biography
| name: |
Madariaga, Salvador de
|
pronunciation:
[mathariahga]
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1886–1978)
|
| biography:
| Historian, essayist, literary critic, novelist, and diplomat, born in La Coruña, NW Spain. He qualified as an engineer in Paris, and worked on the railways from 1912. On the outbreak of World War 1 he worked for The Times, and from 1921 in the secretariat of the League of Nations, returning to Geneva in 1935–6 as the Spanish delegate. He taught Spanish literature at Oxford University (1928–31) and again later in semi-retirement. He was Spanish ambassador to Washington (1931) and to Paris (1932–4), and after the end of World War 2 he lived permanently outside Spain, writing in English and French as fluently as in Spanish. After an early essay on Shelley and Calderón, he became celebrated for his Guía del lector del Quijote (1926, trans Don Quixote, a Psychological Study, 1934), Englishmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards (1928), Spain (1930), and his historical books on Latin America: Vida del muy magnífico Señor Cristóbal Colón (1940), Hernán Cortés (1941), Cuadro histórico de las Indias (2 vols, 1945, trans The Rise and Fall of the Spanish American Empire, 1947), and Simón Bolívar (1949). Of moderate, liberal, and cosmopolitan leanings, he found his spiritual home in Britain, while continuing to write and research on the Spanish world. He composed poetry and plays, but in the field of creative literature he achieved most in the novel. His first attempt was a humorous fantasy, La jirafa sagrada (1924); more of a tract than a novel, it preaches tolerance, patience, and reconciliation between nations. Arceval y los ingleses (1925) is a similar thesis novel existing to contrast the hero, modelled on Ganivet, with English manners. Sir Bob (1930) was composed in English. His subsequent novels, all in Spanish, are El enemigo de Dios (1936), a religious story deriving from Unamuno's ideas; Ramo de errores (1952), a philosophical story; La camarada Ana (1954), a political story of the Cold War; and a novela-fantasía of totalitarianism, Sanco Panco (1964). He has also written a sequence of historical novels called Esquiveles y Manriques, using his knowledge of Latin America: El corazón de piedra verde (1942), Guerra en la sangre (1957), and El Semental negro (1961). Una gota de tiempo (1958) concerns the Pizarros in Peru. His autobiographical Memorias (1921-1936): amanecer sin mediodía (1974) has been abridged for the English edition as Morning Without Noon (1974). |
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