Rosa Clotilde Chacel Arimón (1898-1994) was a Spanish writer who belonged to the Generation of 27. Like many intellectuals of her time, after the Civil War of 1936 she was forced into exile, therefore, most of her work was conceived in distant lands.
Chacel Arimón was a writer of novels, essays, biographies, short stories, and also a translator. His works are characterized, in most cases, by simplicity and easy understanding, as well as by the psychology of the characters and the connection with the circumstances of his time..
The time that Chacel had to live was difficult and exclusive for the female gender, which hindered her literary growth, so she chose to fight for a place among men. However, his work began to be recognized in exile, for that reason many of his works were reissued.
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Rosa was born on June 3, 1898 in Valladolid. He came from a family with a liberal ideology that gave him the development of an independent personality, and vast literary and cultural knowledge. Due to her frequent health problems, she was educated at home by her mother, the teacher Rosa Cruz Arimón.
When he was ten years old he moved with his family to Madrid. When she was eleven years old, in 1909, she began classes at the School of Arts and Crafts, and later enrolled in the Home and Professional School for Women. Six years later he began studying sculpture, which he abandoned in 1918..
At that time Chacel met the poet and playwright Valle-Inclán, and who would be her future husband, the painter Timoteo Pérez Rubio. At the age of seventeen, he began to attend the literary meetings that took place in cafes and at the athenaeum..
Rosa Chacel began to work and collaborate with some print media such as the magazine Ultra, between 1918 and 1922. That was also the time when he met and made friends with great intellectuals such as Miguel de Unamuno, José Ortega y Gasset, and Juan Ramón Jiménez.
At the age of twenty-three, in 1921, she married Timoteo Pérez; As a result of the relationship, their only son Carlos was born. A year after they were married, they went to Italy where they lived for several years, after a scholarship that the husband obtained. At the end of the poet's studies they returned to Madrid in 1927.
Chacel began his literary activity in a concrete way in 1927. In the Occidente Magazine public Chinina migone Y Game of the two corners, in 1928 and 1929 respectively. Then in the magazine Ultra, the story came out The cities, and in 1930 saw the light Station. Round trip, his first novel.
The creativity of the writer suffered after the death of her mother. So in 1933 he traveled to the German capital, Berlin, to find inspiration again. Three years later it was published At the edge of a well, in the collection Hero, of the also writer and poet Manuel Altolaguirre.
When the Civil War started in 1936, Rosa was in the Spanish capital. While manifesting her leftist position, she also worked as a nurse; and her husband was involved in the removal of the paintings from the Prado Museum as a protection measure.
In 1937 Rosa left Spain with her son Carlos, went to France, and also made a brief stay in Greece. Two years later, she met her husband in Brazil, and from there they moved to Argentina with the intention that the son kept in contact with the mother tongue..
In Buenos Aires he published the novel The Unreason, considered one of his greatest works. She moved back to Brazil, and there she remained active; he attended social gatherings and did some translations. However, the economic problems were accentuated.
Some time later, in 1959, he was awarded a scholarship to create by the Guggenheim Foundation, and for this reason he went to live in New York. Under this patronage he wrote a series of essays of a philosophical and erotic nature. During that time the writer was part of the Nouveau Roman literary movement.
In 1961, when the scholarship ended, Rosa traveled to Spain, and stayed to live there for two years. At the end of that time he settled again in Brazil. Later he returned to his homeland, until in 1973 he returned to receive a grant from the Juan March Foundation to complete Maravillas neighborhood.
For a long period she lived between Madrid and Rio de Janeiro, until, when her husband died in 1977, she settled permanently in the Spanish capital. Although the loss was difficult, his literary production began to be valued just as democracy arrived, which helped him to move forward..
The last years of Rosa Chacel's life were moved. In 1970 he published The confession, later published Saturnian, one of the essays he produced during his stay in New York. In 1976 it came to light Maravillas neighborhood, works that, for many critics, meant his consecration.
Economic disagreements knocked on his door again, so he began to write for television, as was the case with a production based on his work Teresa. His last manuscripts were Slices Y Balaam. Cardiorespiratory failure took his life on August 7, 1994.
Rosa Chacel's work enjoyed a simple language, therefore, easy to understand. Most of his characters were built within an elaborate psychology, on the other hand, he developed it framed within the popular, and with abstract and imprecise features.
Most of his stories had a dubious and uncertain plot, with a high reflective content. He also highlighted in his style the ability to describe each event in a meticulous and beautiful way, as well as the way of talking in detail about the peculiarities of the landscapes and the actions of his characters.
- Station. Round trip (1930).
- Teresa (1941).
- Memoirs of Leticia Valle (1945).
- The unreason (1960).
- Wonder Quarter (1976).
- Novels ahead of time (nineteen eighty one).
- Acropolis (1984).
- Natural Sciences (1988).
It was the first novel of the writer, had autobiographical nuances and also developed themes related to the performance of women during her time. The influence of José Ortega y Gasset was evidenced; the style used by Chacel was typical of the avant-garde.
This novel by the Spanish writer Rosa Chacel was part of the trilogy Plato's school, made of Acropolis Y Natural Sciences. The work was about the author's memoirs, set in the Madrid town that gave the work its title.
The main characters are Elena and Isabel, two little girls through whom Chacel looked at and described the twentieth-century urban environment. The story tells the reader about life in Spain from the early 1900s until the Civil War broke out in 1936.
- Over the sea (1952).
- Offering to a mad virgin (1961).
- Icada, Nevda, Diada (1971).
- Balaam and other tales (1989).
- Short narrative (2003, this was an edition by his son Carlos Pérez Chacel).
This story by Chacel was characterized by the use of symbols, and by having a load of mysticism and human reflection. It was about beauty, fertility, and hope; the writer developed an excellent work from the gesture with the hand of a woman without sanity in the Argentine capital.
- At the edge of a well (1936).
- Forbidden verses (1978).
- Poetry 1931-1991 (1992).
This collection of poems by Rosa Chacel was characterized, like much of her poetry, for being classic and passionate. In the manuscript, the writer sometimes dedicated herself to making some tributes, and also separated herself from intimacy and was unconcerned about the use of feelings.
"Who could hold you, dark goddess,
who would dare caress your body
to breathe the night air
through the brown hair on your face? ...
from the unspoken breath of the shadow
that the forest tends on the slopes
-broken rock, unpredictable moss-.
From trunk or ties of lianas,
from the lewd voice of silence
the eyes come from your slow wings ... ".
- Since sunrise (1972).
- Timoteo Pérez Rubio and his garden portraits (1980).
- Autobiographies (2004).
- Piggy Bank I. Ida (1982).
- Piggy Bank II. Return (1982).
- Piggy bank, termini station (1988, posthumous work edited by his son Carlos Pérez Chacel).
- Diaries (2004, from the Jorge Guillén Foundation).
- Poetry of the circumstance. How and why of the novel (1958).
- The confession (1971).
- Saturnian (1972).
- The titles (nineteen eighty one).
- Slices (1986).
- Reading is secret (1989).
- Plague, by Albert Camus (1951,1957, 1968, 1970, 1979, 1983, 1988, 1990, 1994, 1995, 2005, 2006).
- Antigone, Reynald and Armida by Jean Cocteau (1952).
- The lady is not for the stake by Christopher Fry (1955).
- Freedom or death by Nikos Kazantzakis (1957).
- Avant-garde art theory by Renato Poggioli (1964).
- Eden term; The retamal; Cornelius by Jean Racine (1983).
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