Baltasar Gracián

Baltasar Gracián there Morals , born with Belmonte, close to Calatayud in Spain the January 8th 1601 and died in Tarragone the December 6th 1658, is a writer and philosopher Jesuit of the Siècle of Spanish gold.

Biography

Youth and formation

Wire of an Aragonese doctor whose five children embraced the ecclesiastical career, Baltasar Gracian was raised by his/her uncle, which was priest, then studied at the school Jesuit of Saragossa of 1616 to 1619 when he became beginner at 18 years. In 1621, he studied philosophy with the college of Calatayud and in 1623 the Théologie in Saragossa. It was ordered priest in 1627 and pronounced his wishes in 1635, after having joined the Society of Jesus (1633). He taught then in several schools of the company, passing in particular to Huesca where he met the aristocrat scholar, Vincencio Juán de Lastanosa, who became his patron and opened to him the doors of its prestigious living room, where he probably met Gaston of Orleans, brother of Louis XIII.

The rise

In 1640, Baltasar Gracian became the confessor of the viceroy of Aragon, Francisco Maria Carafa, duke of Nocera, which it accompanied at the court by Philippe IV, to Madrid, and which it dedicated his work El Político gift Fernando ( the Policy gift Ferdinand the catholic , 1640.) In spite of the disgrace into which was to fall the viceroy a little later (defendant of agreement with the French enemy, it was thrown in prison, where it was to perish one year later), Gracian would do that who had become his friend a vibrating praise in El discreto ( the universal Man ), published in 1646, at the same time as he “to condemn, by transparent allusions, the control of the king. ” It is in this same year 1646 qu ' it was the chaplain of the army which took again Lérida with the French troops of the count d' Harcourt, at the time of the war against Catalonia and France: the zeal of which it made proof on this occasion attracted him the praises of the soldiers and Spanish officers, who called it “the Father the Victoire. ”

Gracian, which had in addition acquired a great reputation of preacher, was named vice-chancellor of the Society of Jesus to Tarragona, where he wrote El Héroe ( the Hero ), El Político ( the Policy ) and El Discreto ( the universal Man ), signed works of the semi-pseudonym of Lorenzo Gracian (Lorenzo was the first name of the one of his/her brothers.)

In 1648, it took again and amplified its work of esthetic theory appeared first once in 1642, Agudeza there arte LED ingenio ( Art and figures of the spirit.) There is jouta very nombresues quotations of more or less obscure Aragonese poets, and in particular of the Salinas canon, cousin of his guard and Lastanosa patron. It is supposed that Gracian, obliged to make a place with Salinas to take pleasure in its guard, undertook walnut tree the extracts of this one in the mass of all these quoted authors, and that the praises which it did not fail to decree to him are actually, in their disproportion, of the disguised mockeries.

The fall

Gracian had had for a long time multiple contentions with its superiors: that it acts, in 1643 and whereas it was in Valence, of a letter which he said to him to be sent since the Hells and which, to attract crowd with her sermon, he had announced that he would unseal and read in pulpit (it was obliged by his superiors to retract publicly), or of the insolence with which it was praised money which its books reported to him, without worrying in addition to measurement about the distorsion which he thus made with the wish poverty, he had been acquired a reputation such as the General of the Society of Jesus, Goswin Nickel, went until qualifying it “cross of its superiors and troublemaker. ” These freedoms taken with the rules of the Church ended up losing it.

In 1651, it published the first part of the Criticon without the authorization of its superiors: the fact was all the more serious as, on the one hand, Gracian had always published profane works without subjecting itself to this obligation, and that on the other hand the Company ceased reminding its members only, vis-a-vis the attacks of its detractors (Jansénistes at the head), they were to preserve an irreproachable attitude and a behavior. Gracian made as it had always made: he was unaware of the remonstrances of his superiors and published in 1654 the second part of the Criticon , in spite of express prohibition of his superiors.

In 1655, Baltasar Gracian finally seemed to return in the row, with the great relief of its superiors: he requested their approval, which he obtained, in order to publish under its name, and in its capacity as Jesuit, a work of piety: El Comulgatorio ( the Art of communier .)

Two years later, Gracian however published the third part of the Criticon . This time was too for the General of the company: also Gracian it was sanctioned and had to leave in exile to Graus, where it was put at the bread and water, before being named, its health declining quickly with this severe mode, with Tarazona, which constituted a half-rehabilitation. He died the following year.

The work and the thought of Baltasar Gracian

The work of Baltasar Gracian can be divided into two parts: in the first, which goes from the Héros (1637) to the Court gentleman (1646), it attempts to build the figure of “the universal Man”, left hero gifted society man the virtues necessary to the success in the company (the first of which the virtue of prudence), from the point of view which is not without recalling, at least seemingly, the Prince of Machiavel. In the second part of its work, consisted the Criticon , Gracian gets busy to destroy this figure built with the wire of the former works, and to condemn “without call monument raised by him to the glory of the Hero. ”

Appearance, lie and dissimulation

Where the Platonic philosophy , taken again by Holy Augustin, and thus by the Jansenists, affirmed the PRIMA of the Essence on appearance, of the bottom on the form, of the idea on the matter, the philosophy of Baltasar Gracian, heiress in that of the thomism aristotelician, constitutes an attempt at rehabilitation of appearance and form. “It is not enough that the substance, Gracian writing in the Court gentleman , one needs for it also the circumstance”: since justice and the truth, with the eyes of the men, count less than appearances of which they are covered, the wise one must not only be virtuous, but also look after appearances of this virtue. It is necessary for him “to make, and make appear”, thus explains the hundred thirtieth maxim of the court gentleman , because “good outside best is guaranteed interior perfection. ” Appearance can even, if necessary, compensate the defect of substance: “if you are not pure, known as the proverb, make pretense be it. ”

The praise of appearance approaches thus dangerously a justification of the lie, but the highly skilled casuist that was Gracian never does not cross the step: one should not lie, writes it; while adding: all the truth should not be said: It is not a question as well, writes a contemporary commentator, to mislead as in " to leave croire." Practical of a cynicism suave: the men like if little the truth that it is useless to run the risk to lie to them. Their own moral mediocrity will be given the responsability to divert them. It is the king Ferdinand II of Aragon, known as “the Catholic” who was according to Gracian the Master in this art of the appearance which is at the same time an art of the dissimulation: the courtiers of this monarch were unaware of them springs of his policy, though the every day applied to the épier, to disentangle them, to guess them. All the care of these curious policies was only blows in the air: the prince was never known for them that by the successive events, whose new glare surprised them more and more.

Criticon or the vanity of the world

The three parts of the Criticon , published in 1651,1653 and 1657, had a great echo in Europe. It acts without any doubt of the chief of work of the author, of the one of the great achievements of the Siècle of gold, and of the most difficult work of access of the Spanish literature. It is a long allegorical novel strewn with philosophical keys which points out the Byzantine romantic style by the many vicissitudes and adventures with which the characters are confronted, as well as the picaresque Roman by its satirical vision of the company who shows through in the long pilgrimage that the principal characters make, Critilo, “the critical man”, who incarnates disillusion, and Andrénio, “the natural man”, who represents the primary education innocence and instincts. The author unceasingly uses a technique perspectivist which is spread according to the ideas or the points of view of each of the two characters. One of the most enthusiastic admirors of this novel, the German philosopher of the XIXe century Arthur Schopenhauer (which regarded the Criticon as the largest allegorical novel of all times), began again on its account what seemed to him to be the philosophy contained in the novel: the Pessimism.

Summary summary

Critilo, a society man, fact shipwreck on the shore of the island of Grey waxbill, where it meets Andrenio, the man of the Nature, which grew completely with the variation of civilization. They begin together the long voyage towards the Island of Immortality, traversing the long roads filled with difficulties of the life. In the first part (“Of the spring of childhood at the summer of youth”), they join the court of the king where they suffer from all kinds of disappointments; in the second part (“Judicious and civil philosophy in the autumn of the virile age”), they cross the Aragon, where they return visit in Salastano (Anagramme of the name of the friend of Gracián, Lastanosa), travel to France, that the author calls “the desert of Hypocrinde”, only populated hypocrites and dunces, and finish their voyage by the visit of a lunatic asylum. In the third part (“In the winter of old age”), they go to Rome and discover an academy there where are the most clever men, then end up joining the Island of Immortality.

Style of Gracian

Regarded as typically representative of the Spanish Baroque, the style of Gracián, génériquement called conceptism , is characterized by the use of ellipse S and by the concentration of a maximum of direction in the most minimal possible form, a style called in Spanish the agudeza (“acuity”) and carried to its extreme in the Court gentleman , a book only made up of almost three hundred maxims with accompanying notes. Gracián plays continuously with the words and each sentence becomes a complex puzzle rhetoric.

This conceptism, which was theorized in the treaty Agudeza there arte of ingenio ( Art and figures of the spirit), prolongs and is opposed to the cultism , developed by the continuators of the work of the poet Góngora, in what the latter intends to stick only to the formal beauty, while Gracian requires “the density of the thought, must be as refined as the form. ”

Posterity and admirors

He was admired by Arthur Schopenhauer which translated its Art of prudence into German, like by Vladimir Jankélévitch and Jacques Lacan, and his work influenced authors like Rochefoucauld, Voltaire, Nietzsche or Guy Debord.

Works

El Héroe ( the Hero , (1637);
El Político gift Fernando ( the Policy gift Ferdinand the catholic , 1640);
El Discreto ( the universal Man , 1646), these three books define qualities which should have a man;
Agudeza there arte LED ingenio ( Art and figures of the spirit, final version 1648) tests on the literature and esthetics;
Oráculo manual there arte of prudencia ( the Court gentleman , 1647);
El Comulgatorio (“the art of communier”, 1655), only book published under the name of the author, to take pleasure in the Society of Jesus.
El Criticón ( Criticon , 1651 - 1657), novel.
Treated political, esthetic, ethical , Threshold, 2005 (the whole of the nonromantic work of the author gathers).

See too

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