Leopoldo Alas

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Leopoldo Alas, "Clarín"

Leopoldo Enrique García-Alas y Ureña , pseudonym Clarín , (born April 25, 1852 in Zamora , Spain , † June 13, 1901 in Oviedo , Asturias , Spain) was a Spanish writer and journalist . He was Professor of Roman Law at the University of Oviedo .

His most famous work is the novel La Regenta (Eng. The President ) published in 1885 . The novel has been compared to Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary , who is considered an adultery and seduction novel . His novel Su único hijo from 1890 (Eng. His only son , 2002) is also available in a German translation.

Life

Leopoldo Alas was born as the fourth child of his parents in Zamora, where his father, Jenaro García Alas y Suárez, was Gobernador Civil of the province (his mother's name was Leocadia). In 1854 the father was transferred to León , where the boy attended a Jesuit school. In 1859, after his father was transferred again, he went back to Oviedo, where Leopoldo met the later writer Armando Palacio Valdés in high school . During this time he wrote his first plays, which the two friends also performed themselves. At 16, he published a humorous weekly called “Juan Ruiz”. In 1869 he got the "Bachiller en Artes" (the Spanish equivalent of the Abitur), at the same time he sent first articles to newspapers and magazines in Madrid , where he went to study law, which he completed in 1871. For a while he tried studying “Filosofía y Letras” (humanities), but then did a law doctorate with a dissertation on “El Derecho y la Moralidad” (law and morality); his doctoral supervisor was none other than Francisco Giner de los Ríos , the founder of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza . This is also the only book that was not published under his pseudonym.

Together with Palacio Valdés and other young intellectuals, Alas founded a " Tertulia " in the Cervecería Inglesa, called "Bilis Club". They also visited the Ateneo , where they met the somewhat older writer Benito Pérez Galdós . In 1872 they founded the “Rabagas” magazine, but it was short lived. In 1874 Leopoldo Alas began to write professionally in the magazine El Solfeo , using his pseudonym "Clarín" (bugle, trumpet) from 1875 , after the gracioso figure of the same name from Pedro de Calderón's La vida es sueño , who does not forbid himself to "make sounds" let. Clarín soon became famous for its pointed pen; almost every one of his articles was hotly debated, and some also triggered scandals. This also seems to have been the reason why a first appointment as professor of political economy and statistics in Salamanca in 1878 failed, since one of the people he severely attacked, the Conde de Toreno, Queipo de Llano, had the final right to decide and he had the First ranked in favor of second ranked. Finally, in 1882, Clarín was appointed full professor of political economy and statistics in Saragossa ; in the same year he married Onofre García Argüelles y García-Bernardo, only to return to Oviedo a year later as professor of Roman law . His first son Leopoldo was born in 1883, the second Adolfo in 1887, and his daughter Elisa in 1890. As a professor (later also for natural law ), Clarín was known for his rigor and incorruptibility, as well as for his unusual teaching methods: In addition to specialist books, he also required reading Don Quixote and other literary works. In his spare time he wrote newspaper articles for El Globo , La Ilustración and Madrid Cómico ; he sends his “paliques”, vicious satirical texts that have given him additional enemies, to the newspapers El Imparcial and Madrid cómico . In 1881 he published his literary reviews in book form under the title Solos de Clarín (Claríns Solos); the foreword is by the later Nobel Prize winner José Echegaray . At the age of 31 he wrote his masterpiece La Regenta (English: The President ), the second volume of which appeared in 1885. In 1891 his second novel, Su único hijo (Eng. His only son , 2002) was published. In the years 1892/93 he went through a personal crisis full of religious doubts, which was reflected in his story Cambio de Luz . In 1894 he finally tried his hand at the theater play Teresa also in the dramatic genre, which obviously did not suit him; the premiere of the one-act play in prose was a failure. Finally, he tried his hand at the literary translator of Émile Zola , whose work Travail he transferred in 1901 in months of detailed work. Already sick and exhausted, Clarín is once again troubling his perfectionism. He writes incessantly, v. a. small items to earn a living and feed your children. In León he tries to rest with a relative, but then the doctors diagnose a disease that was incurable at the time: tuberculosis . He died on June 13, 1901, at the age of just 49.

Worldview

Clarín stood out as a biting critic of conservatism , was liberal , saw himself as a supporter of the republic and was influenced by Krausismo . For a while he was also politically active and was a councilor for the city of Oviedo. In 1898 a kind of branch of his university was founded on his initiative with the aim of giving lectures for the general public; Clarín z. B. taught at the Centro Obrero (Workers' Center) in Oviedo and at the Círculo Mercantil in Gijón . He was anti-clerical , but not non-religious. His committed newspaper articles against the restorative tendencies of society brought him many difficulties.

In addition, one can see him as a "literary advocate of feminism ". Alas has done a lot of psychology, the school of Charcot , and has devoted critical studies to it. He sums up his naturalistic way of working in an article in El Progreso 1882: “Today the novelist seeks his materials, his characters and the form of his works in the world as it is; in it he finds his only source of inspiration. he observes, ponders, compares, generalizes and then reproduces. ”He was not recognized for his literary status for a long time, though he was famous during his lifetime, but this fame was based more on the scandalous success of his novel than on the appreciation of his artistic achievement recognized by only a few (including Galdós). For the most part, he aroused outrage in conservative Spain, which his son (rector of the University of Oviedo) felt when the victorious Franco troops marched in, when he had to lose his life - for the "sins" of his father. Only after the end of Franquism was there a Clarín renaissance; his main work, La Regenta , has been called the “Spanish Madame Bovary”.

plant

Essays

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

Novels

Stories and short stories

Readings

  • His only son (Su unico hijo), speaker: Jürgen Thormann, SWR 2003 (published in SWRedition ( ISBN 978-3-95615-040-1 ), available from all common audio portals)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Alas, Leopoldo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Clarín; Leopoldo Enrique García-Alas Ureña
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 25, 1852
PLACE OF BIRTH Zamora , Spain
DATE OF DEATH June 13, 1901
Place of death Oviedo , Asturias