Fernán Caballero

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Cecilia Böhl de Faber, Fernán Caballero , by Valeriano Domínguez Bécquer , 1858. Madrid, Museo del Romanticismo.

Cecilia Francisca Josefa Böhl de Faber y Larrea , better known by her pseudonym Fernán Caballero (born December 24, 1796 in Morges ( Switzerland ); † April 7, 1877 in Seville ) was a Spanish writer of German-Spanish-Irish origin.

Life

Cecilia was the daughter of the German consul and merchant in Cadiz Johann Nikolaus Böhl von Faber , who was an important source of inspiration for Spanish romanticism , and an Andalusian mother, Frasquita Larrea, whose mother came from Ireland . Cecilia's paternal ancestors were merchants in Stralsund . She was born during her parents' stay in Morges, Switzerland, but was mainly brought up in Hamburg . The father, who since 1787 was a stepson and later also the adoptive son of the Prussian lawyer Martin Jakob Ritter and Edler von Faber, bought the Görslow estate near Leezen in Mecklenburg in 1805 and settled there, but the mother and two of her daughters moved to Cádiz back. Cecilia and her brother Juan Jacobe stayed with their father, who was ennobled by Faber in 1806 with the imperial nobility and the name Böhl . She was brought up by a Belgian governess and her father, and from 1807 she went to a French boarding school for girls in Hamburg. The family did not move together again until 1811, when Böhl converted to Catholicism and moved to Cádiz. In 1815 Cecilia visited Spain, where in 1816 she married the infantry captain Antonio Planells y Bardaxí , with whom she went to Puerto Rico . She was heartbroken in marriage and was only redeemed by the imminent death of her husband, who died in the field the following year. In 1822 the young and unusually educated widow Francisco Ruiz del Arco , Marqués de Arco Hermoso, married an officer in one of the Spanish guard regiments from a wealthy Sevillian aristocratic family. This time the marriage was happy and Cecilia lived partly in a city palace in Seville, partly on the finca “Dos Hermanas”, where she could study country life.

When Arco Hermosos died in 1835, she was already 39 years old and found herself in precarious circumstances, as her father also died in 1836 and as a single widow she was in a difficult position, economically and socially. In 1836 she went on a trip to Paris and there met an exceptionally attractive man, the aristocrat Frederic Cuthbert, who is reflected in the character of Sir George Percy in her novel Clemencia . Cecilia fell madly in love with him, but he only needed her as one adventure among many, and they parted in deep disappointment. In 1837 she married Antonio Arrom de Ayala , a man who was 17 years younger than her class. At this time she seems to have already written a text, but she felt no need to publish it. Her third husband, however, encouraged her to write and publish, and so she published the novel La Gaviota in 1849 under the pseudonym "Fernán Caballero". Arrom was consul in Australia , engaged in various businesses and made a lot of money. Unfortunate speculations drove him to suicide in London in 1859 . She was now 63 years old and thought temporarily of retiring to a convent, but stayed in Seville, where she found solace in her writing and died on April 7, 1877 at the age of 81.

plant

Fernán Caballero

Since Cecilia Böhl de Faber feared that she would not be taken seriously as an author, she used the pseudonym Fernán Caballero . The name is derived from a village in the province of Ciudad Real that appeared in the newspapers because of a crime.

Her entire literary output, like that of the other Costumbristas, can be classified between romanticism and realism . The Spanish literary historian Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo sees in her the founder of the modern Spanish moral novel. The writer José Manuel Ruiz Asencio even brings them close to William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra . Meyers Lexikon (5th edition, 1893) describes her as the creator of the modern realistic novel in Spain, although she pursues a strictly Catholic and extremely conservative direction.

Fernán Caballero was the first to combine so-called “escenas de costumbres” (moral images) with a simple novel and is therefore considered the founder of the Spanish novela costumbrista ; she always shows a certain folkloristic interest in the rural ambience in Spain and portrays the idyllic Andalusia from the outside perspective of those who only moved there in adulthood. It is precisely for this reason that their texts are often used as a treasure trove for documenting the “typically Spanish” customs and traditions of the time. In contrast to later Spanish authors such as Emilia Pardo Bazán, Fernán Caballero does not show any feminist approaches, but sees herself as the guardian of conservative Catholic morality, which limits women to their “feminine” role. It is puritanical and sometimes very sentimental even for today's tastes. The most valuable thing about her texts are the descriptions. Incidentally, she wrote her very first works in German.

Spanish title

Novels

  • La gaviota (1849) [the first version, which has not survived, was published in French in 1845]; modern editions z. E.g. Edición, introducción y notas de Carmen Bravo-Villasante. 3rd ed. Madrid: Castalia, 1987. (= Clásicos Castalia, 95). or: Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1995, edición de Enrique Rubio Cremades.
  • Clemencia . Madrid, Imp. De C. González, 1852.
  • La familia de Alvareda . Madrid, Imp. Mellado, 1856. Modern edition: 8th edition, Madrid, Espasa Calpe, 1975.
  • Lágrimas (1853)
  • Un verano en Bornos , 1858
  • Un servilón y un liberalito, ó Tres almas de Dios: novela. Madrid, Imprenta del Establecimiento de Mellado, 1863.
  • Una en otra. Novela de costumbres . Madrid, Librería de Miguel Guijarro, 1882.

Stories and short stories

  • Cuadros de costumbres populares andaluzas 1852
  • Cuentos y poesías andaluzas , 1859
  • Promesa de un soldado a la Virgen del Carmen . Madrid, Imprenta del Establecimiento de Mellado, 1863.
  • Un sermón bajo naranjos. Madrid, Imprenta del Establecimiento de Mellado, 1863.
  • La farisea; Las dos gracias: novelas originales. 3rd edition, Madrid, Centro General de Administración, 1865.
  • La estrella de Vandalia; ¡Pobre dolores! Madrid, Librería de Miguel Guijarro, 1880.
  • Relaciones . Madrid, Librería de Miguel Guijarro, 1880.
  • Vulgaridad y nobleza . Madrid, Librería de Antonio Rubiños, 1917.

Essays

  • El Alcazar de Seville . Madrid, Imprenta del Establecimiento de Mellado, 1863.

drama

  • Matrimonio bien avenido, la mujer junto al marido . Madrid, Imprenta del Establecimiento de Mellado, 1863.

Children's literature

  • Cuentos, oraciones, adivinas y refranes populares e infantiles, El refranero del campo y poesías populares (posthumous). Madrid, Sáenz de Jubera, Hermanos, [1921].
  • La mitología contada a los niños e historia de los grandes hombres de la Grecia. 4th edition, Barcelona, ​​Librería de Juan y Antonio Bastinos, 1888.

Others

  • Cosa cumplida solo en la otra vida: diálogos entre la juventud y la edad madura . Madrid, Librería de Miguel Guijarro, 1881.

German translations

  • Die Möve , translated by LG Lemcke in Selected Works , Vol. 2, Braunschweig 1859.
  • Die Möwe , 2 volumes, Max, Breslau 1860. Translated by August Geyder .
  • Lagrimas: a moral novel from today's time , 2 volumes, Max, Breslau 1860. Translated by August Geyder.
  • Clementia , Max, Breslau 1860. Translated by August Geyder.
  • The seagull : Roman. Translation from Spanish and afterword by Hans Kundert. Zurich: Manesse Verlag, 1973. (Manesse library of world literature). ISBN 978-3-7175-1460-2 , ISBN 978-3-7175-1461-9

literature

  • Amores, Montserrat: Fernán Caballero y el cuento folclórico . El Puerto de Santa María: Ayuntamiento de El Puerto de Santa María, 2001. (Biblioteca de Temas Portuenses, 13) ISBN 84-89141-32-0
  • Coloma, Luis: Recuerdos de Fernán Caballero . Madrid: Razón y Fe, 1949
  • Gómez Sánchez, José María: Recuerdos al viento: Fernán Caballero (1796-1996). Dos Hermanas: Ayuntamiento de Dos Hermanas, 1997. ISBN 84-920852-4-X
  • Herrero, Javier: Fernán Caballero: un nuevo planteamiento . Madrid: Gredos, 1963. (Biblioteca románica hipánica; 2.71)
  • Klible, Lawrence H .: Fernán Caballero . New York: Twayne, 1973
  • Palma, Angélica: Fernán Caballero, la novelista novelable . Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1931.
  • Fernán Caballero: de la Andalucía romantica a la novela moderna; catálogo de la exposición conmemorativa del bicentenario del nacimiento de la escritora . El Puerto de Santa María, 1996. Madrid: Ed. Imprenta, 1997. ISBN 84-89141-11-8

Web links

Wikisource: Fernán Caballero  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ GHdA Adelslexikon Volume I, 1972, p. 466 f.
personal data
SURNAME Caballero, Fernan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cecilia Francisca Josefa Böhl de Faber y Larrea
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish writer of German-Spanish-Irish origin
DATE OF BIRTH December 24, 1796
PLACE OF BIRTH Morges , Switzerland
DATE OF DEATH April 7, 1877
Place of death Seville