Pedro Calderón de la Barca
Encyclopedia
Pedro Calderón de la Barca y Barreda González de Henao Ruiz de Blasco y Riaño usually referred as Pedro Calderón de la Barca (17 January 1600 – 25 May 1681), was a dramatist, poet and writer
of the Spanish
Golden Age
. During certain periods of his life he was also a soldier and 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.
. His mother, who was of Flemish
descent, died in 1610; his father, an hidalgo
of Cantabrian origins who was secretary to the treasury, died in 1615. Calderón was educated at the Jesuit
College in Madrid
, the Colegio Imperial
, 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.
According to one of his biographers, Vera Tassis, Calderón served with the Spanish army in Italy
and Flanders
between 1625 and 1635; but this statement is contradicted by numerous legal documents indicating that Calderón resided at Madrid during these years. Early in 1629 one of his brothers was stabbed by an actor who took sanctuary in a convent; Calderón, accompanied by another brother and some constables, broke into the cloister and attempted to seize the criminal (one of the nuns happened to be the daughter of fellow dramatist Lope de Vega
). The fashionable preacher, Hortensio Félix Paravicino
, denounced Calderón's actions in a sermon preached before King Philip IV
; Calderón retorted by introducing into El príncipe constante a mocking reference to Paravicino's florid oratory. Calderón was punished with three days of house arrest, and forced to remove the offending line from the play.
By the time Lope de Vega died in 1635, Calderón was recognized as the foremost Spanish dramatist of the age. Calderón had also gained considerable favour in the court, and in 1636-1637 he was made a knight of the order of Santiago
by Philip IV, who had already commissioned from him a series of spectacular plays for the royal theatre in the newly built Buen Retiro palace.
On 28 May 1640 he joined a company of mounted cuirassiers recently raised by Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares
, took part in the Catalonia
n campaign, and distinguished himself by his gallantry at Tarragona
. His health failing, he 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.
His 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 his brother 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
at 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 autos sacramentales
--one-act allegories illustrating the mystery of the Eucharist
--for performance during the feast of 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 Charles II
's marriage to Maria Luisa of Orléans. Notwithstanding his position at court and his popularity throughout Spain, his closing years seem to have been passed in relative poverty.
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theatre. Whereas his predecessor, 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 sponteneity 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 debuted. 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 stated by Goethe, Calderón tended to write his plays taking special care about their dramatic structure. Hence, he usually reduced the number of scenes in his plays if compared to those of Lope de Vega
, so as to avoid any superfluous one and present only those essential to the play, also reducing the number of different meters in his plays for the sake of gaining a greater style uniformity. Although his poetry and plays leaned towards the culteranismo
, he usually reduced the level and obscurity of that style by avoiding metaphors and references away from those that uneducated viewers could understand. However, he had a like for symbolism, for example making a fall from a horse a metaphor of a fall into disgrace, the fall representing dishonour; the use of horoscopes or prophecies at the start of the play as a way of making false predictions about the following to occur, symbolizing the utter uncertainty of future. Besides, probably influenced by Cervantes
, Calderón realized that any play was but fiction, and that the structure of the baroque play was entirely artificial, so he sometimes makes use of meta-theatrical techniques such as making his characters comment jocosely the clichés the author is using and they are forced to follow. Some of the most common themes of his plays were heavily influenced by his Jesuit education. For example, as a reader of Saint Thomas Aquinas and Francisco Suárez
, he liked to confront reason against passions, intellect against instinct, or understanding against will. As 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 oeuvre is better exemplified in one of his most famous plays, 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 such as few playwrights have been able to do. As Gracián
, Calderón favoured only the deepest human feelings and dilemmas.
Since Calderón's plays were usually represented 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.
and Joseph Schreyvogel. Later significant adaptations in the German context include Hugo von Hofmannsthal
's versions of 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
,
Twentieth-century Calderón reception suffered significantly under the influence of Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo
, but a revival of interest in Calderón scholarship can be largely attributed to a British reception, namely through the works of A.A. Parker, A.E. Sloman and more recently Bruce Wardropper.
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 to 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
, John Clifford and Helen Edmundson
. A major new English translation of La vida es sueño
was published by the University Press of Colorado in 2004.
, which takes up the assumption that he served in the Spanish Army at Flanders and depicts him during the sack of Oudkerk by Spanish troops, helping the local librarian save books from the library in the burning Town Hall.
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
of the Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
Golden Age
Spanish Golden Age
The Spanish Golden Age is a period of flourishing in arts and literature in Spain, coinciding with the political rise and decline of the Spanish Habsburg dynasty. El Siglo de Oro does not imply precise dates and is usually considered to have lasted longer than an actual century...
. During certain periods of his life he was also a soldier and a Roman Catholic priest. Born when the Spanish Golden Age theatre was being defined by Lope de Vega
Lope de Vega
Félix Arturo Lope de Vega y Carpio was a Spanish playwright and poet. He was one of the key figures in the Spanish Golden Century Baroque literature...
, 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.
Biography
Calderón was born in MadridMadrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
. His mother, who was of Flemish
Flemish people
The Flemings or Flemish are the Dutch-speaking inhabitants of Belgium, where they are mostly found in the northern region of Flanders. They are one of two principal cultural-linguistic groups in Belgium, the other being the French-speaking Walloons...
descent, died in 1610; his father, an hidalgo
Hidalgo (Spanish nobility)
A hidalgo or fidalgo is a member of the Spanish and Portuguese nobility. In popular usage it has come to mean the non-titled nobility. Hidalgos were exempt from paying taxes, but did not necessarily own real property...
of Cantabrian origins who was secretary to the treasury, died in 1615. Calderón was educated at the Jesuit
Society of Jesus
The Society of Jesus is a Catholic male religious order that follows the teachings of the Catholic Church. The members are called Jesuits, and are also known colloquially as "God's Army" and as "The Company," these being references to founder Ignatius of Loyola's military background and a...
College in Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
, the Colegio Imperial
Colegio Imperial de Madrid
Colegio Imperial de Madrid was the name of a Jesuit teaching institution in Madrid....
, with a view to taking orders; but instead, he studied law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
at Salamanca
University of Salamanca
The University of Salamanca is a Spanish higher education institution, located in the town of Salamanca, west of Madrid. It was founded in 1134 and given the Royal charter of foundation by King Alfonso IX in 1218. It is the oldest founded university in Spain and the third oldest European...
.
Between 1620 and 1622 Calderón won several poetry contests in honor of St Isidore
Isidore the Laborer
Isidore the Laborer, also known as Isidore the Farmer, , was a Spanish day laborer known for his goodness toward the poor and animals. He is the Catholic patron saint of farmers and of Madrid and of La Ceiba, Honduras....
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.
According to one of his biographers, Vera Tassis, Calderón served with the Spanish army in Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
and Flanders
Flanders
Flanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp...
between 1625 and 1635; but this statement is contradicted by numerous legal documents indicating that Calderón resided at Madrid during these years. Early in 1629 one of his brothers was stabbed by an actor who took sanctuary in a convent; Calderón, accompanied by another brother and some constables, broke into the cloister and attempted to seize the criminal (one of the nuns happened to be the daughter of fellow dramatist Lope de Vega
Lope de Vega
Félix Arturo Lope de Vega y Carpio was a Spanish playwright and poet. He was one of the key figures in the Spanish Golden Century Baroque literature...
). The fashionable preacher, Hortensio Félix Paravicino
Hortensio Félix Paravicino
Hortensio Félix Paravicino y Arteaga was a Spanish preacher and poet from the noble house of Pallavicini....
, denounced Calderón's actions in a sermon preached before King Philip IV
Philip IV of Spain
Philip IV was King of Spain between 1621 and 1665, sovereign of the Spanish Netherlands, and King of Portugal until 1640...
; Calderón retorted by introducing into El príncipe constante a mocking reference to Paravicino's florid oratory. Calderón was punished with three days of house arrest, and forced to remove the offending line from the play.
By the time Lope de Vega died in 1635, Calderón was recognized as the foremost Spanish dramatist of the age. Calderón had also gained considerable favour in the court, and in 1636-1637 he was made a knight of the order of Santiago
Order of Santiago
The Order of Santiago was founded in the 12th century, and owes its name to the national patron of Galicia and Spain, Santiago , under whose banner the Christians of Galicia and Asturias began in the 9th century to combat and drive back the Muslims of the Iberian Peninsula.-History:Santiago de...
by Philip IV, who had already commissioned from him a series of spectacular plays for the royal theatre in the newly built Buen Retiro palace.
On 28 May 1640 he joined a company of mounted cuirassiers recently raised by Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares
Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares
Don Gaspar de Guzmán y Pimentel Ribera y Velasco de Tovar, Count-Duke of Olivares and Duke of San Lúcar la Mayor , was a Spanish royal favourite of Philip IV and minister. As prime minister from 1621 to 1643, he over-exerted Spain in foreign affairs and unsuccessfully attempted domestic reform...
, took part in the Catalonia
Catalonia
Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...
n campaign, and distinguished himself by his gallantry at Tarragona
Tarragona
Tarragona is a city located in the south of Catalonia on the north-east of Spain, by the Mediterranean. It is the capital of the Spanish province of the same name and the capital of the Catalan comarca Tarragonès. In the medieval and modern times it was the capital of the Vegueria of Tarragona...
. His health failing, he 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.
His 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 his brother 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
San Salvador
The city of San Salvador the capital and largest city of El Salvador, which has been designated a Gamma World City. Its complete name is La Ciudad de Gran San Salvador...
at 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 autos sacramentales
Autos sacramentales
Autos sacramentales are a form of dramatic literature which is peculiar to Spain, though in some respects similar in character to the old Morality plays of England.The auto sacramental may be defined as a dramatic representation of the mystery of the Eucharist...
--one-act allegories illustrating the mystery of the Eucharist
Eucharist
The Eucharist , also called Holy Communion, the Sacrament of the Altar, the Blessed Sacrament, the Lord's Supper, and other names, is a Christian sacrament or ordinance...
--for performance during the feast of Corpus Christi
Corpus Christi (feast)
Corpus Christi is a Latin Rite solemnity, now designated the solemnity of The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ . It is also celebrated in some Anglican, Lutheran and Old Catholic Churches. Like Trinity Sunday and the Solemnity of Christ the King, it does not commemorate a particular event in...
. In 1662, two of Calderón's autos, Las órdenes militares and Mística y real Babilonia, were the subjects of an inquiry by the Inquisition
Inquisition
The Inquisition, Inquisitio Haereticae Pravitatis , was the "fight against heretics" by several institutions within the justice-system of the Roman Catholic Church. It started in the 12th century, with the introduction of torture in the persecution of heresy...
; 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 Charles II
Charles II of Spain
Charles II was the last Habsburg King of Spain and the ruler of large parts of Italy, the Spanish territories in the Southern Low Countries, and Spain's overseas Empire, stretching from the Americas to the Spanish East Indies...
's marriage to Maria Luisa of Orléans. Notwithstanding his position at court and his popularity throughout Spain, his closing years seem to have been passed in relative poverty.
Style
Calderón initiated what has been called the second cycle of Spanish Golden AgeSpanish Golden Age
The Spanish Golden Age is a period of flourishing in arts and literature in Spain, coinciding with the political rise and decline of the Spanish Habsburg dynasty. El Siglo de Oro does not imply precise dates and is usually considered to have lasted longer than an actual century...
theatre. Whereas his predecessor, 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 sponteneity 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 debuted. 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 stated by Goethe, Calderón tended to write his plays taking special care about their dramatic structure. Hence, he usually reduced the number of scenes in his plays if compared to those of Lope de Vega
Lope de Vega
Félix Arturo Lope de Vega y Carpio was a Spanish playwright and poet. He was one of the key figures in the Spanish Golden Century Baroque literature...
, so as to avoid any superfluous one and present only those essential to the play, also reducing the number of different meters in his plays for the sake of gaining a greater style uniformity. Although his poetry and plays leaned towards the culteranismo
Culteranismo
Culteranismo is a stylistic movement of the Baroque period of Spanish history that is also commonly referred to as Góngorismo...
, he usually reduced the level and obscurity of that style by avoiding metaphors and references away from those that uneducated viewers could understand. However, he had a like for symbolism, for example making a fall from a horse a metaphor of a fall into disgrace, the fall representing dishonour; the use of horoscopes or prophecies at the start of the play as a way of making false predictions about the following to occur, symbolizing the utter uncertainty of future. Besides, probably influenced by Cervantes
Cervantes
-People:*Alfonso J. Cervantes , mayor of St. Louis, Missouri*Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, 16th-century man of letters*Ignacio Cervantes, Cuban composer*Jorge Cervantes, a world-renowned expert on indoor, outdoor, and greenhouse cannabis cultivation...
, Calderón realized that any play was but fiction, and that the structure of the baroque play was entirely artificial, so he sometimes makes use of meta-theatrical techniques such as making his characters comment jocosely the clichés the author is using and they are forced to follow. Some of the most common themes of his plays were heavily influenced by his Jesuit education. For example, as a reader of Saint Thomas Aquinas and Francisco Suárez
Francisco Suárez
Francisco Suárez was a Spanish Jesuit priest, philosopher and theologian, one of the leading figures of the School of Salamanca movement, and generally regarded among the greatest scholastics after Thomas Aquinas....
, he liked to confront reason against passions, intellect against instinct, or understanding against will. As many writers from the Spanish Golden Age
Spanish Golden Age
The Spanish Golden Age is a period of flourishing in arts and literature in Spain, coinciding with the political rise and decline of the Spanish Habsburg dynasty. El Siglo de Oro does not imply precise dates and is usually considered to have lasted longer than an actual century...
, 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 oeuvre is better exemplified in one of his most famous plays, 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 such as few playwrights have been able to do. As Gracián
Gracián
Gracián is a Spanish name and surname and may refer to:* Baltasar Gracián , Spanish writer* Leandro Gracián , Argentine football player...
, Calderón favoured only the deepest human feelings and dilemmas.
Since Calderón's plays were usually represented 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
Although his fame dwindled during the 18th century, he was rediscovered in the early 19th century by the German Romantics. Translations of August Wilhelm Schlegel reinvigorated interest in the playwright, who, alongside Shakespeare, subsequently became a banner figure for the German Romantic movement. In subsequent decades, Calderón's was translated into German numerous times, most notably by Johann Dietrich Gries and Joseph von Eichendorff, and found significant reception on the German and Austrian stages under the direction of Goethe, E.T.A. HoffmannE.T.A. Hoffmann
Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann , better known by his pen name E.T.A. Hoffmann , was a German Romantic author of fantasy and horror, a jurist, composer, music critic, draftsman and caricaturist...
and Joseph Schreyvogel. Later significant adaptations in the German context include Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Hugo Laurenz August Hofmann von Hofmannsthal ; , was an Austrian novelist, librettist, poet, dramatist, narrator, and essayist.-Early life:...
's versions of La vida es sueño
La vida es sueño
Life is a Dream is a Spanish language play by Pedro Calderón de la Barca. First published in 1635 , it is a philosophical allegory regarding the human situation and the mystery of life. Focusing on Segismundo, Prince of Poland, the central argument is the conflict between free will and fate...
and El Gran Teatro del mundo.
Although best known abroad as the author of Doctor Zhivago
Doctor Zhivago
-Original creation:*Doctor Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak, published in 1957**Yuri Andreyevich Zhivago, a fictional character and the main protagonist of the book Doctor Zhivago-Adaptations:There are several adaptations based on the Doctor Zhivago book:...
, Boris Pasternak
Boris Pasternak
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian language poet, novelist, and literary translator. In his native Russia, Pasternak's anthology My Sister Life, is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language...
produced acclaimed Russian translations of Calderón's plays during the late 1950s
1950s
The 1950s or The Fifties was the decade that began on January 1, 1950 and ended on December 31, 1959. The decade was the sixth decade of the 20th century...
. According to his mistress
Mistress
Mistress may refer to:* Mistress , a woman, other than the spouse, with whom a married individual has a continuing sexual relationship* Schoolmistress, or female school teacher...
, Olga Ivinskaya
Olga Ivinskaya
Olga Vsevolodovna Ivinskaya was the mistress of Boris Pasternak and the inspiration for the character of Lara in Pasternak's novel, Dr. Zhivago....
,
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.
Twentieth-century Calderón reception suffered significantly under the influence of Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo
Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo
Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo was a Spanish scholar, historian and literary critic. Even though his main interest was the History of ideas, and Hispanic philology in general, he also cultivated poetry, translation and philosophy.He was born at Santander where he showed that he was an infant prodigy...
, but a revival of interest in Calderón scholarship can be largely attributed to a British reception, namely through the works of A.A. Parker, A.E. Sloman and more recently Bruce Wardropper.
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
Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys FRS, MP, JP, was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man...
recorded attending to some plays during 1667 which were free translations of some of Calderón's. Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
translated a substantial portion of El Mágico prodigioso. Some of Calderón's works have been translated into English, notably by Denis Florence MacCarthy
Denis Florence MacCarthy
Denis Florence MacCarthy was an Irish poet, translator, and biographer, born in Lower O'Connell Street, Dublin.-Life:McCarthy was born in Lower O'Connell Street, Dublin, on 26 May 1817, and educated there and at Maynooth. He acquired an intimate knowledge of Spanish from a learned priest, who had...
, Edward Fitzgerald
Edward FitzGerald (poet)
Edward FitzGerald was an English writer, best known as the poet of the first and most famous English translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The spelling of his name as both FitzGerald and Fitzgerald is seen...
, Roy Campbell
Roy Campbell (poet)
Ignatius Royston Dunnachie Campbell, better known as Roy Campbell, was an Anglo-African poet and satirist. He was considered by T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas and Edith Sitwell to have been one of the best poets of the period between the First and Second World Wars...
, Edwin Honig
Edwin Honig
Edwin Honig was an American poet, playwright, and translator.-Life:He has published ten books of poetry, eight books of translation, five books of criticism and fiction, three books of plays....
, Kenneth Muir
Kenneth Muir (scholar)
Kenneth Arthur Muir was a twentieth-century literary scholar and author, prominent in the fields of Shakespeare studies and English Renaissance theatre...
& Ann L. Mackenzie, Adrian Mitchell
Adrian Mitchell
Adrian Mitchell FRSL was an English poet, novelist and playwright. A former journalist, he became a noted figure on the British anti-authoritarian Left. For almost half a century he was the foremost poet of the country's anti-Bomb movement...
, John Clifford and Helen Edmundson
Helen Edmundson
Helen Edmundson is a British playwright particularly well-known for her adaptations of various literary classics for the stage.Edmundson's first play Flying was produced at the National Theatre Studio in 1990...
. A major new English translation of La vida es sueño
La vida es sueño
Life is a Dream is a Spanish language play by Pedro Calderón de la Barca. First published in 1635 , it is a philosophical allegory regarding the human situation and the mystery of life. Focusing on Segismundo, Prince of Poland, the central argument is the conflict between free will and fate...
was published by the University Press of Colorado in 2004.
Selected plays
- Amor, honor y poder (Love, Honor and Power) (1623)
- El sitio de Breda (The Siege of Breda) (1625)
- La dama duende (The Phantom LadyThe Phantom LadyThe Phantom Lady is a play written by the Spanish playwright Pedro Calderón de la Barca. It was written and performed in 1629. It was published for the first time in the Primera parte de comedias de don Pedro Calderón de la Barca ....
) (1629) - Casa con dos puertas (The House with Two Doors) (1629)
- La vida es sueño (Life is a Dream) (1629–1635)
- 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)
- El médico de su honra (The Surgeon of his Honour) (1637)
- El Pintor de su deshonra (The Painter of His Dishonour) (1640s)
- El Alcalde de Zalamea (The Mayor of Zalamea) (1651)
- 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)
Autos Sacramentales (Sacramental plays)
- La cena del rey Baltazar (The Banquet of King Balthazar)
- El Gran Teatro del mundo (The Great Theater of the World)
- El Gran Mercado del mundo (The World is a Fair)
In modern literature
Pedro Calderón appears in the 1998 novel The Sun Over Breda by Arturo Perez-ReverteArturo Pérez-Reverte
Arturo Pérez-Reverte Gutiérrez is a Spanish novelist and journalist. He worked as a war correspondent for twenty-one years . His first novel, El húsar, set in the Napoleonic Wars, was released in 1986. He is well known outside Spain for his "Alatriste" series of novels...
, which takes up the assumption that he served in the Spanish Army at Flanders and depicts him during the sack of Oudkerk by Spanish troops, helping the local librarian save books from the library in the burning Town Hall.
External links
- An excellent site in Spanish about Calderón at the Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes. Includes texts, video, images, and more biographical information.