Mariano José de Larra

"Larra" redirects here. For other uses, see Larra (disambiguation).

Mariano José de Larra
Mariano José de Larra (c. 1835), painted by José Gutiérrez de la Vega (Museo del Romanticismo, Madrid).
Born	Mariano José de Larra Sánchez de Castro (1809-03-24)March 24, 1809 Madrid
Died	February 13, 1837(1837-02-13) (aged 27) Madrid
Cause of death	Suicide
Resting place	Cemetery of San Justo
Other names	Fígaro, el Pobrecito Hablador, el Duende, Andrés Niporesas
Occupations	Writer, journalist, politician
Spouse	Josefa Wetoret Velasco
Children	Luis Mariano, Adela and Baldomera
Signature

Mariano José de Larra y Sánchez de Castro (Madrid, March 24, 1809 – ibid., February 13, 1837) was a Spanish writer, journalist and politician. Together with Espronceda, Bécquer, José Zorrilla and Rosalía de Castro, he is considered the highest peak of Spanish literary Romanticism.

A journalist, satirical and literary critic, and costumbrista writer, he published more than two hundred articles in the press over the course of eight years. He thus furthered the development of the essay genre. He wrote under the pseudonyms Fígaro, el Duende, Bachiller and el Pobrecito Hablador. According to Iris M. Zavala, Larra represents "democratic Romanticism in action". Far from indulging in effusions of sentiment, Fígaro places Spain at the center of his critical and satirical work. His work must be understood in the context of the newly born Cortes after the Ominous Decade (1823–1833), and of the First Carlist War (1833–1840). After Larra's suicide at the age of twenty-seven, José Zorrilla read an elegy at his burial, with which Zorrilla made himself known.

Larra's ideas have their origin in the Spanish Enlightenment, especially in José Cadalso, and proved very influential on the later Generation of '98. In 1901 some of the representatives of that generation, such as Azorín, Unamuno and Baroja, brought a wreath of flowers to his tomb, a tribute that signified his rediscovery and the group's identification with Larra's thought and his concern for Spain.

Biography

Mariano José de Larra was born on March 24, 1809, in Madrid, on the Calle de Segovia, where the old Casa de la Moneda (Mint) was located. His grandfather, Antonio Crispín de Larra y Morán de Navia, worked there. His parents were Mariano de Larra y Langelot and his second wife, María de los Dolores Sánchez de Castro. His father, a physician, was an afrancesado who had held the post of military surgeon in the Josephine army during the Napoleonic Invasion of Spain, so in 1813, when the future author was four years old, his family had to leave the country following King Joseph I Bonaparte and go into exile, first in Bordeaux and then in Paris. Thanks to the amnesty decreed by Ferdinand VII, the family was able to return to Spain in 1818 and settled in Madrid, where his father became personal physician to the Infante Don Francisco de Paula, one of King Ferdinand's brothers.

Larra continued in Madrid the studies he had begun in France, and followed his father to the posts he successively held in various parts of Spain (Corella, 1822–1823; Cáceres, 1823–1824; Aranda de Duero, 1824 onward). In 1824 he settled in Valladolid to study at the university. Although he did not sit any examination that academic year, in October 1825 he passed all his subjects. The reason for his absence from the examinations may have been a "mysterious event" that completely altered his character. It has since been claimed that he fell in love with a woman much older than himself, who turned out to be his father's mistress. After sitting the October examinations, he left his studies in Valladolid and returned to Madrid (1825).

Bust of Larra on the Calle de Bailén, in Madrid.

He continued his studies, and in 1827 he joined the Royalist Volunteers, a paramilitary body formed by fervent absolutists, noted for their participation in the repression of the liberals. At the same time he began to write poetry, mainly odes and satires.

However, it would be satirical journalism that brought Larra to light. At nineteen, in 1828, Larra published a monthly pamphlet called El duende satírico del día. It was a series of five booklets in the line of the essay magazines inaugurated in England at the beginning of the 18th century with The Spectator, by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, and represented in Spain by El duende especulativo de la vida civil, El Pensador and El Censor, devoted to the criticism of the society of their time. Larra signed with the pseudonym el Duende. In this publication the satirical genius that Larra would later display begins to be glimpsed. Larra was not, however, an opponent of the absolutist regime (he still belonged to the Royalist Volunteers), but a journalist who, through satire, criticized the social and political situation of the moment.

Larra was not alone, but part of a group of restless and nonconformist young men who met in a café on the Calle del Príncipe, in Madrid. The tertulia was christened "El Parnasillo", and was frequented by Ventura de la Vega, Juan González de la Pezuela, Miguel Ortiz, Juan Bautista Alonso and Bretón de los Herreros. In December 1828, Larra had a confrontation in the café with José María de Carnerero, director of the Correo Literario y Mercantil, whom "El duende" had criticized in its latest issues. Carnerero went to the authorities, who closed down the publication. Nevertheless, Larra had already achieved a certain renown as a sharp observer of the customs and of the cultural, social and political reality of the moment.

On August 13, 1829, he married Josefa Wetoret Velasco in the Church of San Sebastián in Madrid. The marriage was unhappy and would end in separation a few years later; they nevertheless had three children: Luis Mariano de Larra, who became a famous librettist of zarzuelas, among them El barberillo de Lavapiés, and Adela and Baldomera, who were five and four years old, respectively, when Larra committed suicide in 1837. Adela was the mistress of Amadeo of Savoy, and Baldomera married the King's physician, Carlos de Montemar, who, when Amadeo renounced the throne, emigrated to America and left his wife with small children in Madrid; Baldomera took up banking and was one of the creators of the so-called pyramid scheme, for which she was sentenced to prison; she ended her days in Argentina at the beginning of the 20th century.

During 1830, Larra devoted himself to the translation of French plays for the theater impresario Juan Grimaldi, while beginning to write his own (in 1831 he would premiere the costumbrista comedy No más mostrador, inspired by a French vaudeville). That year would be crucial, since he met Dolores Armijo, married to a son of the well-known lawyer Manuel María de Cambronero, with whom he would begin a stormy relationship in 1831 (while still married to Josefa Wetoret, with whom he had had his first child, Luis Mariano, in 1830).

Larra, in the magazine El Museo Universal (1857).

In 1832 he returned to journalism of social criticism with El Pobrecito Hablador, in which he wrote under the pseudonym Juan Pérez de Munguía. In El Pobrecito Hablador, Larra shows the enlightened and progressive hope that it is possible to overcome, through hope in tomorrow, the old Castilianism of a patriotism ossified in the past. El Pobrecito Hablador ceased publication in March 1833, several months after Larra began to contribute to La Revista Española, a newspaper of liberal orientation that had been born in November 1832, taking advantage of the fact that the King's illness had left the Government in the hands of Queen María Cristina, raising the hopes of the liberals. Under the pseudonym of Fígaro, he would insert literary and political criticism within costumbrista sketches, under the shelter of the relaxation brought about by the death of Ferdinand VII. Articles such as Vuelva usted mañana, El castellano viejo, Entre qué gentes estamos, En este país and El casarse pronto y mal, among others, became famous. Beyond social criticism, Larra attacked the Carlists, committed as he was to the political transformation from absolutism to liberalism, and complained ironically about censorship in his article "Las palabras" ("Words"):

I do not know who said that man is naturally evil; a great piece of roguery, to be sure! We have never thought so: man is a poor wretch, whatever they may say... However much of an animal he may be, he speaks and listens; and here precisely is the reason for man's superiority, a naturalist will tell me: and here precisely is the reason for his inferiority, as I think, I who have more of the natural than of the naturalist... Everything is positive and rational in the animal deprived of reason. The female does not deceive the male nor vice versa, because, since they do not speak, they understand each other. The strong does not deceive the weak, for the same reason: at first sight the second flees from the first, and this is the order and the only possible order. Give them the use of speech; in the first place they will need an academy to claim for itself the right to tell them that such and such a word must not mean what they want, but something else entirely: they will consequently need scholars who spend a whole long life talking about how one ought to talk: they will need writers to make little bundles of bound papers, which they will call books, to tell their opinions to others, whom they believe they matter to... They will give names to things, and by calling one robbery, another lie, another murder, they will succeed, not in avoiding them, but in filling the woods with criminals... Give them, in short, the use of speech and they will lie: the female to the male out of love, the great to the small out of ambition, equal to equal out of rivalry, the poor to the rich out of fear and envy: they will want government as something indispensable, and on the kind of it they will agree, by God: these will let themselves be slaughtered so that one alone may rule them, a fondness I have never been able to understand: those will want to rule over one alone, which does not seem to me a great triumph: here all will want to rule, which I understand perfectly...

In 1834 he published the historical novel El doncel de don Enrique el Doliente, whose protagonist is the same as that of the historical drama Macías, banned by the censors the previous year and premiered on September 24. Both are based on the tragic life of the medieval poet Macías and his adulterous loves, a plot that in some way reflects the relationship he maintained with Dolores Armijo. In the summer of 1834, Dolores left him and departed from Madrid, while he separated from his pregnant wife, who would give birth to a girl, Baldomera, after the break-up (the second daughter after Adela, whom they had had in 1832).

In 1835 he undertook a journey to Lisbon, from where he sailed for London and then Paris, passing first through Brussels. He stayed in Paris for several months and met Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas. That year a collection of his articles had begun to be published in Madrid: Fígaro. Colección de artículos dramáticos, literarios, políticos y de costumbres. Back in Madrid, he worked for the newspaper El Español. In this period, political concern dominated his writings. Larra at first supported the government of Mendizábal, but began to criticize it on observing that the confiscation (desamortización) worked to the detriment of the most needy. After the fall of the Mendizábal government, he decided to take part in active politics on the side of the moderates, presenting his candidacy for Ávila on June 18, 1836. It is no coincidence that Dolores Armijo, the protagonist of his tragic passion, was living in Ávila at that time under the guardianship of her uncle Alfonso Carrero, Intendant of the city. His participation in politics began after the dissolution of the Cortes, when Larra sent an article to El Español titled Un procurador o la intriga honrada, which was not published. The writer protested against the Government's censorship, and the controversy ended with a seat as a cunero deputy as payment for his silence. Ceruti, secretary general of the civil government and the principal representative in Ávila of his amorous and political interests, failed in his attempt to restore his relationship with Dolores; but he created a web of intrigues that led to his electoral victory as candidate for Ávila, in exchange for concessions to a number of prominent figures in the city, among them Dolores's uncle, who had a long record of service in the Treasury.

His growing discouragement and dissatisfaction with the course of Spanish society and politics, together with the pain caused by his definitive separation from Dolores Armijo (Larra had visited her in Ávila in February 1836, without achieving any positive result), were reflected in his last articles. Perhaps the most notable is El día de difuntos de 1836, published in El Español, in which a deep pessimism appeared behind his usual irony.

The pact of the journalist, of clear republican sympathies, with a Government formed on the basis of palace intrigues with the Regent and supported by ultraconservative military elements, meant a genuine personal and political disaster for him. After the events of the Mutiny of La Granja de San Ildefonso, he found himself caught between the nets of the opposition and the reprisals of his former fellow partisans. His readership fell spectacularly, and in letters to Pepita and to Dolores he speaks of the dangers he faces and cries out "I cannot withstand calumny and infamy".

Larra's present tomb in the Cemetery of San Justo, in Madrid.

On the night of February 13, 1837, Dolores Armijo, accompanied by her sister-in-law, visited him at his home on Calle de Santa Clara in Madrid, informing him that there was no possibility of reconciliation. The two women had scarcely left the house when Larra decided to put an end to his life, shooting himself in the temple at the age of twenty-seven. His body was found by his daughter Adela.

The great Fígaro came close to having one of the most humiliating post mortem fates of the time, the pauper's burial (entierro de misericordia), had it not been for the intervention of the Juventud Literaria (Literary Youth), which paid for the burial. And so his burial, on the 15th, was comparatively "massively attended". While the body was being placed in a niche of the North Cemetery of Madrid (located behind the Glorieta de Quevedo), the then young poet José Zorrilla read a moving poem dedicated to Larra. In 1842 his remains were moved to the Sacramental de San Nicolás, which was located on the Calle de Méndez Álvaro (Madrid). In May 1902 the remains were moved again to the Sacramental de San Justo, San Millán y Santa Cruz in Madrid, being deposited in the Pantheon of Illustrious Men of the Association of Spanish Writers and Artists, where tributes in his memory have continued to be held, such as the one in 2009 commemorating the bicentenary of the writer's birth, led by the writer Juan Van-Halen, President of the Association of Spanish Writers and Artists, and Jesús Miranda de Larra, Larra's descendant and biographer.

Significance

Larra was an eminent columnist, with great clarity and vigor in his prose. In this field, his only precedents are Quevedo in the 17th century, or Feijoo, José Cadalso and Jovellanos in the 18th. In his articles he combats the organization of the State, attacks absolutism and Carlism, mocks society, and rejects family life. The ills of Spain, which he identifies with ignorance, backwardness, and the lack of education and culture, are the central theme of his critical and satirical work. Discontented with the country and its men, he wrote critical articles (En este país, El castellano viejo, El día de difuntos de 1836, Vuelva usted mañana...), and articles against censorship (Lo que no se puede decir no se debe decir), against capital punishment (Los barateros or El desafío y la pena de muerte), against the Carlist pretender (¿Qué hace en Portugal su majestad?) and Carlism (Nadie pase sin hablar al portero), and against the incorrect use of language (Por ahora, Cuasi, Las palabras). He also cultivated the historical novel (El doncel de don Enrique el Doliente) and tragedy (Macías).

Larra as a literary character

Later literature has taken Larra as a recurring character: Francisco Umbral (Larra, anatomía de un dandy, 1965), Francisco Nieva (Sombra y quimera de Larra, 1976); Antonio Buero Vallejo (La detonación, 1977); Juan Eduardo Zúñiga (Flores de plomo, Alfaguara, 1999), as well as the book by Nino Quevedo (Lunes de carnaval. Las últimas horas de Larra).

Works

• Obras completas de D. Mariano José de Larra, Montaner y Simón, Barcelona, principal work. (1886)
• Macías: historical drama depicting love thwarted by fate, which leads to death.
• El doncel de don Enrique el Doliente: historical novel set in the Middle Ages, according to the Romantic custom. In it Larra takes up again the theme of his drama Macías.
• El conde Fernán González y la exención de Castilla, historical drama set during the independence of the County of Castile.

See also

• Spanish Romantic literature: Romanticism in the Spanish literary framework.
• Spanish Romantic writers: List of Romantic authors.
• Romanticism: Overview of the movement.
• Spanish literature: Evolution of Spanish literature.

Bibliography

• Adler, Robert L. "Modernization of Spain and the converso in the Work of Mariano José de Larra". Hispania 72.3 (1989), pp. 483–490.
• Alma Amell, Alma. La preocupación por España en Larra. Madrid: Pliegos, 1990.
• Behiels, Lieve. «El criterio de la verosimilitud en la crítica literaria de Larra». Castilla: Boletín del Departamento de Literatura Española 8 (1984), pp. 25–46.
• Blanquer, Daniel. "Larra: Autopsia de un suicidio". Alcoy: Author's edition, 1978. [Prologue by Francisco Umbral]
• Burgos, Carmen de (Colombine). "Fígaro" (Revelaciones, "Ella" descubierta, Epistolario inédito). Epilogue by Ramón Gómez de la Serna. Madrid, Imprenta de «Alrededor del Mundo», 1919.
• Cano, Vicente. «Los ensayos de Larra y Alberdi: Paralelos y puntos de contacto estilísticos». In Studies in Eighteenth-Century Spanish Literature and Romanticism in Honor of John Clarkson Dowling. Ed. Douglas and Linda Jane Barnette. Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 1985, pp. 37–47.
• Cedeño, Aristófanes. «Los grandes ideales sociales y la perspectiva histórico-política en los artículos de Larra». Romance Languages Annual 7 (1995), pp. 423–429.
• Cedeño, Aristófanes. «Hombre y sociedad en el pensamiento de Larra». Hispanófila 123 (1998), pp. 17–29.
• Centeno, Augusto. «La Nochebuena de 1836». Modern Language Notes 50 (1935), pp. 441–445.
• Escobar, José. «El Pobrecito hablador de Larra, y su intención satírica». Papeles de Son Armadans 64 (1972), pp. 5–44.
• Escobar, José. Los orígenes de la obra de Larra. Madrid: Editorial Prensa Española, 1973.
• Escobar, José. «Larra durante la ominosa década». Anales de Literatura Española 2 (1983), pp. 233–249.
• Escobar, José. «Larra y la revolución burguesa». Revista de Historia 10 (Nov. 1987), pp. 55–67.
• Hendrix, William S. "Notes on Jouy's Influence on Larra". Romantic Review 9 (1920), pp. 37–45.
• Kirkpatrick, Susan. Larra: El laberinto inextricable de un romántico liberal. Trans. Marta Eguía. Madrid: Gredos, 1977.
• Lomba y Pedraja, José. Mariano José de Larra (Fígaro). Cuatro estudios que le abordan o le bordean, Madrid: Tipografía de Archivos, Olózaga, 1936.
• Lorenzo-Rivero, Luis. Larra y Sarmiento: Paralelismos históricos y literarios. Madrid: Ediciones Guadarrama, 1968.
• Lorenzo-Rivero, Luis. Larra: Técnicas y perspectivas. Madrid: Ediciones José Porrúa Turanzas, 1988.
• Palacios Fernández, Emilio (1984). "Larra, una revisión continua". Dicenda. Cuadernos de Filología Hispánica (in español) (3): 279–288. ISSN 1988-2556. Retrieved October 9, 2016.
• Rosenberg, John R. "Between Delirium and Luminosity: Larra's Ethical Nightmare". Hispanic Review 61.3 (1993), pp. 379–389.
• Schurlknight, Donald E. Spanish Romanticism in Context: Of Subversion, Contradiction and Politics: Espronceda, Larra, Rivas, Zorrilla. Lanham: University Press of America, 1998.
• Servodidio, Joseph V. Los artículos de Mariano José de Larra: Una crónica de cambio social. New York: Eliseo Torres, 1976.
• Tarr, F. Courtney. "Larra's Duende Satírico del Día". Modern Philology 26 (1928–1929), pp. 31–46.
• Ullman, Pierre L. Mariano de Larra and Spanish Political Rhetoric. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1971.
• 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 Monographs, No. 61, 2004, pp. 15–52.

External links

• The complete works of Mariano José de Larra on Google Books: Volume I, Volume II, Volume III
• Author Library of Mariano José de Larra at the Biblioteca Virtual Cervantes
• Works of Mariano José de Larra: text, concordances and frequency list
• El Doncel don Enrique el Doliente Text search on Google Books
• Miranda de Larra: "Larra no se mató por una mujer, sólo fue la gota que colmó el vaso"
• Works of Mariano José de Larra at Project Gutenberg.
• El doncel de don Enrique el Doliente at Project Gutenberg, in four volumes: volume I, volume II, volume III and volume IV.
• Digitized works of Mariano José de Larra in the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica of the National Library of Spain
• Works of Mariano José de Larra in the Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes