, Clarín en sus palabras. Biografía, Nobel, Oviedo (2007).
• LÓPEZ, M., Berta: «El deseo triangular en La Regenta». Estudios filológicos 22 (1987), pp. 59–76.
• PAU, Antonio: Clarín. Ganivet. Azaña. Pensamiento y vivencia del Derecho, Madrid: Tecnos, 1994.
• RICHMOND, Carolyn: «Las ideas de Leopoldo Alas, ‘Clarín’, sobre la mujer en sus escritos previos a La Regenta». Homenaje al profesor Antonio Vilanova. Ed. Marta Cristiana Carbonell. 2 vols. Barcelona: Universidad de Barcelona, 1989, vol. II, pp. 523–539.
• SÁNCHEZ, Roberto G.: «Clarín y el Romanticismo Teatral: examen de una afición». Hispanic Review 31 (1963), pp. 216–228.
• SÁNCHEZ, Roberto G.: “The Presence of Theater and the Consciousness of Theater in Clarín’s La Regenta”. Hispanic Review 37 (1969), pp. 491–509.
• SOBEJANO, Gonzalo: «Introducción». La Regenta de Leopoldo Alas. 2 vols. Madrid: Castalia, 1981, vol. I, pp. 7–58.
• VALBUENA Y PRAT, Ángel (professor of Literature): Historia de la literatura española. Gustavo Gili, publisher. Barcelona, 1946.
• VALIS, Noël Maureen: The Decadent Vision in Leopoldo Alas: A Study of “La Regenta” and “Su Único Hijo”. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981.
• VALIS, Noël: Leopoldo Alas (Clarín): An Annotated Bibliography, Supplement I. London: Tamesis; 2002.
• VALIS, Noël: "Leopoldo Alas (Clarín): A Supplemental Annotated Bibliography". Letras Peninsulares 16.3 (2003–2004), pp. 739–800.
• SOTELO VÁSQUEZ, Adolfo: «Emile Zola y Leopoldo Alas 'Clarín': Aspectos de la novela». Excavatio: Emile Zola and Naturalism 18.1–2 (2003), pp. 198–210.
• WARD, Thomas: «Literatura y sociedad española en Larra, Giner y Alas». La teoría literaria: el romanticismo, el krausismo y el modernismo ante la 'globalización' industrial. University, MS: Romance Monogrphs, No. 61, 2004, pp. 15–52.
• WEBER, Francis: “Ideology and Religious Parody in the Novels of Leopoldo Alas”. Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 43 (1963), pp. 197–208.
• WESSELING, Pieter: “Structure and its Implications in Leopoldo Alas’ La Regenta”. Hispanic Review 51 (1983), pp. 393–408.

External links

• Digitized works of Leopoldo Alas in the Hispanic Digital Library of the National Library of Spain
• Leopoldo Alas Clarín at the Centro Virtual Cervantes
• Portal about the author at the Miguel de Cervantes Virtual Library
• Leopoldo Alas Clarín Collection at One More Library
• Full text of the second edition of La Regenta at the Bibliotheca Augustana Digital
• Bibliographic Exhibition on Leopoldo Alas