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Baltasar Gracián y Morales (1601-1658) |
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Baltasar Gracián was a Spanish baroque moralist, philosopher, and Jesuit scholar, whose works influenced La Rochefoucauld, and later Voltaire, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer, who referred to Gracián's El criterión as "one of the best books in the world." Gracián wrote in concentrated, terse style; he was the master of the baroque literary style known as conceptismo (conceptism). His Oráculo manual y arte de prudentia (1647, The Pocket Oracle), a collection of three hundred maxims, was translated by Joseph Jacobs in 1892 as The Art of Wordly Wisdom. It is Gracián's most famous book outside of Spain. When Ignatius Loyola's Exercitia was a manual of prayer and devotion, Oráculo offered practical advices for social life. xxiv Keep the imagination under Control; Baltasar Gracián y Morales was born in Belmonte, a village in Aragon
near Calatayud, the
son of Francisco Gracián de Garcés, a doctor, and Angela Morales
Torrellas. During his childhood Gracián lived with his uncle, who
was a chaplain. He studied at a Jesuit school in
Saragosa and at the age of 18 he became a novice with the Jesuits.
Between
the years 1621 and 1623 he studied philosophy at the College of
Calatayud. Like his brothers, Gracián decided to pursue a clerical career.
After studying theology in Zaragosa, he was ordained in 1627
as a priest and in 1635 he took his final vows. Gracián taught
philosophy and theology at several Jesuit schools in
Aragon and in the Jesuit University of Gandia (1633-36). In 1636 he was
sent as a preacher and confessor to the Colegio de Huesca. He also
worked as the rector of the Jesuit college at
Tarragona. During the French siege of 1644, he stayed in the city. In
Huesca he befriended the rich patron of letters,
Vincencio Juan de Lastanosa, who financed the publication of his most
important books, and helped him when he had troubles with the Jesuits.
Moreover, he had access to Lastanosa's large library. In 1640 Gracián traveled to Madrid, where the court was located, and
gained fame as a preacher, partly due of his criticism of aristocrats
and their servants and lackeys. Once in Valencia he jokingly announced in one of his sermons
that he has a letter sent to him straight from the Hell. During the war
in 1646 Gracián served as a military priest in Lerida, witnessing
horrors of war first hand. In 1650 he moved to Zaragoza, where he was appointed to the Cátedra de Escritura. Almost all Gracián's publications were published under pseudonyms. The only exception was El Comulgatorio (1655, Sanctuary Meditations for Priests and Frequent Communicants), which was printed with the permisson of his order and came out under his own name. Arte de ingenio was published in 1642 with permission but using the name Lorenzo Gracián. Even during his lifetime Gracián was recognized as a master of
style, but he had to conceal his frustration when lesser talented
authorities
tampered with his writings. Gracián was repeatedly disciplined, his
performance as a professor of theology was criticized, and he was also
put on bread and water for punishment. His
superiors characterized him as colericus (choleric), biliosus (ill-humored), and melancolicus (melancholic).
Embittered Gracián tried unsuccessfully to leave the Jesuits and become
a monk. Just a few months before his death, Gracián received a final
warning, which suggested that he should be locked up without paper,
pen, or ink. The appearance of El Héroe (1637, The Hero) under the pseudonym of Lorenzo Grazian, the
author's brother, strained Gracián's relationships with the Compañia de Jésus and he was sent from Huesca to serve as official confessor to the Duke of Nochera. "A
wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his
friends," Gracián said. (in The Art of Worldly Wisdom, p. 49) Stubbornly, he ignored warnings not to publish his books without permssion. When the third part of El criticón
(1657) came out, it was
denounced by ecclesiastical authorities in Spain. He was removed from
his chair in Zaragoza, and exiled to Graus for a period. Baltasar
Gracián died in Tarragona on December
6, 1658. It is likely, that he was buried in a common grave. iv Knowledge and Courage Along with Quevedo (1580-1645) Gracián became known as one the leading Spanish exponent of conceptismo, a stylistic form and practice which sought to express witty and original ideas by puns, antitheses, epigrams, twisted metaphors and other verbal devices. The conceptistas disapproved arcane language and insisted that language should be precise and correct. In Agudeza y arte de ingenio (1648, The Mind's Wit and Art) Gracián set forth his views on different kinds of conceit and defined the numerous varieties of literary agudeza (fine distinction; ingenuity). Noteworthy is that Gracián doesn't take examples from Cervantes' Don Quixote, the most famous Spanish novel of all times. Gracián lived in a time when Spain's power was declining. Wars, corruption and inflation undermined economy and restrictions were placed on civil and religious freedom. At the same time the baroque culture in the country was thriving. Gracián was the contemporary of the painters Velasquez (1599-1660), Murillo (1617-1682), and Zurbaran (1598-1664), and the writers Lope de Vega (1562-1635) and Calderón (1600-1681). To gain success in the world of constant struggle, Gracián's advice for young heroes in El Héroe was that "let all Men indeed know you, in order to be esteem'd by all, but lay yourselves open to none". (The Hero, from the Spanish of B. Gracian; with remarks moral, political, and historical of the learned by Father J. de Courbeville, 1726, p. 5) The Hero criticized Machiavelli (1469-1527), except the idea that the end justifies the means, and
drew a portrait of the perfect Christian leader. Its first edition has been lost, but by 1646, it had
been translated into French and Portuguese and plagiarized by a French
Jesuit. Gracián's ideal image of the politician, as presented in El político Don Fernando el Católico (1640),
was King Ferdinand the Catholic, "that great master in the art of
kingship, the greatest oracle of the reason of State," as he wrote. To
Macchiavelli's concept of "reason of state," which was actually
popularized by the Italian Jesuit Giovanni Botero, he referred in Criticón as
"reason of stable" ("razones, no de Estado, sino de establo").('On Power, Image, and Gracián's Prototype' by Isabel C. Livosky, in Rhetoric and Politics: Baltasar Gracián and the New World Order, edited by Nicholas Spadaccini, Jenaro Taléns, Universioty of Minnesota Press, 1997, p. 74)
Both authors believed that the concentration of power and wealth
into the hands of a single person is the rule of the world – "The rich
inherit, and the poor have no relation. The hungry cannot find
bread, and those with a full belly are taken out to dinner. He that has
nothing shall have nothing. There is no equality in the world,"
Gracián wrote. (A Pocket Mirror for Heroes, translated by Christopher Maurer, Currency and Foubleday, 1996, pp. 85-86) Gracián emphasized the importance of
personal improvement. In El discreto (1646, The Complet Gentleman) he continued the Renaissance tradition of Castiglione and described the qualities which make the sophisticated man of the world. Andrenio, a young savage called "hombre o bestia," is a kind of literary ancestor of Rousseau's Émile (1762). He is the disciple of Critilo, an ideal man, who advises Andrenio to rely on his reason, not instincts, and not to be swayed by appearances. Gracián doesn't hide his pessimistic views about stupidity and egoism of human beings; on the pages of the Criticón, God is not mentioned very often. In Madrid Andrenio is seduced by Falsirena and Critilo finds a good opportunity to criticize women. Then the companions meet the wise Salastano (an anagram of Lastanosa), travel to France, and finally arrive Rome at their old age. The English translation of part one of El Criticón by Paul Rycaut came out in 1681. The first, lost edition of the Oráculo manual, was
small enough to fit in the pocket to be carried around. Possibly the
idea came from portable prayer books. Gracián's collection
of advices for social interactions and gaining success for life was
written for people, who were ready to take advantage of
opportunity, beginning from the author himself. Gracián
dedicated his work to Don Luis
Méndez de Haro who had replaced Count-Duke of Olivares as the King's
favorite. This "handbook" has been described as "an odd compound of
shrewdness, cynicism, and moralizing." ('On Power, Image and Gracián's Prototype' by Isabel C. Livosky, in Rhetoric and Politics: Baltasar Gracián and the New World Order, edited by Nicholas Spadaccini and Jenaro Taléns, 1997, p. 78) It was translated into German by Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) as Balthazar Gracian's Hand-Orakel und Kunst der Weltklugheit. The
translation appeared in 1862, two years after Schopenhauer's death, but
already in the 1820s, he had translated 50 of its 300 aphorisms. For further reading: Acquired Ingenuity: The Conflation of Prudence with Ingenio in the Works of Baltasar Gracián by Rebecca Beattie (2020); Artful Immorality - Variants of Cynicism: Machiavelli, Gracián, Diderot, Nietzsche by D.S. Mayfield (2015); Voicing Dissent in Seventeenth-century Spain: Inquisition, Social Criticism and Theology in the Case of El Criticón by Patricia W. Manning (2009); An Early Bourgeois Literature in Golden Age Spain: Lazarillo de Tormes, Guzmán de Alfarache, and Baltasar Gracián by Francisco J. Sánchez (2003); Courtiers, Courtesans, Picaros and Prostitutes: the Art and Artifice of Selling One's Self in Golden Age Spain by Jennifer Cooley (2002); Rhetoric and Politics: Baltasar Gracián and the New World Order, edited by Nicholas Spadaccini and Jenaro Talens (1997); 'Gracián, Baltasar' by Pedro Maria Muñoz, in Encyclopedia of the Essay, edited by Tracy Chevalier (1997); Gracián, Wit, and the Baroque Age by Arturo Zárate Ruiz (1996); 'Introduction,' in A Pocket Mirror for Heroes, edited and translated by Christopher Maurer (1995); Borges y Baltasar Gracián by Julio O. Chiappini (1994); La poética di Gracián in Europa by Luciano Anceschi (1989); Gracián: Vida, estilo, y reflexión by Jorge M. Ayala (1987); The Truth Disguised by Theodore L. Kassier (1976); Baltasar Gracián by Virginia R. Foster (1975); Gracián and Perfection by Monroe Z. Hafter (1966); Baltasar Garcián: Su vida y su obra by Evaristo Correa Calderón (1961); Gracián y el barroco by Miguel Batllori (1958); Baltasar Gracián et Nietzsche by Victor Bouillier (1926) Selected works:
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