MACHADO (Y RUIZ), Manuel 1874-1947

PERSONAL: Born August 29, 1874, in Seville, Spain; died January 19, 1947, in Madrid, Spain; son of Antonio Machado Alvarez (a journalist) and Ana Ruiz Hernández; married Eulalia Cáceres, 1910. Education: Earned a university degree in Seville, c. 1897; attended the University of Madrid.

CAREER: Librarian, poet, dramatist, and translator. Passed librarian exam in 1913; appointed to government university in Santiago de Compostela; transferred to Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid; cofounder of Revista de la Biblioteca, Archivo de Madrid, 1924; director of Biblioteca Municipal, beginning 1925; director of Museo Municipal, 1928-44. Worked as translator for Garnier Frères, Paris, France, beginning 1900; served on editorial board of Electra and Juventud, beginning 1901; Liberal (daily newspaper), theater critic, beginning 1916; Libertad (newspaper), staffwriter, 1919-34. Co-founded Musa Musae (writers' society), c.1940.

MEMBER: Musa Musae (writers' society).

AWARDS, HONORS: Elected to Real Academia Española, 1938.

WRITINGS:

(With Enrique Paradas) Tristes y alegres, Catalana (Madrid, Spain), 1894.

(With Enrique Paradas) Etcétera, López Robert (Barcelona, Spain), 1895.

Alma (title means "Soul"), Marzo (Madrid, Spain), 1900.

(With José Luis Montoto de Sedas) Amor alvuelo: comedia en un acto, [Seville, Spain], 1904.

Caprichos (title means "Caprices"), Revista de Archivos (Madrid, Spain), 1905.

La fiesta nacional: rojo y negro, Fortanet (Madrid, Spain), 1906.

Poesías escogidas, Maucci (Barcelona, Spain), 1907.

Alma. Museo. Los cantares, Pueyo (Madrid, Spain), 1907.

El mal poema, Gutenburg-Castro (Madrid, Spain), 1909.

Trofeos, Gasso (Barcelona, Spain), 1910.

Alma. Opera selecta, Garnier (Paris, France), 1911.

Apolo. Teatro pictórico (title means "Apollo. Pictorial Theater"), Prieto (Madrid, Spain), 1911.

Cante hondo. Cantares, canciones y coplas, compuestas al estilo popular de Andalucía, Helénica (Madrid, Spain), 1912.

El amor y la muerte: capítulos de novela, Helénica

(Madrid, Spain), 1913.

La guerra literaria, 1898-1914: Crítica y ensayos, Hispano-alemana (Madrid, Spain), 1913.

Canciones y dedicatorias, Hispanio-alemana (Madrid, Spain), 1915.

Poesías completas, Residencia de Estudiantes (Madrid, Spain), 1917.

Un año de teatro, Biblioteca Nueva (Madrid, Spain), 1918.

Día por día de mi calendario, Pueyo (Madrid, Spain), 1918.

Sevilla y otros poemas, América (Madrid, Spain), 1918.

Ars moriendi (title means "The Art of Dying"), Mundo Latino (Madrid, Spain), 1921.

Obras completas, five volumes, Mundo Latino (Madrid, Spain), 1922-24.

Poesía: opera omnia lírica (title means "Poetry: Complete Lyric Works"), Internacional (Madrid, Spain), 1924.

La égloga Antonia: una obra inédita de Lope de Vega, Municipal (Madrid, Spain), 1924.

La prima Fernanda, Farsa (Madrid, Spain), 1931.

Cante hondo, Sevilla, Aguilar (Madrid, Spain), 1934.

Phoenix: nuevas canciones, Altolaguirre/Héroe (Madrid, Spain), 1936.

Horas de oro: devocionario poético, Castellana (Valladolid, Spain), 1938.

Antología poética, Zugazaga (Burgos, Spain), 1938.

Antología, Espasa-Calpe (Buenos Aires, Argentina), 1940.

Unos versos, un alma y una época: Discursos leídos en la Real Academia Española, con motivo de la recepcíon de Manuel Machado, Españolas/Diana (Madrid, Spain), 1940.

Ars longa, Garcilaso (Madrid, Spain), 1943.

Cadencias de cadencias: nuevas dedicatorias, Nacional (Madrid, Spain), 1943.

El pilar de la victoria, Nacional (Madrid, Spain), 1945.

Horario: poemas religiosos (title means "Book of Hours"), Nacional (Madrid, Spain), 1947.

Estampas sevillanas, Aguado (Madrid, Spain), 1949.

Poemas de Manuel Machado, Horizonte (Medellín, Colombia), 1963.

Prosa, edited by José Luis Ortiz de Lanzagorta, Universidad de Sevilla (Seville, Spain), 1974.

Antología poética, edited by Margarita Smerdou Altolaguirre, E.M.E.S.A. (Madrid, Spain), 1977.

Poesías, Alianza Editorial (Madrid, Spain), 1979.

Cualquier día en Sevilla, RC Editor (Seville, Spain), 1988.

Manuel Machado para niños, Ediciones del la Torre (Madrid, Spain), 1991.

Poesía de guerra y posguerra, Universidad de Granada (Granada, Spain), 1992.

Cuentos completos, Clan Editorial (Madrid, Spain), 1999.

Impresiones: el modernismo: artíclos, crónicas y reseñas, 1899-1909, Pres-Textos (Valencia, Spain), 2000.

Del arte largo: (antología poética), Editorial Lumen (Barcelona, Spain), 2001.

with antonio machado

Poemas de Antonio y Manuel Machado, Cultura (Mexico), 1917.

Desdichas de la fortuna, o Julianillo Valcárcel, Fernando Fé (Madrid, Spain), 1926.

Juan de mañana, Espasa-Calpe (Madrid, Spain), 1927.

Las adelfas, Farsa (Madrid, Spain), 1928.

La Lola se va a los puertos (title means "Lola Goes off to Sea"), Farsa (Madrid, Spain), 1929.

La duquesa de Benamejí, Farsa (Madrid, Spain), 1932.

Teatro completo, two volumes, C.I.A.P. (Madrid, Spain), 1932.

La duquesa de Benamejí, La prima Fernanda y Juan de mañana, Espasa-Calpe (Buenos Aires, Argentina), 1942.

Las adelfas y El hombre que murió en la guerra, Espasa-Calpe (Buenos Aires, Argentina), 1947.

Obras completas, Plenitud (Madrid, Spain), 1947.

La prehistoria de Antonio Machado, Torre/Universidad de Puerto Rico (Río Piedras, Puerto Rico), 1961.

Cartas a los Machado, Diputación Provincial de Sevilla (Seville, Spain), 1981.

Los Machado y su tiempo: exposición itinerante, Sevilla Madrid, Baeza, Segovia, Soria, Barcelona, Collioure, 1987, La Fundación (Madrid, Spain), 1987.

translator

Paul Verlaine, Fiestas galantes. Poemas saturnianos . . . y otras poesías, Fortanet (Madrid, Spain), 1910.

(With Antonio Machado and Francisco Villaspesa) Victor Hugo, Hernani, Farsa (Madrid, Spain), 1928.

Virgil, Obras, Casa Editorial Garnier Hermanos (Paris, France), 1929.

(With Luis de Oteyza) Edmond Rostand, El aguilucho, Farsa (Madrid, Spain), 1932.

Contributor to Documentos ineditos referentes al poeta Garcilaso de la Vega, 1915, and to periodicals Helios, Alfar, and Indice.

ADAPTATIONS: Work included in sound recording Poetas para el cante, EMI, 1992.

SIDELIGHTS: Early in the twentieth century, Manuel Machado was instrumental in introducing modernism to Spanish poetry. He made his reputation as a poet with later folk and flamenco-influenced writings, but it is Machado's early poetry that continues to be admired by critics. In the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Michael L. Perna commented that "at his best [Machado] gives a poem apparently spontaneous, sincere emotion in the midst of musical elegance and verbal finesse." Writing in the Times Literary Supplement, Gordon Brotherston called Machado "the salient poet of Spanish Modernism at the turn of the [twentieth] century," but he also noted that Machado's work had not yet been studied properly. Commenting on a 1975 collection of Machado's work, Brotherston pointed to persistent "problems of dating and variants" caused by the author's numerous publications. Machado also worked as a librarian, did translations, and wrote plays with his brother Antonio.

During Machado's early childhood in Seville, his father collected, studied, and published popular flamenco songs, which resulted in the boy's immersion in folk ballads. The family later moved to Madrid, but Manuel and his brother completed high school in Seville. It was during this period that he published his first poetry in two collections written with his friend Enrique Paradas. In 1899 the brothers went to Paris, where Machado worked as a translator. He associated with Spanish and Latin American writers, met famous literary figures, and began his first serious writing. He was influenced by Victor Hugo, the French Parnassians, Nicaraguan writer Rubén Darío, and avant-garde theater, but most importantly became fascinated by the symbolism of Paul Verlaine.

The work Machado started in Paris would be published in the collection Alma. Perna described this work as including exotic themes resembling those of the Parnassians, being "fine examples of the modernists' emphasis on the mystery of emotions that cannot be expressed in words." Other poems in Alma used traditional Spanish meters but assonance instead of full rhyme and, according to Perna, show an "attitude of rebellion." They earned Machado a reputation as a leading young poet.

Machado returned to Madrid, where he became a part of literary and café society. He became close friends with Darío, with whom he enjoyed drinking and meeting young women. Their pleasures are reflected in the erotic verse of Machado's next collection, Caprichos. Subsequent collections from this period include La fiesta nacional: rojo y negro, which was inspired by a friend's bullfighting career, and Alma. Museo. Los cantares, a reprint of most of the poet's work to 1907. When Machado's friends commented on the inferior quality of his more recent work, he responded with the collection El mal poema, which deals with the lives of prostitutes and criminals. The poet complained that his poverty forced him to write and publish quickly, resulting in "bad poetry."

Following the publication of a long series of poems about paintings, Apolo. Teatro Pictório, which included reflections on the work of Peter Paul Rubens, Francisco de Zurbarán, Fra Angelico, and Sandro Botticelli, Machado decided to become a librarian. After attending university and passing the civil service exam, he worked primarily in Madrid at the Bibilioteca Nacional, Biblioteca Municipal, and Museo Municipal. He continued to publish poetry, including Sevilla y otros poemas. This collection was described by Perna as nowadays appearing "marred . . . by superficial Andalusianism," but it is also judged as having helped create the atmosphere in which Federico García Lorca developed his more authentic folk presence.

During a turbulent period in Spain, Machado took political changes in stride. He worked happily under the dictatorship of General Miguel Primo de Rivera and collaborated with his brother writing plays, completing about one per year from 1926 to 1932. Their biggest production was La Lola se va a los puertos with actress Lola Membrives. He published the collection Phoenix: Nuevas canciones on the eve of the Spanish Civil War, which necessarily lessened critical notice of the poems. Machado was on vacation when he found himself caught inside territory controlled by Generalissimo Francisco Franco's Nationalists. Soon he was writing poetry for the new regime's propaganda office. At the same time, his brother was in Madrid supporting the Republic.

Following Franco's victory in 1939, Machado returned to his job in Madrid. He now spoke of himself as "the oldest of the young poets and the youngest of the old." He was sixty-nine years old when he published Cadencias de cadencias: nuevas dedicatorias. Perna wrote that this collection "shows he could write in the neoclassical style of the Garcilaso movement, at times as well as any of its younger members. Many of his poems, similar to his earlier approaches to painting and bullfighting, focus on moments in the performing arts." The poet's popularity declined after his retirement from civil service in 1944, after which he made veiled criticisms of Franco's dictatorship in poems published in a Monarchist daily. Machado fell ill early in 1947 and died just a few days later.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

books

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 108: Twentieth-Century Spanish Poets, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1991.

periodicals

Times Literary Supplement, May, 23, 1975, Gordon Brotherston, review of Antología, p. 559.*