Francisco Umbral Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Francisco Umbral (b. May 11, 1935) is a Spanish journalist, novelist, biographer and essayist.
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2 Work 3 Honors and awards 4 External link 5 References |
Life
Though he was born in Madrid, the city that informs the great part of his work, his early years were spent in Valladolid; his mother had traveled to Madrid solely for his birth, because he was an illegitimate child. His mother's indifference and distance from him him certainly marked his sensibility with sadness, as did the infant death of his only son, from which event was born his saddest and most personal book, Mortal y rosa. This inculcated in the author a characteristic haughty manner, devoid of hopefulness, absolutely submerged in literature, which has provoked no few polemics and enmities.
In Valladolid he began his career in newspapers at El Norte de Castilla, under the tutorship of Miguel Delibes. In 1961 he went to Madrid as a correspondent and became within a few years a prestigious reporter and columnist' in magazines such as La Estafeta Literaria, Mundo Hispánico and Interviú, and in the influential newspapers, such as Ya and ABC, although he is best known for his writings for the daily newspapers El País (founded in 1976 just after the death of Franco and the restoration of constitutionalism and democracy) and El Mundo (founded 1990). At El País he was one of the reporters who best was able to describe the countercultural movement known as La Movida, but his literary quality undoubtedly came from his creative fecundity, his linguistic sensibility and the extreme originality of his style, very careful and complex, creative in its syntax, very metaphorically developed and flexible, abundant in neologisms and intertextual allusions; in sum, of a demanding lyric and aesthetic quality. He practices a species of anti-bourgeois criticism of customs and manners que no renuncia al yo más intensamente romántico and, in the words of Novalis, has the intent of giving the quotidian the dignity of the unknown, impregnating it, not infrequently, with a desolate tenderness. As a political reporter, Umbral hace gala, además, de una gran acidez y mordacidad. Having become a successful journalist and writer, he worked with Spain's most varied and influential magazines and newspapers. Among the many published volumes of his articles, the following stand out: Diario de un snob ("Diary of a snob", 1973); Spleen de Madrid ("Madrid Spleen", 1973, the title being a reference to Charles Baudelaire's Paris Spleen), España cañí ("?", 1975), Iba yo a comprar el pan ("I went out to buy bread", 1976), Los políticos ("Politicians", 1976), Crónicas postfranquistas ("Post-franquista Chronicles", 1976), Las Jais ("?", 1977), Spleen de Madrid–2 ("Madrid Spleen–2", 1982), España como invento ("Spain as an invention", 1984), La belleza convulsa ("Convulsive Beauty", 1985), Memorias de un hijo del siglo ("Memories of a child of the century", 1986), Mis placeres y mis días ("My pleasures and my days", 1994).
Work
Narratives
Highlights of his very extensive narrative production, in which autobiographical aspects stand out, include: Tamouré ("?", , 1965), Balada de gamberros ("?", 1965), Travesía de Madrid ("Crossing Madrid", 1966), Las vírgenes ("The Virgins", 1969), Si hubiéramos sabido que el amor era eso ("If we had known that love was this", 1969), El Giocondo (1970) about the the homosexual milieus of Madrid (the title is a play on the Italian "la Gioconda", the name of the painting known in English as the Mona Lisa); Las europeas (1970), Memorias de un niño de derechas ("Memoirs of a child of the right", 1972), Los males sagrados ("Holy Evils", 1973), Mortal y rosa ("The Mortal and the Rose", 1975), Las ninfas ("The nymphs", 1975, received the Premio Nadal), Los amores diurnos ("Daytime love", 1979), Los helechos arborescentes ("?", 1980), La bestia rosa ("?", 1981), Los ángeles custodios ("Guardian Angels", 1981), Las ánimas del purgatorio, ("The souls of purgatory", 1982), Trilogía de Madrid ("Madrid Trilogy", 1984), Pío XII, escolta mora y un general sin un ojo ("Pius XII, the Moorish escort and a general without an eye", 1985), Nada en el domingo ("Nothing on Sunday", 1988), El día en que violé a Alma Mahler ("The day Alma Mahler was raped", 1988), El fulgor de África ("The radiance of Africa", 1989), Y Tierno Galván ascendió a los cielos ("And tender Galván ascended to the heavens", 1990), Leyenda del César Visionario ("The legend of Caesar, visionary", 1992, winner of the Critics' Prize), Madrid, 1940 (1993), Las señoritas de Avignon ("The young women of Avignon", 1995; the title is a reference to a painting by Pablo Picasso generally known in the English-speaking world by its French-language name, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon), Madrid 1950 (1995), Capital del dolor ("The capital of sadness", 1996), La forja de un ladrón ("The forge of a thief", 1997) and Historias de amor y Viagra ("Stories of love and viagra", 1998). In 1985 Umbral began a series of novels about the most important events in the 20th-century history of Spain, after the fashion of the Episodios nacionales of Benito Pérez Galdós for the 19th century.
Essays
He also wrote a set of very personal essays, under such titles as La escritura perpetua (De Rubén Darío a Cela) ("Perpetual Writing (From Rubén Darío to Cela)", 1989), Las palabras de la tribu ("The words of the tribe", 1994), Diccionario de literatura ("Dictionary of literature", 1995), Madrid, tribu urbana ("Madrid, urban tribe", 2000), Los alucinados ("Hallucinations", 2001), Cela: un cadáver exquisito ("Cela, an exquisite cadaver", 2002) and ¿Y cómo eran las ligas de Madame Bovary? ("And how are Madame Bovary's garters?", 2003). His preoccupation with slang is shown by Diccionario para pobres ("Dictionary for the poor", 1977), el Diccionario cheli ("Cheli dictionary", 1983, Cheli' being to Madrid what Cockney is to London) and Las palabras de la tribu'' ("The words of the tribe", 1994).
Biographies and autobiographies
He also published biographical and literary essays presenting original views about classical authors of the 19th and 20th centuries, such as Larra, anatomía de un dandy ("Larra, anatomy of a dandy", 1965), Lorca, poeta maldito (1968, about Federico García Lorca; the title is ambiguous, and could be interpreted as calling Lorca a "wicked", or "indecent" poet or one who is "cursed" either in the sense of being "spoken against" or "unlucky"), Ramón y las vanguardias ("Ramón and the vanguards", 1978) and Valle-Inclán: los botines blancos de piqué ("Valle-Inclán: ?", 1997) and others más bien divulgativas such as Valle-Inclán (1968); Lord Byron (1969); Miguel Delibes (1970); Lola Flores, sociología de la petenera ("Lola Flores, sociology of the [?]", 1971). Although autobiography is also present throughout his journalistic work, several of his works are explicitly autobiographical: La noche que llegué al café Gijón ("The night I arrived at the Café Gijón" 1977), Memorias eróticas (Los cuerpos gloriosos) ("Erotic memories: the glorious bodies", 1992) and El hijo de Greta Garbo ("Son of Greta Garbo", 1977).
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External link
References