Places
Quesada is located about 100 km from the capital of Jaén, at the southern end of the Sierras de Cazorla, Segura and Las Villas Natural Park, where the Guadalquivir is born, as the municipality’s slogan wields.
Writers
The ephemeral presence of Miguel Hernández in the province of Jaén, lasting 72 days, from March 2 to May 12, 1937, caused a transcendental imprint, not only in the province, but in universal literature itself, since this brief stay in Jaén is one of the most prolific of his literary career.
Born in Orihuela in 1910, Miguel Hernández arrived in Jaén after being killed in the Fifth Regiment and in its 1st Mobile Shock Brigade, in which he was head of the Department of Culture and an emissary exhorting the troops on the front.
After his discharge, he was assigned to Jaén as a commissioner in the propaganda body “Speaker of the South Front” with a very clear mission: to collaborate in the writing of prose and war poetry for publication in the newspapers and leaflets of the front.
Thus, the South Front promotes the evolution of the «Venceremos» Magazine. The newspaper is printed on four pages of high-quality paper and with an abundance of illustrations, which comes out twice a week, with anonymous editors, among whom Antonio Machado wrote and where Miguel Hernández himself sometimes signed with the pseudonym Antonio López.
Frente Sur, in its initial issue and in the introductory editorial “To all: ¡Salud!”, is defined as:
… a newspaper from the front and the rear. It is a war newspaper. Of implacable war against the traitor and the invader (…)
A work that, as commissioner in the Speaker of the South Front will lead Miguel Hernández to cover the chronicle of the siege of the Virgen de la Cabeza Sanctuary in Andújar and to have direct knowledge of the Battle of Lopera, among other actions.
In the capital of Granada, he would reside in the Commissariat building, located at 9 Calle Llana –now Francisco Coello, 9–, palace of the Marquis of Blanco Hermoso, and where the Speaker of the South Front is also located.
The fruitful and significant work of Miguel Hernández in Jaén began the same day of his arrival, since March 2 is the date “Aceituneros”, becoming a provincial anthem in Jaén. Later, on March 4, “The Struggle and the Life of the Spanish Peasant” was dated.
Olive Pickers
Andalusians of Jaén,
proud olive pickers,
tell me from your soul: who,
who raised up the olive trees?
They were not raised up by nothing,
nor by money, nor by the master,
but by the silent earth,
by work and by sweat.
Together with pure water
and together with the planets,
these three gave beauty
to the twisted trunks.
Rise up, silver haired olive tree,
they said at the foot of the wind.
And the olive tree raised
a powerful hand as its foundation.
Andalusians of Jaén,
proud olive pickers,
tell me in your soul: who
suckled the olive trees?
Your blood, your life,
not that of the exploiter
who grew rich on the
generous wound of sweat.
Not that of the landowner
who buried you in poverty,
who trod on your brow,
who made you bow your head.
Trees which your effort
brought into the broad light of day,
provided the bread
eaten only by someone else.
How many centuries of olives,
with your feet and hands kept captive
from sun to sun and moon to moon,
weigh down on your bones!
Andalusians of Jaén,
proud olive pickers,
my soul asks: to whom,
to whom do these olive trees belong?
Jaén, rise up bravely
on your stony, moon-like land,
do not be a slave
along with all your olive groves.
Within the clarity
of the oil and its aromas,
they proclaim your liberty
the liberty of your hillsides.
Miguel Hernández is also closely linked with another municipality of Jaén, Quesada, through his wife Josefina Manresa. Miguel and Josefina were married on March 9 in the Orihuela court, just a week after being assigned to Jaén. Although she stayed barely 3 years in that town, since her father was a civil guard and they consigned him to another destination, both wanted to know the hometown of his wife. A trip that they could never make together (she did visit him later in 1964, encouraged by some friends who insisted that she get to know the town), as expressed by Josefina Manresa in her Memories:
“While in Jaén, with Miguel, I expressed my desire to go to know my town, and he was also excited to see it and please me, but Quesada turned out to be further away from Jaén than we thought, and there was no easy way to go , and because of my hasty stay there we are left with that wish. “
Miguel Hernández and Josefina Manresa had two children. The first of them, Manuel Ramón, the protagonist of many of his verses, was born on December 19, 1937, but died a few months after being born. It is necessary to emphasize the one that he dedicates to his wife when he knows that he is going to be a father, as it is one of the last poems he writes in Jaén: Song of the Soldier Husband, which appears published in The Blue Overalls (magazine of the republican side during the Civil War ) of May 10, 1937:
I have sown your womb with love and seed,
prolonged the echo of blood I answered
and I wait in the furrow as the plough waits:
I have reached into the depths.
(…)
To his second son, Manuel Miguel, he dedicated his famous Lullaby of the Onion:
(…)
My little boy
was in hunger’s cradle.
He was nursed
on onion blood.
But your blood
is frosted with sugar,
onion and hunger.(…)
At the end of the Civil War, after clandestinely crossing the Portuguese border, he was arrested by the police of the fascist dictator Salazar and handed over to the Francoist authorities. After his captivity in the jails of Seville and Madrid (where he wrote the Lullaby of the Onion), he was released thanks to the efforts of his friends and because crossing the border clandestinely was not considered a serious crime and thus relieve the crowded prisons .
But when he returned to Orihuela in search of his wife and son, he was betrayed and imprisoned again, tried, accused of joining the military rebellion and sentenced to death, although the death penalty was commuted to 30 years in prison.
In prison he suffered unfortunate hardships that made him seriously ill with bronchitis and later typhus, which led to a fatal tuberculosis, and he dies on March 28, 1942 in Alicante prison.
Literary production of Miguel Hernández
The premature death of Miguel Hernández at the age of 31, truncated one of the most brilliant trajectories of Spanish literature, which undergoes a prodigious evolution, from the reigning gongorism in the Generation of 27 as manifested in “Lunar Expert”, to the popular heroism infused by the Civil War as exhibited in “Wind of the Village” or Miguel Hernández is discovered overwhelmed by pain and misery in “Songbook of Absences”.
Literary production:
His “Jaen era” is clearly marked by that popular heroism, which is welcomed in the pages of the newspaper Frente Sur:
“Companion of our Days”, no 1 –21 March, 1937–;
under the pseudonym Antonio López.
“The Evaded from the fascist Hell”, no 3 –28 March, 1937–
«On the Front of Extremadura», no 6 –8 April, 1937–. under the pseudonymM. H.
«The poor Man´s Son», no 6 –8 April,1937–; under the pseudonymAntonio López.
«Bombarded City», no 7 –11 April, 1937–.
«Broken Home», no 8 –15 April, 1937–.
«On the 8 April Decree. Fascism and Spain», no 9 –18 April,1937.
«Life in the Rear», no 9 –18 April, 1937–; under the pseudonym. Undated, in La Carolina.
«Children of the Iron», no 12 –1 May 1937–; under the pseudonym Antonio López.
«Labour Day», no 12 –1 May 1937–.
«The surrender of Cabeza», no 13 –6 May 1937–.
«The Traitors of the Sanctuary of Cabeza», no 15 –13 May
de 1937–.
«On the taking of Cabeza. Letter and Clarification», no 15 –13 May 1937–;
The relpy –«Companion Juan Celdrán», under the initials M. H.93.
«The Issues of Bread», no 15 -13 May 1937-, under the pseudonym Antonio López.
«Soldier Family», no 17 -20 May 1937-.
« Mussolini Cinderell», first published, as «Sanguinary Mussolini», in La voz del combatiente, no 83; 24 March1937.
«Call to Youth», in Nueva Cultura, no 1; Valencia, March, 1937.
Below, his publications:
1933.- Lunar Expert
1934.- If only they could see you now and the shadow of what you used to be: self sacramental
1934.- The Bravest Bullfighter
1936.- The Unending Lightning
1937.- Wind of the Village. Poems in War
1937.-Airy Labourer
1937.- Drama in War
1939.- The Man on the Prowl
1938-1941.- Songbook of Absences
Web Portal of Miguel Hernández ´s Legacy
Web Portal of Zabaleta Museum – Miguel Hernández-Josefina Manresa
Web Portal of Miguel Hernández
Writers
Federico García Lorca, poet and playwright assigned to the Generation of 27, was born in the Granada town of Fuentevaqueros on June 5, 1898 and died dramatically at dawn on August 18, 1936, when he was supposedly shot somewhere on the road. between Víznar and Alfacar (Granada). The mortal remains of one of the most universal Spanish poets of the 20th century have not yet been found. His link with the province of Jaén is due to study trips to different regions of Spain, in the company of a professor and his fellow students.
The study trip to the town of Baeza, where he met Antonio Machado – already a professor of French language at the General and Technical Institute – is crucial for awakening his vocation as a writer, since in his adolescence the young Lorca felt more affinity for music than for writing.
From these visits the texts Impressions of the trip II Baeza: The City, will be born, published in 1917 in the Granada magazine Letras. Texts later reworked in his first book Impressions and landscapes (1918) with the title Lost City, including a dedication to María del Reposo Urquía, daughter of the director of the Institute and one of his first friends outside Granada. An interesting description of Baeza from the beginning of the century that responds to the “impressions” caused by the visit to the city.
These student transfers will not be the only ones that Federico García Lorca made to the province, but in 1925 he visited the city of Jaén several times in the company of some friends.
The stays in the capital were not anecdotal, but they left a transcendental mark both in his turn towards literature to the detriment of music, and in the deepening of his theory of Andalusia.
The severe Andalusia of Jaén is important to Lorca, as evidenced by his frequent references to the landscape of the upper Guadalquivir, the olive trees or the fact that his Romancero Gitano was originally called “Romance of Dark sorrow in Jaén”.
Poem of the Deep Song. Landscape
The fields open
like a fan.
Above the olive grove
there is a sunken sky
and a dark shower
of cold stars.
Bulrush and twilight tremble
at the edge of the river.…)
Jaén is also present in the music of Federico García Lorca. Thus, in 1931 he recorded five gramophone records with Encarnación López “La Argentinita”. Among the engraved pieces The Moorish of Jaén, a popular poem from the 15th century. La Argentinita provided the voice, the tap dance and the castanets and Federico García Lorca accompanied her on the piano.
Literary production of Federico García Lorca
As Federico Chica expresses in Jaén in Federico García Lorca, «if Granada and Seville suppose for the poet the encounter with the Arab culture, Cordoba the affirmation of the Roman element and Malaga, the Mediterranean; Jaén has proven to be transcendental for the literary production of Federico García Lorca, both because of the direction he took promoting his vocation as a writer, and because of the work he developed towards a closed and furious aesthetic ».
Literary work:
POETRY
Book of poems (1921)
Deep Song Poem (1921)
First songs (1922)
Songs (1921-1924)
Gypsy ballads (1924-1927)
Poet in New York (1929-1930)
Cry for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías (1935)
Six Galician Poems (1935)
Divan of Tamarit (1936)
Sonnets of Dark Love (1936)
Loose Poems
Popular Songs
PROSE
(PRINTS)
Symbolic fantasy
Granada. Paradise closed for many
Easter in Granada
(NARRATIONS)
Saint Lucia and Saint Lazarus
History of this rooster
Death of the Baptist
Death of the Innocents
Suicide in Alexandria
Swimmer submerged. (Small tribute to a saloon chronicler)
Lovers killed by a partridge
The hen
FIRST BOOK IN PROSE
Impressions and landscapes. (1918)
CINEMATOGRAPHIC SCRIPT
Trip to the Moon (1929)
THEATER
The Butterfly’s Evil Spell (1919)
The girl who waters the basil and the wondering prince (1923)
The Billy-Club Puppets. Tragicomedy of Don Cristóbal and Sená María (1923)
Mariana Pineda (1925)
Brief Theater (1928): (The walk of Buster keaton), (The maiden, the sailor and the student), (Chimera)
The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife (1930)
Love of Don Perlimplín with Belisa in Their garden (1931)
Altar for Don Cristóbal. Farce for guignol (1931)
Once Five Years Pass (1931)
The public (1933)
Blood wedding (1933)
Yerma (1934)
Doña Rosita the Spinster, or the Language of Flowers (1935)
The House of Bernarda Alba (1936)
Writers
Antonio Cipriano José María Machado Ruiz, full name of one of the most emblematic poets of the Generation of 98, better known as Antonio Machado, was born in the city of Seville on July 26, 1875.
Antonio Machado’s stay in the municipality of Baeza came right after the death of his wife Leonor Izquierdo Cuevas, on August 1, 1912. In November 1919, he left Baeza to move to an institute in Segovia. In 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, Machado was evacuated to Valencia. Finally, he left for Barcelona in 1939, where he died shortly after.
Letter from Machado to Ortega y Gasset. 1913
(…)
“I start working with some profit. I have recently begun to recover from my deep crisis that would have led me to spiritual annihilation. The death of my wife left me torn and so dejected that all my work, barely outlined in Campos de Castilla, was truncated. “
(…)
This event deeply affects him and with the intention of alleviating the unfathomable emptiness of her loss, he decided to leave Soria and requested the first vacancy that occurred in his ranks as professor. He wanted a quiet and serene city, because he was anxious for solitude, but also well connected with Madrid. This vacancy occurred in Baeza, a historical but self-absorbed city in frank decline, although the railway junction where he believed he was located was not such, since the city was 12 kilometers from the station and had to be accessed by tram.
The Machadian stage in Baeza spans seven years, from November 1, 1912, the date of possession of the chair of French language at the then called General and Technical Institute, until November 5, 1919, date of his appointment as professor of French at an institute in Segovia.
Machado arrived in Baeza at a delicate emotional moment, which produced in him a negative first impression of the city and its people. The memory of Soria and Leonor was still very present.
CXXVIII
POEM FOR A DAY
RURAL MEDITATIONS
So now here I am, a teacher
of modern languages (lately
a master at writing poetry,
apprentice to a nightingale),
in a damp and cold town,
rundown and gloomy,
in both Andalusia and La Mancha. (…)
Machado’s life in Baeza went on at the beginning with placidity and slowness, walking, observing, meditating and teaching at the Institute – although he never had a great vocation as a teacher, as he himself confessed. Little by little, his attitude changed and he began to participate more actively in the city’s chores, attending gatherings in the pharmacy of the pharmacist Adolfo Almazán and even collaborating in local newspapers, which would slowly mitigate the memory of Soria and his wife.
In the end, the landscape of Baeza ended up taking over the poet, an aspect that in turn represented a great advance in his lyrics, incorporating a folkloric vein.
Notes
IV
You could see an owl
flying round and round
over the olive grove
He was flying to bring
a green twig
to the Virgin Mary.
Countryside of Baeza,
I will dream of you
when I no longer see you (…)
On September 7, 1919, Machado signed the transfer contest to an highschool in Segovia and left Baeza in November of the same year, but the memory of the city and the region remained in his memory and in his work.
In November 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, Machado was evacuated to Valencia (provisional capital of the Second Republic), where he met numerous artists and intellectuals -such as Rafael Zabaleta and Miguel Hernández, among others-, collaborated in republican publications and made literary campaign, participating in the II International Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture (1937), the most important act of intellectual propaganda during the War.
In 1939 he went to Barcelona, from where he crossed the Pyrenees to Collioure. There he died shortly after his arrival.
Literary production of Antonio Machado
Within the poetic production of the author, there are many poems alluding to the province of Jaén, but Baeza will offer Machado the opportunity to dedicate practically exclusively to poetic creation, reading, study and philosophical reflection, this stage being considered the most important, fruitful and complete in his personal evolution and his literary production, where publications of books as important for the consolidation of the poet as Poetry chosen (1917), Complete Poetry (1899-1917) and the second edition of Solitudes, galleries and other poems (1919).
Poetry
1903.- “Solitudes”
1907.- “Solitudes, Galleries, and Other Poems”
1912.- “Plains of Castile”
1917.- “Selected Pages”
1917.- “Complete Poems”
1924.- “New Songs”
1928.- “Complete Poems (1899-1925)”
1933.-“Complete Poems (1899-1930)”
1933.- “Land of Alvargonzález”
1933.- “Complete Poems”
1936.- “Juan de Mairena (sentences, graces, notes and memories of an apocryphal teacher)»
1937.- “The War (1936-1937)”
Drama
Writers
Antonio Muñoz Molina was born in the city of Úbeda on January 10, 1956, in the attic of a house that his parents rented when they married, “the room of the beam”, as he himself remembers. His mother was a housewife and his father worked in the garden and sold vegetables in the food market of Úbeda, perhaps from there, the references to the vegetable gardens of Mágina.
This writer completed his elementary baccalaureate at the “Santo Domingo Sabio” Salesian school and his upper baccalaureate at the “San Juan de la Cruz” High School Institute, both in Úbeda.
After completing these studies, he moved to Madrid to study journalism at the Complutense University and become the author of plays of political upheaval, but he did not finish this degree and went to Granada, where he completed a degree in Art History, although he never discarded the idea of becoming a journalist and writer, and regularly published articles in various local media.
He Lived in Granada working as an administrative assistant official in the City Council, while collaborating as a columnist in El Ideal and in the Diario de Granada and writing his first stories. In 1985 he published his first novel, Beatus Ille, which won the Icarus Award, followed by Winter in Lisbon (1987), Critics’ Award and National Award for Literature in 1988. After this literary and editorial success, he moved to Madrid and in 1991 he was awarded the Planeta Award for The Polish Horseman, and was awarded the National Narrative Award the following year.
He taught as a visiting professor of Spanish literature in some universities in the United States and in 1995 he became the youngest member to be elected by the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) to occupy the u (lowercase u) chair. Also in 2004 he was appointed director of the Instituto Cervantes in New York, where he had resided for some years and where he will return frequently in successive years.
Among the many recognitions he received, it is worth highlighting his investiture as Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Jaén in 2007, and, especially, obtaining the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature in 2013.
The connection between Antonio Muñoz Molina and Jaén is not only due to the fact that he is a native of Úbeda, but also because he uses Úbeda as a literary resource to frame some of his works as a “model of the city” which he calls “Mágina” and although it cannot be identified exactly with it, many of the spaces, situations, experiences and characters coincide with his native Úbeda. The author names this imaginary city “Magina” in honor of the mountainous massif that, in his childhood and adolescence, he could glimpse on the horizon from the viewpoints of Úbeda.
“Rather than a landscape, Mágina looks like a model of the city, a scale model of the ephemeral world in which most of the people live their lives” (…).
Antonio Muñoz Molina. Article “Between Úbeda and Mágina”.1996
Although he evokes Magina with greater or lesser emphasis in other novels and articles (Beltenebros, The Owner del Secreto, Warrior Zeal, Sefarad or Mysteries of Madrid), it is in three novels where Magina is overwhelmingly present and where the plot is recreated of them: his first novel Beatus Ille, The Polish Horseman and Full Moon. It is in them where we can identify some of the places in Úbeda that Antonio Muñoz Molina has transferred to Mágina: the Clock Square, the statue of General Orduña, the House of Towers …
Literary production of Antonio Muñoz Molina
According to professor Irene Andrés-Suárez in “Ethics and Aesthetics of Antonio Muñoz Molina” (1997), three well-defined stages are perceived throughout the author’s career. A first stage where his novels are especially nourished by music, literature and films; a second stage where he delves into his personal and collective memory; and a third stage more committed to the surrounding reality.
Literary production:
The following are the main works of the author:
– Winter in Lisbon, 1987 (Critics Award, 1988 and National Award for Literature, 1988
– Beltenebros, 1989
– Córdoba de los Omeyas, 1991
– The Polish Horseman, 1991 (Planeta Award, 1991 and National Literature Award, 1992)
– The Mysteries of Madrid, 1992
– Nothing fancy, 1993
– The Reality of Fiction, 1993
– The Owner of the Secret, 1994
– Why is literature not useful? 1994
– Warrior Zeal, 1995
– Appearances, 1995
– The Garden of Eden, 1996
– Written in an instant, 1996
– Full Moon, 1997 Prix Fémina, 1998
– Pure joy, 1998
– Carlota Fainberg, 1999
– Sefarad, 2001
– Without Blanca, 2001
– Life Ahead, 2002– Manhattan Windows, 2004
– The Wind of the Moon, 2006
– Everyday, 2007
– The Night of Times, 2010
– Nothing fancy, 2011
– The audacity to look, 2012
– All that was solid, 2013
– Like a passing shadow, 2014
– The lighthouse at the end of Hudson, 2015
– A lonely walk among the people, 2018 – Your steps on the stairs, 2019
Writers
Juan de Yepes Álvarez, later beatified, canonized and proclaimed Saint John of the Cross and Doctor of the Universal Church, Fontiveros (Avila) was born in 1542.
He studied Humanities at the Jesuits of Medina del Campo and at the age of twenty-one, due to his religious vocation, he entered the Carmelitas Calzados, under the name of Juan de Santo Matía. As a professed friar he settled in Salamanca, where he studied Philosophy at the University and in 1567 he was ordained a priest.
That year he had his first encounter with Saint Teresa of Jesus, won the Carmel Reform, and became Juan de la Cruz.
Saint Teresa herself highlighted this meeting in her Foundations:
(…)
Shortly afterwards a young father happened to come there, who was studying in Salamanca, and he went with another as a partner, who told me great things about the life that this father did. His name is Fray Juan de la Cruz.
(…)
The relationship of the religious and mystical poet of the Spanish Renaissance with Jaén is marked precisely by the founding work within the reforming current promoted by Saint Teresa of Jesus. Thus, after accompanying the Saint in the founding of the Reformation monasteries, acting as Master of novices and as confessor and vicar, he would arrive in Beas de Segura after escaping from the conventual prison of the Carmelite friars of Toledo, where he had been imprisoned by disputes between the Carmelite and the Discalced Carmelites.
During his captivity, which lasted about nine months in a state of total abandonment, Saint John of the Cross began the first stanzas of the Spiritual Canticle at the same time as the Romances and the poem of the “The fountain”.
(…) First I died for very dying.
´Twas my life that slaughter´d me:
For so long as it continued,
Thy dear face I could not see.
Greatly joy´d the heartless aliens(…)
Saint John of the Cross
After his escape from the conventual jail of Toledo and attending the General Chapter of Almodóvar del Campo (Ciudad Real), in 1578 he was appointed Prior of the El Calvario de Beas de Segura Convent, where he arrived very ill and deteriorated by the hardships of his captivity. Therefore, he stayed for a few days in the Monastery of Carmelitas Descalzas, which Saint Teresa of Jesus had founded three years before.
In Beas he spends about eight months, confessing and leading the nuns spiritually, while finding an ideal environment to write, being here, as Antonio Yuste Moreno explains in The Hundred Notices from Beas (1992), where he traces the great schemes of his thinking:
He wrote Prudence, a spiritual treatise as an instruction or advice intended primarily for the barefoot nuns of Beas, although later he intended it for other monasteries and their friars.
He composed the model of the Mount of Perfection, giving each of the nuns an autograph copy.
Wrote the first series of “Sentences and Spiritual Warnings.”
He composed the five stanzas of the Spiritual Canticle.
In 1579 he founded the Discalced College of Carmelo in Baeza, where he would be its first Rector and resided in the so-called Vicar’s house until 1582, although he did not stop returning to Beas every fifteen or twenty days, passing through other municipalities of Jaén: Úbeda, Torreperogil, Villacarrillo, Iznatoraf, Villanueva del Arzobispo …
After Baeza, he began a founding work (Granada, Málaga, Córdoba, Mancha Real-formerly Manchuela de Jaén-, Caravaca de la Cruz) and other functions such as Definitor, Prior or Vicar, which required him to travel constantly and in 1591, after being dismissed in all his positions, he arrived as a simple subject at the Convent of La Peñuela (La Carolina), where sick, he travelled to Úbeda, where he died the night of December 13 to 14 at the age of 49 years.
After his death, the dispute over his relics between Úbeda and Segovia would ensue. The transfer to Segovia was carried out in secret at the end of April 1593 – an event that is thought to have inspired Chapter XIX of the first part of Cervantes´s Quixote.
Literary production of Saint John of the Cross
Considered by many as the pinnacle of mystical poetry, the Spiritual Canticle and Dark Night stand out among his lyrical works. The works of Saint John of the Cross have quite a limitation of historical references, therefore some of dates below are the most accepted approximations:
– Ascent of Mount Carmel (1578-1583).
– Dark night of the soul. (1578).
– Spiritual Canticle (1584).
– Living flame of love (1584 or 1585).
– Epistolary (1581-1591).
Unlike Saint Teresa of Jesus, who left written testimonies of her life and activity – the Foundations – Saint John of the Cross did not write anything directly about himself, except for his letters, nor do personal elements appear scattered throughout his work.
Ascent to Mount Carmel (…)
In an obscure night,
With anxious love inflamed,
O, happy lot!
Forth unobserved I went,
My house being now at rest.
Web Portal of the Way of Saint John of the Cross(Úbeda)
Web Portal of the Way of Saint John of the Cross
Writers
The date and place of birth of Jorge Manrique is very controversial, since there is no specific document that certifies his birth. Although it has been maintained that he was born in Paredes de Nava (Palencia) in 1440, where his father, Don Rodrigo Manrique de Lara, was a count, there are reputed historians of the Middle Ages, such as Domingo Henares, professor at the UNED in Albacete, where in his work Letters from Don Rodrigo Manrique to his son Don Jorge (Diputación Provincial de Albacete, 2001), which argue that he could have been born in Jaén, specifically in Segura de la Sierra in 1434.
This assertion is based on the fact that Don Rodrigo Manrique conquered Plaza de Huéscar in 1434, which caused the then Master of Santiago, the Infante Enrique de Aragón, to hand him the command of Segura de la Sierra, the most important of the Order of Santiago (of which he would become Master), with the title of Commander. Some “military gains” that Jorge Manrique himself refers to in Copla XXIX:
He left no weighty chests of treasure,
Nor ever unto wealth attained
Nor store excelling;
To fight the Moors was all his pleasure
And thus his fortresses he gained,
Demesne, and dwelling.
Amid the lists where he prevailed
Fell knights and steeds into his hands
Through fierce compression,
Whereby he came to be regaled
With vassals and with feudal lands
In fair possession.
On the other hand, there is evidence that confirms that the Manrique family, at the time, was installed in a palace in the town of Segureño (a house that is still preserved) and that his mother already had three young children. So, Domingo Henares asks himself:
“Was she going to leave them alone, venturing, eight months pregnant to Paredes de Nava along the roads of that time, leaving the rest of her family in Segura de la Sierra?”
Whether or not he was born in Segura de la Sierra, what is evident is that a large part of his life was spent in the territories of the current province of Jaén (it must be remembered that the current division into provinces and regions was not made until 1833). Firstly, in Segura de la Sierra, where he would spend his childhood as the head of the Commission that his father administered. Don Rodrigo himself points out in his will regarding his stay in Segura:
“I spent most of my time there depending on the jobs I did”
Later in Chiclana de Segura, where the poet was commander, lived long periods and where his son Luis was born. In this town he lived both in the castle and in a house that is still preserved (Palacio de la Encomienda) on Calle Real. He even had an important connection with Baeza, where his daughter Luisa married Manuel, one of Benavides’ sons, owners of the Jabalquinto palace. This, in turn, led him to participate in 1477 in the struggles that took place in Baeza between Juan de Benavides, to whom the lineage was linked by the marriage between their respective children, against Diego Fernández de Córdoba, Marshal of Baena and son of the Count de Cabra, for the bad government in this city. Jorge Manrique was defeated and sentenced for contempt of the monarchy, as the chronicler
“Jorge Manrique, a hard-working warrior, an expert in military science and very fortunate in fighting (…) he carried a note of perfidy (..) to come to the end to attempt against the honor and life of his old friends, moved by the new relationship with Juan de Benavides (…) The latter (ie, Jorge Manrique) alleged some inadmissible excuses, but, in consideration of the merits of his father, was better treated than the other prisoners. (Palencia, Chronicle of Enrique IV, III, pp. 34-35).
This period of imprisonment is vital, because it is estimated that during this period of inactivity and with his father’s recent death (1476), is when the gestation of the Coplas at the Death of His Father must be dated. The prison barely lasted a few months, since Jorge Manrique, in the traditional chivalric way, drew up a poster of defiance to all those who dared to accuse him of guilty. After the period of thirty days, as no one appeared to the challenge, the kings declared him free and he was publicly excused from such an ungrateful act. After reconciliation with the Catholic Monarchs, he was appointed one of the eight captains of the Brotherhood, specifically the captaincy of Toledo.
On the other hand, Jorge Manrique was more a man of arms than a poet (in many occasions he is referred to as “the warrior poet”), employed from a very young age in the tasks of a Castilian military, although without neglecting his training in letters, as expected from a member of one of the oldest noble families of Castile, the Manrique de Lara. This fact made him a character who has gone down in the history of Spain as the first poet of the Pre-Renaissance.
In his political, religious and military aspects, he was a Santiaguista Knight, Commander of Montizón and Thirteen of the Order. In other words, one of the thirteen knights who attended the general chapters, which took place in Uclés (Cuenca), head of the Order. At the age of 24 he participated in the fighting of the siege of Montizón Castle (Villamanrique, Ciudad Real), where he gained fame and prestige as a warrior. He also fought in Alcázar de San Juan, Ciudad Real (1470), in Sabiote, Jaén (1473), at the site of Canales, León (1474), in the conquest of Alcaraz, Albacete, in the capture of Ciudad Real (1475) and in the battle of Uclés (1476).
After participating in the capture of Baeza in 1477 and later being freed, he served with the troops of Isabel and Fernando’s side in the war against the supporters of Juana la Beltraneja. As lieutenant of the queen in Ciudad Real, together with his father Rodrigo, he raised the siege that Juan Pacheco and the archbishop of Toledo, Alfonso Carrillo de Acuña, had placed on Uclés. In that war, during a skirmish near the Garcimuñoz castle in Cuenca, defended by the Marqués de Villena, he was mortally wounded in 1479 in Santa María del Campo Rus (Cuenca) and is buried in the church of the monastery of Uclés, head of the Order of Santiago. When he died, it is said that the bloody premonitory verses of his poem were found among his clothes: “Oh world, then you kill us …”
Finally, it is necessary to highlight the motto that Jorge Manrique carried as his flag “neither lie, nor regret” and that he expresses in the following Gloss:
II neither lie nor regret it,
neither say nor deny it,
neither am I sad nor happy,
neither claim nor consent,
neither trust nor distrust;
I neither live nor die well,
neither am I alien nor belong,
nor do I conquer nor strive,
neither hope nor despair. (…)
Literary production of Jorge Manrique
Probably due to his main role as a man at arms, administrator of the Montizón Commission and his early death, Jorge Manrique’s literary production is not very extensive, of only forty-nine compositions, although it may be that he still wrote more and are lost. Most of his works are love themes, some burlesque and others, like the Coplas, with a moral background (Elegies and doctrines). This literary excellence is not accidental, since poetry was a courtly activity and Manrique came from a family of Arts. His mother, Doña Mencia de Figueroa Laso de Vega, was a first cousin of the Marqués de Santillana, one of the most important poets of the time; Gómez Manrique was his uncle, a fact that greatly influenced his work. Even from his father, Don Rodrigo Manrique, some poetry is preserved.
In Jorge Manrique’s work, eight-syllable verses predominate, mastering the broken-foot couplet, which he uses frequently and in various metric combinations. In fact, it is often called a broken foot or “manriqueña” couplet. As a man of arms, he develops love poems as if the taking of a square was involved.
Castle of love
I
so well has,
milady, your memory defended me
from moving on,
that never, never, has been able
to achieve my victory’s
oblivion:
because you are in possession
of all my firmness in such a way,
that my fortress
cannot be taken
neither by force
nor by treason. (…)
Some love poems were dedicated to his wife Doña Guiomar de Castañeda, whose name appears in acrostic, that is, by means of a letter that begins each verse in a stanza (Gvyomar according to the spelling of that time).
Verses(…) God have mercy of the one who never attains (…)
(…)Veracious love and sorrow (…)
(…) Yonder evils I have told, (…)
(…) Oh, if these are my passions, (…)
(…) My life with sorrow be filled (…)
(…) And now that I am already loose, (…)
(.. .) Rage afflicts me terribly, (…)
Despite his sparse work, Jorge Manrique occupies a prominent place in the history of Spanish literature, especially for “Verses at the death of His Father”, undoubtedly his most important work and one of the first poems published by the Spanish press. (Zaragoza, 1480). A complex work in which the most relevant thing is that the author uses the topics that existed about death in the tradition of the time, but he pours them into a completely new form of expression, prelude to the Renaissance lyric. Written in a simple language, without falling into vulgarism or rhetoricism -as was the fashion of the time-, inaugurating the style of the Renaissance, of writing as it is spoken.
In the “Verses at the death of His Father”, made up of a collection of 40 double verses of broken foot, the poet expresses the equalizing power of death that does not respect anything or anyone. He collects the religious sense of his time on the shortness of life in the world and passes it on to later Spanish poetry. In these poems there is no despair, but quite the opposite: serenity, dignity of expression and simplicity, which give the poem great emotion. Without a doubt, Jorge Manrique is one of the most relevant figures in Spanish Pre-Renaissance poetry (transition period between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, around the 15th century), as evidenced by the influence he has had on other authors such as Lope de Vega, who went so far as to say that the “Verses at the death of His Father” deserved “to be written in golden letters.”
Jorge Manrique is praised by other authors, such as Antonio Machado himself, who gives his muse (Pilar de Valderrama, known as Guiomar in her epistolary relationship with Antonio Machado) the name of Jorge Manrique’s wife (Guiomar de Castañeda) and which also pays homage by taking a fragment of the famous Verses and offering its own interpretation:
“Our lives are the rivers,
travelling to the sea,
which is death. Great singing!
Among poets of mine
Manrique has an altar.
Sweet joy of living:
bad science of passing,
blind flee to the sea.
After the dread of dying
comes the pleasure of arriving.
What delight!
But what about the horror of coming back
’What lament!”
Literary production:
Love poems:
– “Of Don Jorge Manrique complaining about the God of love and how they reason with each other”
– “Castle of love”
– “To fortune”
– “Because while he was sleeping, his friend kissed him”
– “Saying what love is”
– “From the profession he made in the Order of Love”
– “Scale of love”,
“With the great evil that I have left over”
– “In a mortal sore”
– “Remember, for God’s sake, lady”
– “See this distresses of mine”
– “Neither live wants me to live”
– “The fires that they lit in me”
– “Being absent from his friend to a messenger sent there”
– “Memorial he made to his heart, which leaves from the ignorance of his friend where he has all his senses”
– “Others in which he puts the name of a lady; and it begins and ends in the first letters of all the verses, and says: “
Esparzas:
Gloss:
Questions :
Answers: –
– “To Guevara”
Satires:
“Elegies and works of doctrine:
Writers
Juan Eslava Galán was born in the municipality of Arjona (Jaén) in 1948. He graduated in English Philology from the University of Granada and received his PhD in Letters with his thesis on Polyorcetics and medieval fortification in the kingdom of Jaén, where he analyzes the history of the kingdom of Jaén -especially from the Castilian conquest- and studies the various justifications and typologies of the fortresses, towers, castles and walls of the province.
The author expanded his studies in the United Kingdom, where he lived in Bristol and Lichfield, and was a student and assistant professor at Aston University, Birmingham.
Upon his return to Spain, he won the exams for the Chair of English for Secondary Education and was a high school teacher for thirty years, a work that he combined with the writing of novels and essays on historical topics.
The historical knowledge acquired together with the extensive academic research carried out make Eslava Galán a rigorous and excellent disseminator of History. Without a doubt, a prolific author who has published hundreds of articles in magazines, diverse collaborations in collective works and numerous novels and tests.
His connection with Jaén is not only given by his birth in Arjona, but also by this continuing research work in the province that he has been carrying out throughout his career, which makes him a great ambassador for Arjona and Jaén.
Juan Eslava Galán collaborates with the locality whenever it is required, either in the form of a literary gift with his novels or presentations or in the form of a contribution of patrimonial assets, such as the templar tombstone or the stone of wishes, donated by the author himself. In November 2016, the City Council of Arjona awarded him the Gold Medal of the City.
The commitment to his land led him to transfer in 2012 more than 8,000 documents from his personal archive to the Institute of Studies of Jaén, of which he is a member, constituting an extraordinary tool for approaching the cultural and historical heritage of the province of Jaén.
Literary Production of Juan Eslava Galán
Juan Eslava Galán cultivates the most diverse literary facets among which he stands out as a novelist (in some of them he uses the pseudonym of Nicholas Wilcox), essayist, historian and columnist.
His bibliography is immense as evidenced by his fruitful work, with almost a hundred magazine articles, around a dozen collaborations in collective works and almost two hundred books, which makes him a truly prolific author.
As a narrator, he opts for the historical novel, a genre that earned him general recognition when he obtained the Planeta Award in 1987 for his work In Search of the Unicorn. He has also turned part of his literary activity into works of historical dissemination, achieving a huge impact with the series History for Skeptics. Likewise, a good part of his literary production has been based on the province of Jaén, being the case of his novels The Mule, Woolf King, The Templar and Solomon´s Table or The Templar Tombstone.
Premios:
– Planeta Award(1987) for In Search of the Unicorn.
– Chianti Ruffino Award– Antico Fattore 1988 for In Search of the Unicorntranslated to Italian
Main Literary Productions:
• The conquest of America told for skeptics, Planeta, Juan Eslava Galán 2019.
• Slavic Encyclopedia. Everything (or almost everything) you need to know to be reasonably cultured, Booket, Juan Eslava Galán 2019.
• The Prado Family. A casual and surprising walk through the Museum of the Austrias and the Bourbons, Planeta, Juan Eslava Galán 2018.
• The Russian Revolution told for skeptics, Booket, Juan Eslava Galán 2018.
• History of Spain told for skeptics, Booket, Juan Eslava Galán 2016.
• The decade that took our breath away, Planeta, Juan Eslava Galán 2016.
• The Second World War told for skeptics, Booket, Juan Eslava Galán, 2016.
• Lust, Círculo de Lectores, Juan Eslava Galán. 2016.
• Mysterious Murder at Cervantes’s House. Planeta, 2015. (Primavera de Novela Award).
• The Second World War told for skeptics, historical disclosure, Planeta, Juan Eslava Galan 2015.
• The first world war told for skeptics, historical disclosure, Planeta, Juan Eslava Galan 2014.
• History of the world told for skeptics, Booket, Juan Eslava Galán 2014.
• No Fuss Cooking, culinary dissemination, Planeta, Juan Eslava Galan-Diana Eslava 2013.
•Wolf King, Planeta, 2010.
•From espadrille to Seat 600 , Planeta, 2010.
• Catholicism explained to the sheep, Planeta, 2009.
• 1000 places to see in Spain at least once in a lifetime, Martínez Roca, 2009.
• Caliphs, warriors, slaves and eunuchs. The Moors in Spain, S.L.U. Espasa Libros, 2008.
• The years of fear, Planeta, 2008.
• The Deciphered Templar Tombstone, Planeta, 2008.
• The Mercenary of Granada, Booket, 2006.
• Unusual and Mysterious Spain, Planeta, 2006.
• Trip to the scenes of Captain Alatriste, El País Aguilar, 2006.
• Trip to the coast of the whales, Imagine Ediciones, 2006.
• A history of the civil war that no one will like, Planeta, 2005.
• Sonnets, Jaén City Council, 2005.
• The disputed paradise. Route of the castles and the battles, essay, Aguilar Guides, 2003.
•The Iberians. The Spanish as we were, Martínez Roca, 2004.
• The Catholic Monarchs, Planeta, 2004.
• The Mule, Planeta, 2003.
• The Death of the Grandmother, Tempora, 2003.
• Saints and Sinners. Album of memories of the Spaniards of the 20th century, essay, Planeta, 2002.
• A Garden Among Olive Trees (The routes of the olive tree in Spain. Masaru in the Olivar III), essay, RBA Libros, 2002.
• The routes of the olive tree in Andalusia (Masaru en el Olivar II), José Manuel Lara Foundation, 2001.
•Dragon´s Teeth, S.L. Devir Contenidos, 2001. • The castles of Jaén, essay, University of Jaén, 1999.
• The Routes of the Olive Tree in Jaén (Masaru en el Olivar I), Provincial Council of Jaén, 1999.
• Guzzlers and Starving. Spaniards eating and fasting through history, Plaza & Janés, 1997.
• Coitus Interruptus, Planeta, 1997.
• Love Life in Rome, Today’s Topics, 1996.
• The Life and Times of the Catholic Monarchs, Planeta, 1996.
• Julius Caesar, the Man Who Could Reign, Planeta, 1995.
Writers
Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada, known universally as Saint Teresa of Ávila or Saint Teresa of Jesus, was born in Ávila on March 28, 1515 and became the first woman “Doctor of the Church”, not without difficulties.
From an early age he has a predilection for chivalric reading, the life of the holy martyrs and the conquest of eternal glory. So much so that, at the age of six, she secretly set off with her brother Rodrigo “to the land of the Moors” with the hope of dying for the faith. Frustrated departure because her uncle discovered and returned them home.
Despite this, Saint Teresa was “the enemy of being a nun” as she herself expressed, although as she grew older, her religious vocation became greater, until at the age of 20 she entered the Convent of the Carmelitas Calzadas de La Encarnación (despite her father’s opposition).
The conventual life that Saint Teresa would know, with a very open regime, urged her to want to live her religious dedication with greater rigor and perfection, leading her to promote the reform of Carmel. The first foundation of the new Order took place in 1562, the Convent of San José de Ávila, eventually founding 17 Convents in life. Currently there are about 750 Carmelite convents in more than 80 countries.
The connection of Saint Teresa of Jesus with the province of Jaén comes precisely because of her work to reform the Order of Carmel, where the Convent of the Discalced Carmelites of San José del Salvador in Beas de Segura became her tenth foundation and first in Andalusia .
“In the time that I have said, they sent me to go to Salamanca from the Incarnation, while a messenger came from the town of Beas with letters for me from a lady of that place and from its beneficiary and other people, asking me to go and found a monastery, because they already had a place for it, so they only needed me to go and found it ”. (…)
Book of Foundations, ch. 22.
Saint Teresa of Jesus would be in Beas for just 92 days, from February 16, 1575, when she arrived in the town, until May 18, when she set on the way to Seville, leaving Ana of Jesus as prioress, who eventually became the fundamental bastion of the reform of Carmel. Only three months of stay in Beas during which she was consolidating the structure of the new foundation, captivated and made a great impression on Saint Teresa of Jesus, as evidenced by the fact of the constant references to the town or the Jaén foundation in four of the chapters of the Book of Foundations and in nearly thirty letters of his Epistolary.
The Saint arrived in Beas to found the new Discalced Carmelo Convent promoted by Doña Catalina Godínez and Doña María de Sandoval, daughters of an important nobleman of the town, who, after death, left their properties to establish the new Monastery in their dependencies , later reaching the habit with the names of Catalina of Jesus and María of Jesus.
It is noteworthy that Saint Teresa arrived in Beas unaware that the town belonged to the Carmelite Province of Andalusia, and since the General of the Order had ordered her to found outside of Castile, she feared that she may not be able to found in Beas. Later she learned that, although civilly it belonged to Castile, ecclesiastically it depended on Andalusia, so everything was correct.
Saint Teresa of Jesus died in the Monastery of Alba de Tormes, on October 4, 1582, at the age of sixty-seven.
Literary production of Saint Teresa of Jesus
In the first place, we must highlight the fact that Saint Teresa embarked on the adventure of being a “writer” at a time when women barely had access to culture, which speaks of her strong will and personality. Undoubtedly, a woman ahead of her time, a fact that is exemplified in that, already in the twentieth century, Pope Pius XI himself refuses to declare Saint Teresa of Jesus a Doctor of the Church because of her condition as a woman: obstat sexus ( sex prevents it).
Literarily speaking, Saint Teresa is considered one of the three mystical writers with the highest quality, along with Fray Luis of León and Saint John of the Cross, in Spanish literature of the golden age.
An indefatigable reader from her childhood and adolescence of books of chivalry and the lives of martyrs, after beginning in the religious occupation she dived into great spiritual books, such as the Third Spiritual Alphabet of Fray Francisco de Osuna, which exerted a great influence on the Saint.
Elegant and unadorned in writing, with a colloquial and communicative tone, almost writing as she spoke, Saint Teresa of Jesus opened her life and experience to the reader, with the intention of guiding him on his spiritual path. She wrote with the intention of “engulfing souls so high” with a didactic purpose and as transparent as possible.
As a result of her literary expertise and her religious experience, Saint Teresa left us an important literary legacy that reaches 30 poems, where her mystical experience becomes a poem; her Epistolary, with about 400 letters where she brings us closer to her daily problems; she wrote works of great significance such as The Book of Life, the first she wrote and the most spontaneous and fresh, a true reflection of her personality and her human and supernatural experience; the Book of Foundations, where she recounts the events during the founding of her convents in life; Pathway to Perfection, a spirituality guide formally addressed to the nuns of the monastery of San José de Ávila; Inner Castle or de las Moradas, her most beloved and elaborate book that corresponds to a new treatise on prayer in 7 dwellings (compared to the four stages that she comments in the Book of Life); Accounts of Conscience, brief notes of a spiritual nature; The Constitutions, legislation for the ideal of the new Carmelite way of life; Meditations on the Songs, her first biblical commentary; or Exclamations of the Soul to God, where Saint Teresa openly dialogues with God.
Web Portal “Saint Teresa´s footsteps in Jaén”
Web Portal “Footsteps ofSaint Teresa”
Web Portal Monasteryof Saint Teresa of Jesus (Jaén)
No category
En la plaza de Santa María se ubica la Catedral de Jaén, el gran monumento de la ciudad, por lo que no escapa al interés de nuestros escritores. Por ejemplo, Juan Eslava Galán utiliza estos espacios para contextualizar lugares y acciones en sus obras; Federico García Lorca los reseña en sus postales cuando viaja por Jaén y Miguel Hernández la refleja en sus artículos sobre el bombardeo de Jaén
Vínculo con Federico García Lorca
Vínculo con Miguel Hernández.
Vinculo con Juan Eslava Galán