GIMÉNEZ CABALLERO, Ernesto 1899-1988

(Gecé)

PERSONAL: Born 1899, in Madrid, Spain; died 1988.

CAREER: Essayist, journalist, and artist. Instituto Cardenal Cisneros, Madrid, Spain, instructor; ambassador to Paraguay. La Gaceta Literaria, founder and editor, 1927-32.

WRITINGS:

Notas marruecas de un soldado, F. Beltrán (Madrid, Spain), 1923, reprinted, Planeta (Barcelona, Spain), 1983.

Los toros, las castañuelas y la Virgen, Caro Raggio (Madrid, Spain), 1927.

Carteles, Espasa-Calpe (Madrid, Spain), 1927.

Hércules jugando a los dados, La Nave (Madrid, Spain), 1928, reprinted, Libros del Innombrable (Zaragoza, Spain), 2000.

Yo, inspector de alcantarillas: epiplasmas, Biblioteca Nueva (Madrid, Spain), 1928.

Julepe de menta, Ciudad Lineal (Madrid, Spain), 1929.

Circuito imperial, Gaceta Literaria (Madrid, Spain), 1929.

Genio de España: exaltaciones a una resurrección nacional y del mundo, Gaceta Literaria (Madrid, Spain), 1932, reprinted, Planeta (Barcelona, Spain), 1983.

Manuel Azaña: profecías españolas, Gaceta Literaria (Madrid, Spain), 1932, reprinted, Turner (Madrid, Spain), 1975.

La nueva catolicidad: teoría general sobre el fascismo en Europa, en España, Gaceta Literaria (Madrid, Spain), 1933.

El Belén de Salzillo en Murcia (origen de los nacimientos en España), Gaceta Literaria (Madrid, Spain), 1934.

Arte y estado, 1935.

Exaltaciones sobre Madrid, Jerarquia (Madrid, Spain), 1937.

Conquista el Estado!, 1937, reprinted, J. M. Garrido (Burgos, Spain), 1998.

Espana y Franco, Los Combatientes (Guipúzcoa, Spain), 1938.

Roma madre, Jerarquia (Madrid, Spain), 1939.

El vidente, Talleres Tipográficos de Fe (Sevilla, Spain), 1939.

Camisa azul y Boina colorada, Talleres Tipográficos de Fe (Sevilla, Spain), 1939.

Los secretos de la Falange, Yunque (Barcelona, Spain), 1939.

Triunfo del 2 de mayo, E. Giménez (Madrid, Spain), 1939.

Hay Pirineos!, Nacional (Barcelona, Spain), 1939.

La Legión C. T. V., Los Combatientes (Madrid, Spain), 1939.

(Editor) Juan del Encina, Égloga de Plácida y Victoriano, prededida de otras tres églogas introductorias, Ebro (Zaragoza, Spain), 1940.

Lengua y literatura de España y su imperio, 1940.

Imperialismos en lucha mundial, Ibero-Itálica (Madrid, Spain), 1940.

La infantería española, Vicesecretaria de Educación Popular (Madrid, Spain), 1941.

Notas de un viaje con Franco a Cataluña, 1942.

Amor a Cataluña, Ruta (Madrid, Spain), 1942.

España nuestra; el libro de las juventudes españolas, Vicesecretaria de Educación Popular (Madrid, Spain), 1943.

La matanza de Katyn: visión sobre Rusia, E. Giménez (Madrid, Spain), 1943.

Despierta Inglaterra! Mensaje a Lord Holland, Toledo (Madrid, Spain), 1943.

El cine y la cultura humana, 1944.

Amor a Andalucía, Nacional (Madrid, Spain), 1944.

Madrid nuestro, Vicesecretaria de Educación Popular (Madrid, Spain), 1944.

Afirmaciones sobre Asturias, Encyclopedia de la Residencia Provincial (Oviedo, Spain), 1945.

Cine y político, Instituto de Estudios Políticos (Madrid, Spain), 1945.

Don Ernesto; o, El porcurador del pueblo en las cortes españolas, Ediciones Españolas (Madrid, Spain), 1947.

Dos americanos en Toledo, E. Giménez (Madrid, Spain), 1947.

Amor a Galicia, progenitora de Cervantes, Nacional (Madrid, Spain), 1947.

Amor a Méjico (a través de su cine), 1948.

Amor a Argentina; o, El genio de España en América, Nacional (Madrid, Spain), 1948.

Amor a Portugal, Cultura Hispánica (Madrid, Spain), 1949.

La Europa de Estrasburgo; visión española del problema europeo, Instituto de Estudios Políticos (Madrid, Spain), 1950.

Cervantes, E. Giménez (Madrid, Spain), 1951.

Norteamérica sonríe a España, 1952.

Palabras sobre Madrid, Instituto de Estudios Madrileños (Madrid, Spain), 1952.

San Isidro y Madrid; conferencia, 1953.

El genio antieconómico de España, 1954.

Curriculum vitae, 1957.

Maravillosa, Bolivia (clave de América), Cultura Hispánica (Madrid, Spain), 1957.

Revelación del Paraguay, Espasa-Calpe (Madrid, Spain), 1958.

Bahia de todos os santos e de todos os demônios, Publicações da Univerisdade da Bahia (Salvador, Brazil), 1958.

El dinero y España, A. Aguado (Madrid, Spain), 1964.

Genio hispánico y mestizaje, Nacional (Madrid, Spain), 1965.

Las mujeres de América, Nacional (Madrid, Spain), 1971.

Rizal, Publicaciones Españolas (Madrid, Spain), 1971.

Asunción, capital de América, Cultura Hispañica (Madrid, Spain), 1971.

Junto la tumba de Larra, 1971.

Cabra, la cordobesa: balcón poético de España, Publicaciones Españolas (Madrid, Spain), 1973.

El procurador del pueblo y su cronicón de España: secretos, revelaciones, disparos, Umbral (Madrid, Spain), 1975.

Cartageneras, Publicaciones Españolas (Madrid, Spain), 1975.

Don Quijote ante el mundo (y ante mí), Inter American University Press (San Juan, Puerto Rico), 1979.

Memorias de un dictador, Planeta (Barcelona, Spain), 1979.

Julepe de menta y otros aperitivos, Planeta (Barcelona, Spain), 1981.

Exaltación del matrimonio, 1936, Fundación Universitaria Española (Madrid, Spain), c. 1982.

Retratos españoles: bastante parecidos, Planeta (Barcelona, Spain), 1985.

E. Giménez Caballero, Editorial del Hombre (Barcelona, Spain), 1988.

Judios de patria España (silent film screenplay), 1922, published as Jews of the Spanish Homeland, Filmoteca Española/National Center for Jewish Film (Waltham, MA), 1994.

Visitas literarias de España, 1925-1928, Pre-Textos (Valencia, Spain), 1995.

Also author of Paraguay y la hispanidad, La Falange, Hecha hombre, and Ante la tumba del catalanismo. Several works originally published under pseudonym Gecé. Author's works have been translated into French and Portuguese.

SIDELIGHTS: Considered a representative prose writer of the generation coming of age after World War I, Ernesto Giménez Caballero was an essayist and journalist who taught in Madrid, Spain. A staunch Falangist who was loyal to the cause embraced by fascist leader Francisco Franco, Giménez Caballero was for a time ambassador to Paraguay. Maria T. Pao, writing in Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispanicos, called the author "a central figure of avant-garde circles in Madrid," and added that throughout his career Giménez Caballero "simply could not remain still. His energy and eclecticism as a creative writer, literary critic, graphic artist, journal editor, movie and modern art enthusiast, and documentary film maker were legend among his peers."

According to Robert Havard, writing in Modern Language Review, Giménez Caballero's works are characterized by "the extremes of the spiritual-materialist [postwar] dilemma." Giménez Caballero is notable as author of "one of the most risqué works of the period and founder-editor of the corrosive avantgarde journal, La Gaceta Literaria." The "risqué" work alluded to is the story collection Yo, inspector de alcantarillas. According to Havard, the stories in this collection "owe much to Freudian theory . . . with its metaphorical suggestion of investigating the lower recesses of the mind where unseemly matter is deposited. The narrator-inspector, who goes in search of his own yo, takes us down to subterranean levels where only the more daring of contemporary writers and artists . . . have dared to tread."

With Carteles, a collection of "graphic representations of writers and their works," Giménez Caballero "began the project of transforming the pictorial into text," according to Maria T. Pao in Letras Peninsulares. Pao described Yo, inspector de alcantarillas as "a book containing short narratives influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis followed by a section of 'Fichas textuales' in prose poetry and another of 'Composicion,' a series of brief texts based on word association....The text replicates many aspects of [the concept of] 'Nochebuena,' including its first person narrator, its occurrence on Christmas Eve, food imagery, the interaction between the protagonist and servants, [and] a dichotomy between the narrator's internal and external self."

Sultana Wahnón, writing in Fascism and Theatre, postulated that "fascist aesthetics . . . found its fullest expression in Ernesto Giménez Caballero's Arte y estado." As Wahnón stated, "in his system of fascist aesthetics, Ernesto Giménez Caballero theorized on all the arts, from architecture to theatre and music, in a half-speculative, half-political manner. Arte y estado is the text containing this system." Wahnón concluded, "there is one key that dominates all the aesthetic choices described in the book, and that is the idea of 'norm.'"

Among Giménez Caballero's many works is Don Quijote, ante el mundo (y ante mi), an historical bibliography that describes the many translations of Miguel Cervantes's now-classic novel.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Berghaus, Gunther, Fascism and Theatre: Comparative Studies on the Aesthetics and Politics of Performance in Europe, 1925-1945, Berghahn Books (Providence, RI), 1996.

Smith, Horatio, editor, Columbia Dictionary of ModernEuropean Literature, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1947.

Ward, Philip, editor, The Oxford Companion to Spanish Literature, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1978.

PERIODICALS

American Libraries, July-August, 1980, review of DonQuijote ante el mundo (y ante mí), p. 453.

Letras Peninsulares, fall-winter, 1997-98, Maria T. Pao, "Coming to His Senses: Physical Gratification in 'La Nochebuena de 1836' and Two Texts of the Spanish Avant-Garde," pp. 415-436.

Modern Language Review, October, 1998, Robert Havard, "Rafael Alberti, Maruja Mallo, and Giménez Caballero: Materialist Imagery in Sermones y moradas and the Issue of Surrealism," pp. 1007-1020.

Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, Maria T. Pao, "Still(ed) Life: The Ekphrastic Prose Poems of Ernesto Giménez Caballero," pp. 469-492.

Revista de Filologia Hispanica, Dionisio Viscarri, "Literatura Prefascista y La guerra de Marruecos," pp. 139-157.*