José Martínez Ruiz

Azorín .

José Augusto Trinidad Martínez Ruiz , better known by his stage name " Azorín " (born June 8, 1873 in Monóvar ( Alicante province ); † March 2, 1967 in Madrid ) was a Spanish writer, literary critic and politician.

Life

José Martínez Ruiz was born the son of a conservative lawyer and landowner in Monóvar, in the Spanish province of Alicante, as the eldest of nine children. He attended high school in a Piarist boarding school in Yecla and studied law in Valencia from 1888 to 1896 . In his youth he was interested in the philosophical currents of Krausismo and anarchism . Early on he began to work as a journalist and theater critic in various newspapers. He also translated various texts by anarchist authors, such as the drama L'Intruse by Maurice Maeterlinck or In Russian and French Prisons (1887) by Kropotkin . In 1895 he himself published two essays , "Anarquistas literarios" and "Notas sociales", in which he expressed himself on anarchist ideas. He took his final exams in Granada and Salamanca , but the theater interested him more than his studies.

In 1896 he came to Madrid to continue his studies; There he worked as a journalist in various republican media, as well as a translator and literary critic. Among other things , he used the following pseudonyms : "Cándido", "Ahrimán", "Charivari" and "Este". In his autobiographical novel trilogy La voluntad, Antonio Azorín and Las confesiones de un pequeño filósofo , which he published between 1902 and 1904, he finally gave the main character the name he would later use as a pseudonym: "Azorín". This is the name under which it went down in Spanish literary history. He was a representative of the Generación del 98 ( generation of 98 ) and gave this group its name.

From 1905 he turned his political line to conservatism ; he began to work for the daily newspaper ABC and between 1907 and 1919 was five times Conservative MP and temporarily also State Secretary in the Ministry of Education under Antonio Maura . He made numerous trips to Spain and studied the Spanish literature of the Siglo de Oro . Under the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera , Azorín resigned from all political offices. In 1924 he was elected a member of the Real Academia Española . When civil war broke out in 1936 , he fled Madrid with his wife and settled in France . After the end of the civil war, he returned to Spain. Azorín died at the age of 93 as one of the last members of the Generación del 98.

plant

Azorín is considered to be one of the most important representatives of the generation of 1898. In his work he discovered the barren Castilian landscape and its poor inhabitants, but displaced real misery and transfigured poverty into an idyll. The Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset characterized his spelling as: "Maximus in minimis": The small, apparently inconspicuous, takes up all of your attention. The greatest problems in history are seen in details of everyday reality. Azorín's strength lies in the impressionistic mood sketch , not in the story-poor novel or in the stage-weak experimental theater. In his essays he also dealt with classical works of Spanish literature such as Don Quixote .

Essays

• Los pueblos 1905
• La ruta de Don Quixote 1905
• España 1909
• Castilla 1912
• Al margins de los clásicos 1915
• El paisaje de España visto por los españoles 1917

Novels

• Trilogy:
  • La Voluntad 1902
  • Antonio Azorín 1903
  • Las confesiones de un pequeño filósofo 1904
• Don Juan 1922
• Doña Inés 1925

drama

• Old Spain (1926)
• Brandy, mucho brandy (1927)
• Comedia del arte (1927)
• Trilogy Lo invisible
  • La arañita en el espejo
  • El segador
  • Doctor Death, de 3 a 5

In German translation

• Confessions of a Little Philosopher . [Lienhart Roffler and Jaime Romagosa took care of the translation into German.] Bern-Bümpliz: Züst, 1949.
• Spanish Visions: Literary Paraphrases . [Translated from the Spanish by Anna Maria Ernst-Jelmoli] Zurich: Rascher, 1942 (European Library).
• In the footsteps of Don Quixote . [Translated from Spanish by Anna Maria Ernst-Jelmoli. Introduction: Fritz Ernst]. With 6 colored and 8 black reproductions after paintings by Fritz Widmann. Zurich: Rascher, 1923.

literature

• Actes du Premier Colloque International José Martinez Ruiz (Azorín) : Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines, Pau, 25 and 26 avril 1985. [Paris]: J & D Ed., 1993. ISBN 2-906483-76-1 .
• Maass, Angelika: Azorín or the human being in the sign of the plain: An examination of the work of Azorín using the example of “La Ruta de Don Quijote” . Bern; Frankfurt / Main; New York: Lang, 1984 (European University Studies: Series 24, Ibero-Romance Languages ​​and Literatures; Vol. 22) ISBN 3-261-03312-6 .
• Prieto de Paula, Ángel L .: Azorín frente a Nietzsche y otros asedios noventayochistas . Alicante: Agua Clara, 2006. (Amalgama; 38) ISBN 84-8018-282-2 .
• Schmelzer, Dagmar: Intermedial writing in the Spanish avant-garde novel of the 20s: Azorín, Benjamín Jarnés and the film . Tübingen: Narr, 2007 (Mannheim contributions to linguistics and literary studies; 72). ISBN 978-3-8233-6359-0 , ISBN 3-8233-6359-X .

Web links

• Literature by and about José Martínez Ruiz in the catalog of the German National Library
• Biography (in spanish)
• Azorín's birth house in Monóvar (in Spanish)
• Biblioteca Virtual Cervantes (in Spanish), online editions of his works in the original