Back From A Long Break Of Not Writing A Book To My Liking: Memoirs Of A Writer By Rafael Cansinos Assens

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”

– William Wordsworth

After a few months pause of not writing decided to publish a new post.

A simple expllanation, my old computer broke down, and was not happy to lose my writing program I had used for many years, lucklily now WordPress has made new settings that allow me to do a good job at it, at least when it come to presentation.

There is little I think now about a theme for this post, so I will talk a little bit about what I am reading and enjoying very much.

In fact three books that I have read two times, and reading for the third time, the bad news its if you do not read Spanish you cannot read it, to my knowledge it’s not translated into English yet.

Rafael Cansinos Assens
Rafael Cansinos Assens was born in Seville, in 1882. He moved to Madrid in 1901 where he carried out his literary career. He collaborated in various modernist and ultraist magazines. He cultivated the novel, poetry and literary criticism. He also made numerous translations into Spanish of foreign works. Of his vast oeuvre, in addition to El candelabro de los siete brazos, it is worth highlighting La novela de un literato, also published in Alianza Editorial, in which he offers us an enthusiastic fresco of Madrid’s artistic bohemia of the first third of the 20th century. Rafael Cansinos Assens died in Madrid in 1964.

The memoirs of a Literary are a true delight of stories about ancient Spain no longer the power it was with the loss from all its colonies, and the end of the Ninetee Century the end of the nineteenth century and the begining of the Twentieth century, with the arrival of Modernism, and a new way of life.

The origins of the surname In the mid-nineteenth century he was aware of his conversal heritage, which led a very young Rafael to investigate the origin of his surname, finding evidence of a family past marked by the expulsion of the Spanish from the Jewish religion in 1492 and that divided the Sephardic families. It is from this moment when the process of assimilation to Judaism begins in him, which will accompany him, with not a few setbacks, until the last minute of his existence.

He published his first work, El candelabro de los siete brazos (psalmos), in 1914, modernist, but published late, when this aesthetic began to fade. At that time, he led the gathering at the Colonial café, where he shared the creationist line of Vicente Huidobro, and with another group of avant-gardeists they founded ultraism, whose manifesto was published in 1919 through the magazines Cervantes and Grecia (directed by Isaac del Vando-Villar with Adriano del Valle as editor-in-chief), and whose objectives were synthesized in Ultra, published between January 1921 and February 1922. In 1919 he abandoned journalism to dedicate himself entirely to literature, directed the magazine Cervantes and collaborated in Greece, Ultra and Tableros, sharing their activities with the avant-garde group made up of Guillermo de Torre, Adriano del Valle and Xavier Bóveda, among others (and among them a young Jorge Luis Borges). At the same time, he maintained a very close relationship with the incipient Jewish community in Madrid, which at that time revolved around the figure of Max Nordau. His work from those years, except for some texts that he signed with the pseudonym “Juan Las”, does not, however, have anything avant-garde, but rather has its roots in biblical texts. In 1919 he published for the first time in Spanish, translating from English and French, a Talmudic anthology with the title of Beauties of the Talmud. His prestige as a translator will increase based on his versions of works by Julian the Apostate, Ivan Turguéniev, Leon Tolstoy, Maximo Gorki and Max Nordau. In 1921, in El movimiento V.P., he makes an ironic portrait of the protagonists of the Spanish avant-garde, and especially of the dissolution of ultraism.

His tales about the numerous Spanish writers he encounter through his Bohemian life, the many rich and the many delicious and spicy anecdotes that he collects from his bohemian life as a late-night writer in literary evenings, in cafes, and in bars in Madrid and why not also say it in brothels and houses of all sorts of friends, and coquettes of his time.

He published his first work, El candelabro de los siete brazos (psalms), in 1914, modernist, but published late, when this aesthetic began to fade. At that time, he led the gathering at the Colonial café, where he shared the creationist line of Vicente Huidobro, and with another group of avant-gardeists they founded ultraism, whose manifesto was published in 1919 through the magazines Cervantes and Grecia (directed by Isaac del Vando-Villar with Adriano del Valle as editor-in-chief), and whose objectives were synthesized in Ultra, published between January 1921 and February 1922. In 1919 he abandoned journalism to dedicate himself entirely to literature, directed the magazine Cervantes and collaborated in Greece, Ultra and Tableros, sharing their activities with the avant-garde group made up of Guillermo de Torre, Adriano del Valle and Xavier Bóveda, among others (and among them a young Jorge Luis Borges). At the same time, he maintained a very close relationship with the incipient Jewish community in Madrid, which at that time revolved around the figure of Max Nordau. His work from those years, except for some texts that he signed with the pseudonym “Juan Las”, does not, however, have anything avant-garde, but rather has its roots in biblical texts. In 1919 he published for the first time in Spanish, translating from English and French, a Talmudic anthology with the title of Beauties of the Talmud. His prestige as a translator will increase based on his versions of works by Julian the Apostate, Ivan Turguéniev, Leon Tolstoy, Maximo Gorki and Max Nordau. In 1921, in El movimiento V.P., he makes an ironic portrait of the protagonists of the Spanish avant-garde, and especially of the dissolution of ultraism.

The life that he led in post-war Madrid was fundamentally nocturnal, since he slept until well into the morning, when he began to work; his sentimental partner, Josefina Megías Casado, died in 1946, and his sister Pilar in 1949, with whom he had lived all his life, in 1950 he went to work at his home in Menéndez Pelayo Braulia Galán, who would become his wife years later, taking care of him until the end of his days. In 1958 she had a son, Rafael Manuel, who is in charge of the Foundation that bears the name of the writer. Thanks to his widow, the writer’s literary archive was preserved, made up of more than sixty thousand documents and one of the most important pieces, if not the most, of the so-called Silver Age of Spanish letters. His library, whose donation was despised by Francoist institutions, is preserved, along with that of Juan Ramón Jiménez, in the Zenobia-Juan Ramón Jiménez Room of the University of Puerto Rico.

Shortly before his death he finished the translation of Balzac’s Complete Works. He was a correspondent of the Sevillana Academy of Good Letters and of the Goethiana of São Paulo (Brazil); in 1925 the Royal Spanish Academy awarded him the “Chirel” prize and the following year he was distinguished with the French Academic Palms.

A street in Seville is named after him.

TWILIGHT

On the last train of the afternoon
like an unhappy player
the emigrant sun fled.
parting faces
in all windows.
frustrated suicides
retrace the viaducts.
The river is full of swords.
Hasty reverbs.
they pass whistling through the streets.
And the great brazier of the poor.
it spills over into the landscape.

Rafael Cansinos Assens