biography
| name: |
Cadalso y Vázquez, José
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pronunciation:
[kadalsoh]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1741–82)
|
| biography:
| Poet and satirist, born in Cádiz, SW Spain. He was one of the most influential figures (with Jovellanos and Forner) of the late 18th-c, and heir to the Stoic-desengaño tradition of Quevedo and Gracián. Educated at the Jesuit school in Cádiz, he studied English, French, German, and Italian, travelling widely in Europe before returning to the capital in 1758. He enlisted for the Portuguese campaign in 1762 and was made a Knight of Santiago in 1766, the year in which he met Jovellanos. In 1768 he was exiled from Madrid for allegedly writing the ‘Calendario manual’, a manuscript which caused offence to a number of society ladies. In 1722 he regularly attended the famous tertulias at the San Sebastian inn, Madrid, and published Los eruditos a la violeta and the Suplemento, a satire on the pretentious ‘scholarship’ of those who pontificate a great deal but neither read nor study at all. The success of this amusing parody, in the form of ‘lessons’ in poetry, philosophy, law, mathematics, and much else, led him to compose Un buen militar a la violeta (1790), a similar parody on military knowledge. He spent part of 1773–4 in Salamanca, where he met Juan Meléndez Valdés and other poets of the School of Salamanca, and in those two years composed the works for which he is best remembered: Cartas maruecas (1793) and Noches lúgubres (1798) both first serialized in the Correo de Madrid (1789-90). He was promoted to colonel (1782) a fortnight before being killed at the siege of Gibraltar. Cadalso's love story, his energetic patriotism, his fearless attack on institutions based on hypocrisy, and the melancholy side of his nature all made him a figure of abiding interest to the Spanish Romantics. |
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