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Jose EchegarayNobel Prize in Literature, 1904
Date of Birth: 19.04.1832
Country:  Spain |
Content:
Early Life and Education
José María Echegaray y Eizaguirre was born in Madrid on April 19, 1832, to Basque parents. At the age of 3, his family relocated to Murcia, an ancient provincial town in the former Moorish kingdom on the Mediterranean coast. Echegaray's father was a professor of Greek at the Murcia Institute, where the precocious young Echegaray enrolled at an early age. He excelled in Greek and Latin, as well as natural history.
After obtaining his bachelor's degree in philosophy at 14, Echegaray returned to Madrid and excelled in mathematics at the Escuela de Caminos (Technical College). He completed the program early in 1853. Following a brief stint as an engineer, Echegaray became a professor of mathematics at the Escuela de Caminos. He taught both theoretical and applied mathematics, published mathematical articles and monographs, and established himself as one of the leading Spanish mathematicians of his time.
Political and Literary Pursuits
During these years, Echegaray also delved into political economy, philosophy, and geology. He became an avid theater-goer, although he had not yet considered becoming a playwright himself despite being an avid reader. Around 1864, Echegaray's younger brother Miguel, then a teenager, penned a one-act play in verse, "Cara o Cruz" ("Heads or Tails"), which was performed on an amateur stage. This apparently made an impression on Echegaray, who, according to one of his translators, James Graham, also wrote a play around this time, which is not known to have been staged.
Before fully committing to literature, Echegaray immersed himself in politics. Following the overthrow of Queen Isabella II in the 1868 revolution, he became Minister of Public Works and, a year later, Minister of Commerce, being a vocal proponent of free trade. In 1869, Echegaray was elected to the Cortes, the Spanish parliament, and held various official positions, including Minister of Finance, where he established the Bank of Spain.
After the Bourbon dynasty was restored in 1874, Echegaray was forced to temporarily emigrate to Paris, where, freed from political and administrative concerns, he indulged in his literary and theatrical interests. Returning to Madrid later that year, he wrote his first play, "El libro talonario" ("The Checkbook"), under the pseudonym Jorge Ayaseca y Eizaguirre. With that, he abandoned mathematics and politics for the theater, dedicating himself exclusively to literary work for the following three decades.
Prolific Playwright
Echegaray was an extraordinarily prolific playwright, producing two or three plays a year, at a minimum. As a result, the Spanish theater scene for an entire generation was filled with Echegaray's numerous works.
The playwright's popularity can be attributed to several factors. Firstly, Echegaray borrowed heavily from the classical Spanish dramatist Pedro Calderón de la Barca, whose stylized plays remained immensely popular in Spain. Secondly, Echegaray tapped into the public's appetite for heightened melodrama. Thirdly, Echegaray presented traditional Romantic themes of honor, loyalty, and love in a contemporary guise.
Of Echegaray's some sixty plays, nearly half were written in verse, such as the Romantic drama "La esposa del vengador" ("The Avenger's Wife", 1874), the playwright's first notable work, which was followed a year later by the more successful "En el puño de la espada" ("On the Sword's Hilt", 1875). In 1877, Echegaray penned "O locura o santidad" ("Either Madness or Piety"), which explored the fate of Don Lorenzo, whose uncompromising integrity, honesty, and straightforwardness lead him to be declared insane. After it was translated into English in 1895, Echegaray received international acclaim. George Bernard Shaw declared Echegaray "of the school of Schiller, Victor Hugo, and Verdi, with their resonant rhetoric, their effective stage-craft, and their high-pitched sentimentality, their struggles of beauty and heroism against blind fate, or against the unconquerable resentment of idealists who are morbidly jealous and vengeful."
It was these very qualities that made Echegaray such a favorite of Spanish audiences. However, beginning with the problem play "El hijo de Don Juan" ("Don Juan's Son", 1892), Echegaray's dramaturgy became more realistic. Inspired by Ibsen's "Ghosts," this play grappled with the theme of a son being affected by his father's dissolute life. Unlike most critics, who dismissed the play, Shaw, writing in 1895, observed that Echegaray "is the only successor of Ibsen in his own line." Shaw continued: "The fact that there is neither Mrs. Alving nor Manders in the Spanish play, and that the profligate father, who does not appear at all in Ibsen, is almost the hero of Echegaray's scheme, will illustrate how national the application of the ghost-play has become, whilst the morals remain the same."
International Recognition
"El gran Galeoto" ("The Great Galeoto", 1881), Echegaray's best-known play, explores the destructive power of gossip and the way in which innocent people can be victimized. According to literary scholar Federico de Onís, "these plays... reproduce with mastery and effectiveness the traditional themes and conflicts that constitute the very essence of drama."
Echegaray was at the height of his fame when he was elected to the Royal Spanish Academy in 1894. However, soon after, a new generation of Spanish writers known as the "Generation of 1898" launched a campaign against what they saw as the sentimental and outdated literary style, the imitations of Ibsen and French naturalists, in his work. Additionally, Echegaray was accused of being out of touch with the pressing social issues facing the Spanish people.
In 1904, Echegaray was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature jointly with Frédéric Mistral "in recognition of the numerous and brilliant services he has rendered to the revival of the Spanish drama." In his presentation speech, Swedish Academy member S.D. Wirsén said that Echegaray, "like the masters of the old Spanish drama, unites in his work the fertility of a rich imagination with a refined artistic taste." The laureate did not attend the award ceremony.
Despite the controversy surrounding Echegaray's Nobel recognition, later critics have valued his work for its historical significance as a bridge between classical and modern Spanish drama. While Donald Shaw branded Echegaray "the most conspicuous exponent of the decadence of the Spanish theater in the latter half of the 19th century," other critics have argued that Echegaray influenced the development of modern drama in certain ways.
Comparing Echegaray's work to that of Luigi Pirandello, American scholar Wilma Newberry observed that "Pirandello utilized some of Echegaray's basic ideas and through them revolutionized the modern theater." Both writers, according to Newberry, "questioned the reality around them, used the 'play-within-the-play' device, related the drama's conflict to its stage solution, and attempted to analyze the creative process. They ridicule Romanticism, thus anticipating the criticism of their affiliation with this movement."
Echegaray, who received the Order of the Golden Fleece in 1912 in addition to his Nobel Prize, died in Madrid on September 14, 1916, at the age of 84.
