Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

In this
Spanish name, the first or paternal surname
is Calderón de la Barca and the second or maternal family name is González.
Don

Pedro Calderón de la Barca
BornPedro Calderón de la Barca y Barreda González de Henao Ruiz de Blasco y Riaño
(1600-01-17)17 January 1600
Madrid, Spain
Died25 May 1681(1681-05-25) (aged 81)
Madrid, Spain
OccupationPlaywright, poet, writer
Alma mater
Literary movementSpanish Golden Age
ChildrenPedro José
RelativesDiego Calderón (father)
Ana María de Henao (mother)

Pedro Calderón de la Barca (17 January 1600 – 25 May 1681) (UK: /ˌkældəˈrɒn ˌdeɪ læ ˈbɑːrkə/, US: /ˌkɑːldəˈroʊn ˌdeɪ lə -, - ˌdɛ lə -/; Spanish: [ˈpeðɾo kaldeˈɾon de la ˈβaɾka]; full name: Pedro Calderón de la Barca y Barreda González de Henao Ruiz de Blasco y Riaño) was a Spanish dramatist, poet, writer and knight of the Order of Santiago. He is known as one of the most distinguished Baroque writers of the Spanish Golden Age, especially for his plays.

Calderón de la Barca was born in Madrid, where he spent most of his life. During his life, he served as soldier and he was a Roman Catholic priest. Born when the Spanish Golden Age theatre was being defined by Lope de Vega, he developed it further, his work being regarded as the culmination of the Spanish Baroque theatre. As such, he is regarded as one of Spain's foremost dramatists and one of the finest playwrights of world literature.[a]

Biography

Calderón de la Barca's portrait, in Primera parte de Comedias verdaderas (1726)

Pedro Calderón de la Barca was born in

hidalgo of mountain origin (Viveda, Cantabria) and by paternal inheritance he had assumed the position of secretary of the Council and Chief Accounting Office of the Treasury, serving in it the kings Felipe II and Felipe III, died in 1615.[3] His mother, Ana Gonzalez de Henao (or Henaut,[4][5] Hainaut[6]), was of Flemish[4][7][8][5] or Walloon descent.[9][10] According to James Fitzmaurice-Kelly, she claimed origin from the De Mons of Hainault.[11] She died when Calderón was ten years old,[7] in 1610.[12] His parents married in 1595.[3] Pedro was the third of the six children that the marriage produced (three boys and three girls), of whom only four survived childhood: Diego, the first-born;[note 1] Dorotea — nun in Toledo—;[note 2] Pedro and Jusepe or José.[note 3][note 4]
These brothers were always welcome, as Diego Calderón stated in his will (1647):

All three of us have always conserved ourselves in love and friendship, and without dividing up assets... we have helped each other in the needs and jobs we have had.[13]

However, they also had a natural brother, Francisco, who hid under the surname of "González" and was expelled from the father's house by Don Diego, although he left written in 1615 that he be recognized as legitimate unless he had married "with that woman he tried to marry", in which case he would be disinherited.

Jesuit College in Madrid, the Colegio Imperial,[2] with a view to taking orders; but instead, he studied law at Salamanca
.

Between 1620 and 1622 Calderón won several poetry contests in honor of St. Isidore at Madrid. Calderón's debut as a playwright was Amor, honor y poder, performed at the Royal Palace on 29 June 1623. This was followed by two other plays that same year: La selva confusa and Los Macabeos. Over the next two decades, Calderón wrote more than 70 plays, the majority of which were secular dramas written for the commercial theatres.

Calderón served with the Spanish army in Italy and

cuirassiers recently raised by Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares, took part in the Catalan campaign, and distinguished himself by his gallantry at Tarragona
. His health failing, Calderón retired from the army in November 1642, and three years later was awarded a special military pension in recognition of his services in the field.

Calderón's biography during the next few years is obscure. His brother, Diego Calderón, died in 1647. A son, Pedro José, was born to Calderón and an unknown woman between 1647 and 1649; the mother died soon after. Calderón committed his son to the care of his nephew, José, son of Diego. Perhaps for reasons relating to these personal trials, Calderón became a tertiary of the

order of St Francis
in 1650, and then finally joined the priesthood. He was ordained in 1651, and became a priest at San Salvador church, in Madrid. According to a statement he made a year or two later, he decided to give up writing secular dramas for the commercial theatres.

Though he did not adhere strictly to this resolution, he now wrote mostly mythological plays for the palace theatres, and

Corpus Christi. In 1662, two of Calderón's autos, Las órdenes militares and Mística y real Babilonia, were the subjects of an inquiry by the Inquisition
; the former was censured, its manuscript copies confiscated, and remained condemned until 1671.

Calderón was appointed honorary chaplain to Philip IV in 1663, and continued as chaplain to his successor. In his eighty-first year he wrote his last secular play, Hado y Divisa de Leonido y Marfisa, in honor of

Maria Luisa of Orléans
.

Notwithstanding his position at court and his popularity throughout Spain, near the end of his life Calderón struggled with financial difficulties, but with the motivation of the Carnival of 1680 he wrote his last work of comedy, Hado y divisa de Leonido y de Marfisa. He died on 25 May 1681, leaving only partially complete the autos sacramentales that he had been working on for that year. His burial was austere and unembellished, as he desired in his will: "Uncovered, as if I deserved to satisfy in part the public vanities of my poorly spent life". In this manner he left the theatres orphaned in which he was considered one of the best dramatic writers of his time.[15]

Monument to Calderón on Plaza de Santa Ana, Madrid (J. Figueras, 1878).

Style

Calderón initiated what has been called the second cycle of

Lope de Vega
, pioneered the dramatic forms and genres of Spanish Golden Age theatre, Calderón polished and perfected them. Whereas Lope's strength lay in the spontaneity and naturalness of his work, Calderón's strength lay in his capacity for poetic beauty, dramatic structure and philosophical depth. Calderón was a perfectionist who often revisited and reworked his plays, even long after they were first performed. This perfectionism was not just limited to his own work: several of his plays rework existing plays or scenes by other dramatists, improving their depth, complexity, and unity. Calderón excelled above all others in the genre of the "auto sacramental", in which he showed a seemingly inexhaustible capacity to giving new dramatic forms to a given set of theological and philosophical constructs. Calderón wrote 120 "comedias", 80 "autos sacramentales" and 20 short comedic works called entremeses.

As Goethe notes, Calderón tended to write his plays taking special care of their dramatic structure. He therefore usually reduced the number of scenes in his plays as compared to those of

Saint Thomas Aquinas and Francisco Suárez, he liked to confront reason against the passions, intellect against instinct, or understanding against will. In common with many writers from the Spanish Golden Age, his plays usually show his vital pessimism, that is only softened by his rationalism and his faith in God; the anguish and distress usually found his œuvre is better exemplified in one of his most famous plays, La vida es sueño (Life Is a Dream
), in which Segismundo claims:

Indeed, his themes tended to be complex and philosophical, and express complicated states of mind in a manner that few playwrights have been able to manage. Like Baltasar Gracián, Calderón favoured only the deepest human feelings and dilemmas.

Since Calderón's plays were usually produced at the court of the King of Spain, he had access to the most modern techniques regarding scenography. He collaborated with Cosme Lotti in developing complex scenographies that were integrated in some of his plays, specially his most religious-themed ones such as the Autos Sacramentales, becoming extremely complex allegories of moral, philosophical and religious concepts.

Reception

Calderón depicted on a 1928 25 Pesetas banknote.

Although his fame dwindled during the 18th century, he was rediscovered in the early 19th century by the German Romantics. Translations by

La vida es sueño and El gran teatro del mundo
.

Although best known abroad as the author of Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak produced acclaimed Russian translations of Calderón's plays during the late 1950s. According to his mistress, Olga Ivinskaya,

In working on Calderón he received help from Nikolai Mikhailovich Liubumov, a shrewd and enlightened person who understood very well that all the mudslinging and commotion over the novel would be forgotten, but that there would always be a Pasternak. I took finished bits of the translation with me to Moscow, read them to Liubimov at Potapov Street, and then went back to Peredelkino, where I would tactfully ask [Boris Leonidovich] to change passages which, in Liubimov's view departed too far from the original. Very soon after the "scandal" was over, [Boris Leonidovich] received a first payment for the work on Calderón.[17]

Already appropriated as a cultural and identitarian Conservative icon in Spain since

Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo in the 19th century, the figure of Calderón de la Barca eventually became a Francoist cultural artifact during the 20th century.[18] In 1881, during a controversial meeting at El Retiro for the commemoration of the two hundredth anniversary of Calderón's death, Menéndez Pelayo drank a toast to the celebration of Calderón's Spain and for the supremacy of the Latin race over "germanic barbarity" (settling accounts with foreign scholars).[19] Félix Sardà y Salvany also claimed Calderón for integrist Catholicism; integrists considered Calderón de la Barca to embody the most brilliant incarnation of the Spanish religious intolerance.[19]
A revival of interest in Calderón scholarship can be attributed to British reception, namely through the works of A. A. Parker (who considered La hija del aire to be his finest work),[20] A. E. Sloman and more recently Bruce Wardropper.

English

Further information: List of Calderón's plays in English translation

Although not well known to the current English-speaking world, Calderón's plays were first adapted into English during the 17th century. For instance, Samuel Pepys recorded attending some plays during 1667 which were free translations of some of Calderón's. Percy Bysshe Shelley translated a substantial portion of El Mágico prodigioso. Some of Calderón's works have been translated into English, notably by Denis Florence MacCarthy, Edward FitzGerald, Roy Campbell, Edwin Honig, Kenneth Muir & Ann L. Mackenzie, Adrian Mitchell, and Gwynne Edwards.

Works

Plays

  • Amor, honor y poder (Love, Honor and Power) (1623)
  • El sitio de Breda (The Siege of Breda) (1625)
La vida es sueño (Life is a dream)
Calderón de la Barca, Life is a dream, act II, scene 19, Monologue of Segismundo
Problems playing this file? See media help.
  • La dama duende (The Phantom Lady) (1629)
  • Casa con dos puertas (The House with Two Doors) (1629)
  • La vida es sueño (
    Life is a Dream
    ) (1629–1635)
  • El purgatorio de San Patricio (The Purgatory of St. Patrick) (before 1635)
  • El mayor encanto, amor (Love, the Greatest Enchantment) (1635)
  • Los tres mayores prodigios (The Three Greatest Wonders) (1636)
  • La devoción de la Cruz (Devotion to the Cross) (1637)
  • El mágico prodigioso (The Mighty Magician) (1637)
  • A secreto agravio, secreta venganza (Secret Vengeance for Secret Insult) (1637)
  • El médico de su honra (The Surgeon of his Honor) (1637)
  • El pintor de su deshonra (The Painter of His Dishonor) (1640s)
  • El alcalde de Zalamea (The Mayor of Zalamea) (1651)
  • La hija del aire (The Daughter of the Air) (1653)
  • Eco y Narciso (Eco and Narcissus) (1661)
  • La estatua de Prometeo (Prometheus' Statue)
  • El prodigio de Alemania (The Prodigy of Germany) (in collaboration with Antonio Coello)

Operas

Autos Sacramentales (Sacramental plays)

Comedies

For a time the comedic works of Calderón were underestimated, but have since been reevaluated and have been considered as masterfully composed works as being classified in the genre of

La dama duende (The Phantom Lady), Casa con dos puertas, mala es de guardar (A house with two doors is difficult to guard), or El galán fantasma
(The Heroic Phantom).

In modern literature

Calderón de la Barca appears in the 1998 novel The Sun over Breda, by

Oudkerk
by Spanish troops, helping the local librarian save books from the library in the burning town hall.

Notes

  1. ^ Diego Calderón de la Barca was born in Madrid in 1596. From his grandmother Inés de Riaño's will we know that he was in Mexico in 1612. He married Beatriz Núñez de Alarcón in February 1622 and in 1623 they had a son, José Antonio Calderón, He was a lawyer for the Royal Councils and a rapporteur for War and Justice, helping his parents and uncles several times in legal matters and married in 1653 to the widow Agustina Antonia Ortiz y Velasco. This nephew of Pedro Calderón lived on Calle de las Fuentes and housed the natural son of his uncle, the playwright Pedro José, but he lost his mind and died in 1658, when Pedro José had also died in 1657. As for his father Diego In early 1629 he and his brother, the playwright Pedro, participated in a brawl on Calle Cantarranas, today Lope de Vega, in which comedian Pedro de Villegas, brother of the famous actress Ana de Villegas, was seriously injured. After making a will in Madrid on 13 November 1647, he died later that year.
  2. ^ Dorotea Calderón de la Barca was born in 1598; She entered the convent of Santa Clara la Real as a novice before the age of fourteen and professed in there of the Order of San Francisco.
  3. ^ José Calderón, much loved by his brothers, was born in Valladolid in 1602. He completed his military career, in which he got the job of lieutenant-general-field master; He was wounded in the right leg during the siege of Fuenterrabía in 1638 and died in the Catalan war on 23 June 1645.
  4. ^ An ancestor of his was Hernando Sánchez Calderón, lord of the Torre de Viveda, near Santillana, Santander province. A son of this gentleman, Álvaro Calderón, went to Aguilar de Campoo, where he married Mencía Sanz; he had three children, Pedro, Juan and Francisco; the firstborn went to live in Sotillo, jurisdiction of Reinosa; his grandson, Diego Calderón, settled in Boadilla del Camino, in Tierra de Campos, Palencia province. Her son, Pedro Calderón, went to Toledo, where he would deal with the wealthy heiress Isabel Ruiz, with whom he married around 1570. They settled in Madrid, and Don Pedro obtained the position of secretary of the Council and Chief Accounting Office of the Treasury, in the one succeeded by his son Don Diego, father of the poet, around 1595.[3]
  1. ^ Goethe regarded Calderón as high as Shakespeare, even commenting his plays to be of greater structural-perfection than those of the Bard due to Calderón mending them once and again.[1]
  1. ^ Eckermann 1837, p. 251.
  2. ^ a b Prat, Angel Valbuena (1965). Literatura española en sus relaciones con la universal (in Spanish). Sociedad Anónima Española de Traductores y Autores.
  3. ^ a b c Valbuena Briones 1977, p. 252.
  4. ^ a b González Mas, Ezequiel (1989). Historia de la literatura española Volume 3 (in Spanish). Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico. p. 171.
  5. ^ a b Díaz-Plaja, Guillermo (1967). Historia general de las literaturas hispánicas: Renacimiento y barroco (in Spanish). Editorial Vergara. p. 399.
  6. ISBN 9781351349321
    .
  7. ^
    ISBN 9780813183565
    .
  8. ISBN 9788817112628
    . Retrieved 6 December 2021.
  9. ^ Delmelle, Joseph (1966). L'expansion wallonne en Europe. Institut Jules Destrée. p. 77. Retrieved 6 December 2021.
  10. ^ "Pedro Calderón de la Barca". Larousse. Archived from the original on 22 November 2021. Retrieved 6 December 2021.
  11. ISBN 9783752352467
    .
  12. ^ Boix 1840, p. 1.
  13. ^ Valbuena Briones 1977, p. 263.
  14. ^ Sliwa 2008, p. 31.
  15. ^ "Pedro Calderón de la Barca".
  16. ^ Schlegel. August Wilhelm. Vorlesungen über dramatische Kunst und Literatur. 2 Vols. Ed. Erich Lohner. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag, 1967. Vol. 2, pp. 107ff.
  17. ^ Ivinskai︠a︡ 1978, p. 292.
  18. ^ Pérez Magallón 2010, pp. 417–448.
  19. ^ a b Hibbs-Lissorgues, Solange (1994). "Los centenarios de Calderón de la Barca (1881) y Santa Teresa de Jesús (1882): un ejemplo de recuperación ideológica por el catolicismo integrista". Hommage à Robert Jammes: 552.
  20. ISBN 9780900411106

References

Attribution

Sources

Corrections have been made to biographical information using
  • Cotarelo y Mori, D. Emilio. Ensayo sobre la vida y obras de D. Pedro Calderón de la Barca. Ed. Facs. Ignacio Arellano y Juan Manuel Escudero. Biblioteca Áurea Hispánica. Madrid;Frankfurt: Iberoamericana; Veuvuert, 2001.
The style section uses the following bibliographical information

External links

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Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article "Calderón de la Barca, Pedro".
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