Marquina, Eduardo 1879-1946
MARQUINA, Eduardo 1879-1946
PERSONAL: Born January 21, 1879, in Barcelona, Spain; died as result of a heart attack November 21, 1946, in New York, NY; son of Luis Marquina (a businessman); married Mercedes Pichot, June 18, 1903; children: Luis. Education: Attended Universidad Barcelona, 1896.
CAREER: Poet, playwright, and translator. España Nueva, correspondent, 1900-01.
MEMBER: Warsaw Conference of Dramatic and Musical Authors (president, 1930), Spanish Royal Academy, Sociedad de Autores Españoles (president, beginning 1932).
AWARDS, HONORS: Premio Piquer, Spanish Royal Academy, 1908, for Las hijas del Cid, 1910, for En Flandres se ha puesto el sol; Gold Medal from the City of Barcelona, 1946.
WRITINGS:
plays
El pastor (three-act; title means "The Shepherd"; produced in Madrid, Spain, 1902), A. Lopez (Barcelona, Spain), 1902.
Aqua mansa (title means "Still Water"; produced in Madrid, Spain, 1902), Velasco (Madrid, Spain), 1903.
La vuelta del rebaño (title means "The Return of the Flock"; produced in Madrid, Spain, 1903), Velasco (Madrid, Spain), 1903.
Mala cabeza (produced in Madrid, Spain, 1906), Velasco (Madrid, Spain), 1906.
Benvenuto Cellini (four-act; produced in Madrid, Spain, 1906), Sociedad de Autores Españoles (Madrid, Spain), 1906.
Emporium, music by Enrique Morera, F. Giró (Barcelona, Spain), 1906.
(With José Salmerón) El delfín: zarzuela histórica (title means "The Dauphin"; produced in Madrid, Spain, 1907), Biblioteca Clasíca (Madrid, Spain), 1908.
La hijas del Cid: leyenda trágica (five-act; title means "The Daughters of the Cid"; produced in Madrid, Spain, 1908), Velasco (Madrid, Spain), 1908.
Doña María la Brava (produced in Madrid, Spain, 1909), Renacimiento (Madrid, Spain), 1909.
En Flandes se ha puesto el sol (title means "The Sun Has Set in Flanders"; produced in Montevideo, Spain, 1910), Renacimiento (Madrid, Spain), 1911.
El último día, produced in Madrid, Spain, 1911.
La alcaidesa de Pastrana (also see below; produced in Madrid, Spain, 1911), Renacimiento (Madrid, Spain), 1911.
La muñeca irromible (for children; produced in Madrid, Spain, c. 1912), Juventud (Barcelona, Spain), 1949.
Las cartas de la monja (also see below), produced in Madrid, Spain, 1912.
El rey trovador (four-act; produced in Madrid, Spain, 1912), Renacimiento (Madrid, Spain), 1912.
El antifaz, produced in Madrid, Spain, 1912.
La muerte en Alba (also see below), produced in Madrid, Spain, 1912.
Cuando florezcan los rosales (three-act comedy; produced in Madrid, Spain, 1913), Sociedad anónima (Madrid, Spain), 1912, translation by Charles Alfred Turrell published as When the Roses Are in Bloom Again, in Contemporary Spanish Dramatists, R. D. Badger (Boston, MA), 1919.
Por los pecados del rey (three-act; produced in Madrid, Spain, 1913), Renacimiento (Madrid, Spain), 1913.
El gavilán de la espada, produced in Madrid, Spain, 1913.
El retablo de Agrellano (produced in Madrid, Spain, 1913), Renacimiento (Madrid, Spain), 1914.
Cantiga de serrana (anthology), Hispania (Madrid, Spain), 1914.
La hiedra (produced in Madrid, Spain, 1914), Renacimiento (Madrid, Spain), 1914.
La Morisca (produced in Madrid, Spain, 1914), Renacimiento (Madrid, Spain), 1918.
Las flores de Aragon (produced in Madrid, Spain, 1914), Renacimiento (Madrid, Spain), 1915.
Una mujer (three-act; produced in Madrid, Spain, 1915), Velasco (Madrid, Spain), 1915.
Juglarías (includes El ultimo día and Una leyenda), Libreria Española (Barcelona, Spain), 1915.
El gran capitán: leyenda dramática de amor caballeresco (three-act; produced in Madrid, Spain, 1916), Renacimiento (Madrid, Spain), 1916.
Alondra, produced in Madrid, Spain, 1918.
Dondiego de Noche, produced in Madrid, Spain, 1919.
Alimaña (four-act; produced in Madrid, Spain, 1919), published with La princesa juega, Reus (Madrid, Spain), 1921.
La princesa juega (two-act; produced in Madrid, Spain, 1920), published with Alimaña, Reus (Madrid, Spain), 1921.
Ebora, produced in Madrid, Spain, 1921.
El pavo real (title means "The Peacock"; produced in Madrid, Spain, 1922), [Barcelona, Spain], 1922.
(With Luis Fernández Ardavín) Rosa de Francia (three-act; produced in Madrid, Spain, 1923), Hispania (Madrid, Spain), 1923.
Una noche en Venencia (produced in Madrid, Spain, 1923), Reus (Madrid, Spain), 1923.
El pobrecito carpintero (title means "The Poor Little Carpenter"; produced in Madrid, Spain, 1924), Reus (Madrid, Spain), 1924.
(With Alfonso Hernández Catá) Don Luis Mejía: comedia legendaria de capa y espada (four-act; produced in Madrid, Spain, 1925), Reus (Madrid, Spain), 1925.
Fruto bendito (produced in Madrid, Spain, 1927), Reus (Madrid, Spain), 1927.
La ermita, la fuente y el río (three-act; title means "The Hermitage, the Fountain, and the River"; produced in Madrid, Spain, 1927), Reus (Madrid, Spain), 1927.
Sin horca ni cuchillo (three-act; produced in Madrid, Spain, 1927), Reus (Madrid, Spain), 1929.
La vida es más (three-act; produced in Madrid, Spain, 1928), Reus (Madrid, Spain), 1928.
Salvadora: drama rural (produced in Madrid, Spain, 1929), Reus (Madrid, Spain), 1929.
(With Gregorio Martínez Sierra) El camino de la felicidad, produced in Madrid, Spain, 1929.
El monje blanco: retabios de leyenda primitiva (title means "The White Monk"; produced in Madrid, Spain, 1930), Estrella (Madrid, Spain), 1930.
Fuente escondida (title means "Hidden Spring"; produced in Madrid, Spain, 1931), Renacimiento (Madrid, Spain), 1931.
Los Julianes (three-act; produced in Madrid, Spain, 1932), Reus (Madrid, Spain), 1932.
Era Una vez en Bagdad (title means "Once upon a Time in Bagdad"; produced in Madrid, Spain, 1932), Reus (Madrid, Spain), 1932.
Pasos y trabajos de Santa Teresa de Jesús (estampas carmelitas) (includes La alcaidesa de Pastrana, Las cartas de la monja, and La muerte en Alba), Reus (Madrid, Spain), 1933.
(Adaptor) Lope de Vega, . . . La Dorotea (comedy), Reus (Madrid, Spain), 1935.
Los que dios non perdona, produced in Madrid, Spain, 1935.
En el nombre del padre (produced in Madrid, Spain, 1935), Reus (Madrid, Spain), 1936.
La bandera de San Martín, produced in Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1937.
La Santa Hermandad (title means "The Holy Brotherhood"), produced in Santiago, Chile, 1937.
El estudiante ediablado (title means "The Devilish Student"), produced in Madrid, Spain, 1942.
María la viuda: poema dramatico (title means "Maria the Widow"; produced in Madrid, Spain, 1943), Españolas (Madrid, Spain), 1943.
El galeón y el milagro: folletin romantica (five-act; produced in Madrid, Spain, 1946), Reus (Madrid, Spain), 1947.
other
(With Guerra Junqueiro) La musa en ocios, Atlante (Barcelona, Spain), 1878.
Odas (poetry), Académica de Serra Hnos y Russell (Barcelona, Spain), 1900.
Las vendimias (poetry; title means "The Grape Harvests"), F. Seix (Barcelona, Spain), 1901.
Eglogas (poetry), Rodríguez Serra (Madrid, Spain), 1901.
Elegías (poetry), Renacimiento (Madrid, Spain), 1905.
La caravana (short stories), R. Sopena (Barcelona, Spain), 1907.
Vendimión (long poem), Biblioteca Clasíca (Madrid, Spain), 1908.
Almas anónimas (novel), Casa Editorial Maucci (Barcelona, Spain), 1908.
Canciones del momento (poetry), F. Beltrán (Madrid, Spain), 1910.
Tierras de España (poetry), Renacimiento (Madrid, Spain), 1914.
Brevario de un año, [Madrid, Spain], 1918.
La dos vidas (novel), E. Domenech (Barcelona, Spain), 1919.
El beso en la herida (novel), Estrella (Madrid, Spain), 1920.
El alma de Sixto (novel), Prensa Gráfica (Madrid, Spain), 1921.
La casa cerrada (novel), Prensa Gráfica (Madrid, Spain), 1922.
La poesía de San Francisco de Asís (long poem), Reus (Madrid, Spain), 1927.
Mujeres (1917-1936) (poetry), J. Peuser (Buenos Aires, Argentina), 1936.
Los pueblos y su alma (1917-1936) (poetry), J. Peuser (Buenos Aires, Argentina), 1936.
Mi huerto en la ladera (poetry), J. Peuser (Buenos Aires, Argentina), 1936.
Los tres libros de España (contains España en ocaso, España miltante, and España en albas), Escelicer (Madrid, Spain), 1941.
Avisos y máximas de Santa Teresa de Jesús (poetry anthology), Betis (Barcelona, Spain), 1942.
La reina mujer (Isabel la Católica) (novel), Betis (Barcelona, Spain), 1942.
Lámparas (poetry), 1943.
Obras completas (includes the novels Almas anónimas and La reina mujer), 8 volumes, Aguilar (Madrid, Spain), 1944-1951.
Antología poética, compiled by Federico Carlos Sáinz de Robles, Aguilar (Madrid, Spain), 1944.
Spanish Poet Eduardo Marquina Reading from His Work (sound recording), Library of Congress (Washington, DC), 1946.
Maternidad (novel), E. Heras (Barcelona, Spain), 1950.
Eduardo Marquina: sus mejores poesías, edited by F. González Ledesman, Bruguera (Barcelona, Spain), 1954.
Días de infancia y adolescencia: memorias del último tercio del siglo (memoirs), Juventud (Barcelona, Spain), 1964.
La misa azul, Emiliano Escolar (Madrid, Spain), 1980.
Contributor of poems, stories, translations, and essays to periodicals, including Luz, La Publicidad, Caras y Caretas, El Cuento Semanal, and Heraldo de Madrid. Contributor to anthology Cancionero de la guerra: versos, Españoles (Madrid, Spain), 1939. Translator of works from Portuguese, Italian, and other languages.
Marquina's works have been translated into several languages, including Italian.
SIDELIGHTS: Writing many of his plays as his country headed into a period of political upheaval that culminated in violent civil war, prolific Spanish playwright and poet Eduardo Marquina avoided dealing with such political concerns by setting his popular dramas in the past, or in rural areas relatively untouched by war. Wishing to revive poetic drama, he used verse to glorify Spain's triumphant past, and focused on heroic figures and courtly subjects. During the years near his death in 1946 the conservative playwright's concern over morals and faith grew increasingly more pronounced, and his work became redolent of his strong Catholic faith. Among his plays, 1943's María la viuda is considered by many critics to be Marquina's best drama, while his long poem Vendimión has continued to impress critics with its impassioned philosophical stance and its grandiose presentation since its initial publication in 1909.
Born in 1879 to parents from the Aragon region bordering the Pyrenees of northeastern Spain, Marquina was one of seven children. After attending first a Catholic school run by French monks and then a Jesuit school, he enrolled at the Universidad Barcelona but dropped out after only a few months. Determined to make his living as a poet, he began to contribute to the modernist journal Luz and other publications and had some small success when Luz editors began to publish his poems in 1897. In 1900 Marquina released his first book of poems, Odas, but was forced to find work as a journalist when the volume did not provide him the hoped-for entré into Madrid's literary community.
Marquina's first play, the idealistic El pastor, was produced in the winter of 1902 and ran for four days under the patronage of Spanish musician Ruperto Chapí; among its follow-up efforts was 1906's Benvenuto Cellini, a biographical work that follows the life of the sixteenth-century Italian sculptor and through which a young, socialist-minded Marquina "exalts the value of art above all utilitarian principles and the right of the artist to create freely," according to Manuel de la Nuez in his Eduardo Marquina.
Married and the father of a son, Luis, by 1904, Marquina moved his family to Madrid, then the center of Spanish theater. Spain's theater community was at this point undergoing a transformation, as the influx of young playwrights such as Adelardo López de Ayala began to overshadow the prominence of established writers such as nineteenth-century Nobel Prizewinning playwright José Echegaray. Now a part of this vibrant community, and with the backing of Madrid's influential Guerrero-Mendoza theater company, Marquina entered a more mature phase of his career, and perfected the verse drama form. His five-act play Las hijas del Cid, with its focus on traditional Spanish themes and its author-penned dedication to "the future of the mother country" and "the new life of the heroes who died for love and pain for old Castille," proved to be the playwright's first critical success upon its opening in March of 1908. The story of the Cid's attempts to marry off his daughters to honorable nobles, the play draws on the Spanish epic of El Cid, a heroic warrior and defender of the realm on horseback and who was first popularized in a poem dating from the twelfth century. Awarded the Premio Piquer from the Spanish Royal Academy, Las hijas del Cid was less warmly embraced by the public and had only a fifteen-day run in Madrid.
After his success with Las hijas del Cid, Marquina's subsequent dramatic efforts proved uneven, the unqualified critical success of his historical drama En Flandes se ha puesto el sol followed by a series of low-profile plays that culminated with the disappointing El gran capitán in March of 1916. Running less than two weeks, El gran capitán focuses on the unwanted attentions of a Spanish nobleman toward Queen Isabella; its controversial presentation of the Spanish Crown and the overshadowing of the play's romantic element by a script dense with rhyme caused little excitement among either theatergoers or critics. Acknowledging the lack of depth of such historical dramas, and recognizing the public's unenthusiastic response to the verse drama form, Marquina authored several prose plays set in contemporary Spain, and also traveled to Latin America in 1916 in the company of the touring Guerrero-Mendoza troupe. Although these plays met with a relatively positive reception, the prose style did not suit Marquina, and by the 1920s he had began to once again pen verse dramas. Unlike his previous works of this type, he now focused on glorifying the lives of the rural poor in such plays as El pobrecito carpintero and La ermita, la fuente y el.
One of several collaborative efforts he undertook during his long career, Marquina joined fellow playwright Alfonso Hernández Catá to produce 1925's Don Luis Mejía, which focuses on the legendary lover Don Juan. However, an increasingly conservative Marquina's first religious-themed play, El monje blanco, premiered in Madrid in 1930 and marked the beginning of what many critics have viewed as the final phase of his writing career. Following a tour of Austria, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, Marquina returned to Spain and in 1931 was elected to the prestigious Spanish Royal Academy. His subsequent election as president of the Sociedad de Autores Españoles was yet another symbol of Marquina's growing stature within Spain's intellectual community.
When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936 and Generalissimo Francisco Franco began—with the help of fellow European dictators Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini—his three-year military push to become dictator of all Spain, Marquina was out of the country on a tour of Latin America with his theatre associates. Because of the playwright's known anti-communist sympathies, Marquina's wife and son were forced to go in to hiding and left Spain to join Marquina in Buenos Aires, Argentina. While in Buenos Aires the playwright began work on La Santa Hermandad, a play with strong Nationalist undertones that draws connections between the glorious reign of Ferdinand and Isabella and the events of the Spanish Civil War then underway. The opposing forces of Nationalism and Republicanism are personified in the play's two main characters, brothers Blas—the "good" brother, who represents Nationalism—and Martín, who represents the discordant influences of Republicanism. Disappointed in the "simplistic" resolution of the conflict between the two brothers, De la Nuez nonetheless noted that the playwright's "inherent human goodness manifests itself clearly" in La Santa Hermandad: "In 1937, in the midst of a bloody civil war, when cries for vengeance were ringing out on both sides, [Marquina] . . . was asking for reconciliation among Spaniards, as both brothers are finally reunited."
In 1938 the Marquina family returned to Spain and settled in Seville because, unlike Madrid, that city was under the protection of Nationalist Movement forces. Due to his extended stay away from Spain, the ongoing political disruption, and because of his increasing participation in the activities of Spain's literary elite, Marquina found his play production declining during the 1930s and 1940s. Interestingly, Maria la viuda, which premiered in 1943, is considered by many critics to be his best play, due to its well-rounded portrayal of strong, realistic female characters. 1946's El galeón y el milagro, was the last of Marquina's historical dramas to be produced during his lifetime. While traveling in Central and North America in the fall of 1946 as a representative of Spain's literary community, the playwright suffered a series of heart attacks. He died in New York City in November, at the age of sixty-seven.
BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:
books
De la Nuez, Manuel, Eduardo Marquina, Twayne (Boston, MA), 1976.
Montera Alonso, José, Vida de Eduardo Marquina, Nacional (Madrid, Spain), 1965.
periodicals
Circulo, Volume 12, 1984, pp. 55-61.
Cuadernos de Aldeeu, January, 1983, pp. 91-99.
Explicación de Textos Literarios, Volume 12, number 1, 1983-84, pp. 79-85.
Revista de Filologia Española, January-June, 1988, Manuel Alvar, "Un cantarcillo transmitido por Andrés Bernáldez," pp. 141-142.
Salina, November, 1999, Gregorio Torres Nebrera, "En Flandes se ha puesto el sol: Teatralidad, contexto histórico y parodia," pp. 111-128.*