Ángel de Saavedra

• Born: March 10, 1791
• Birthplace: Córdoba, Spain
• Died: June 22, 1865
• Place of death: Madrid, Spain

Other Literary Forms

In addition to his drama, Ángel de Saavedra produced poetry and nonfiction works.

Achievements

Ángel de Saavedra was a prolific writer as well as an influential politician. Better known as the duke of Rivas to critics and the public, his literary production, especially the drama Don Álvaro, has been described alternatively as the best of Spanish Romanticism, by his friend and colleague Antonio Alcalá Galiano, and as a play whose main value lies in its intense theatricality, by the drama critic and historian Francisco Ruiz Ramón. In truth, Saavedra’s literary career reflects the trajectory of literary tastes and fashions in Spain during the nineteenth century. He began in the waning neoclassical style, already tinted with elements of Romanticism; his early tragedies incorporate the themes of liberty, resistance to tyranny, political reform, and individual freedom that were prevalent in the literary and political milieu of mid-nineteenth century Spain.

The production of Don Álvaro in Madrid in 1835 was the event that signaled the dominance of Romanticism in Spain. Building on the work of his predecessors, Francisco Martínez de la Rosa and Mariano José de Larra, Saavedra added to his drama the influence of other European Romantics whose work he read while in exile in France and England. Don Álvaro is, then, the ultimate Romantic drama with the ultimate Romantic hero, the one who captured the imagination of the times, transcending frontiers and genre. His play was the base for numerous imitations in Europe and for the well-known opera by Giuseppe Verdi, La forza del destino.

Saavedra’s achievements in the theater were not limited to his success with Don Álvaro. His work was generally popular among the public, and another major drama, El desengaño en un sueño, signaled the consolidation within the theater of the trend already started by Saavedra himself in two major works of narrative poetry, the Romances históricos (1841) and the Leyendas (1854), which shifted the character of Spanish Romanticism from the liberal European to the national conservative.

Biography

Ángel Pérez de Saavedra Ramírez de Madrid Ramírez de Baquedano was born in Córdoba, Spain, on March 10, 1791, the second son of a noble family. He received his early education from French clerks who had fled the French Revolution. From an early age, he showed an aptitude in poetry and painting. At the age of eleven, Saavedra entered the Royal Seminary for Noblemen in Madrid; at fifteen, he joined the Royal Guards and started his military career. At the same time, he began writing articles and poetry for a journal founded by friends. This was the time of the Napoleonic invasion of Spain and the beginning of the Spaniards’ rebellion against Napoleon and his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, who had been made king of Spain by the French armies. This rebellion, known as the Spanish War of Independence (or the Peninsular War), lasted from 1808 to 1814 and signaled the end of Napoleon’s dominance in Europe.

Saavedra participated with distinction in the Spanish War of Independence. He first fought against the French as a lieutenant and was severely wounded in 1809. In 1810, he went to Cádiz, a stronghold of the Spanish armies, where he was promoted to captain, then to lieutenant colonel. In Cádiz, Saavedra became the editor of the official staff journal of the armies fighting against the Napoleonic forces. Also in Cádiz, he met the patriotic poets Juan Nicasio Gallego and Manuel José Quintana, whose influence is reflected in Saavedra’s early neoclassical works. The political atmosphere in Cádiz was liberal, and the young Saavedra was a firm supporter of this political ideology and of the premises on which it was founded.

In 1814, Joseph Bonaparte was deposed and the French were expelled from Spain. That same year, Ferdinand VII returned from exile and abolished the liberal constitution of 1812 and all the reforms made by the popular regime of Cádiz. The king established literary censorship, and Saavedra’s first tragedy, Ataúlfo, written in 1814, was banned. Saavedra joined the revolution that forced the king to reinstate the constitution, and in 1821, he became a deputy to the Cortes (Parliament) in Madrid. In 1823, however, the conservative government of France sent an army to Spain to help restore the absolute power of Ferdinand VII, and the liberals had to flee the country.

In exile, Saavedra went from Gibraltar to London, where he joined Antonio Alcalá Galiano and established friendships in the literary world, becoming familiar with the ideas of English Romanticism. Looking for a better climate, Saavedra returned to Gibraltar, where he was married to the noblewoman Doña María de la Encarnación de Cueto y Ortega. After their marriage, they tried to settle in Italy, but the conservative government of that country and the Vatican denied entrance to Saavedra and his wife because of his liberal political stance. Following this failed attempt to enter Italy, Saavedra and Doña María settled in Malta, where they lived for five years. The stay in Malta was very important for Saavedra’s literary development. There he had time to read the Spanish literary masters from the Renaissance and Baroque periods (the period called the Golden Age) and also the English Romantics.

In 1830, wanting to be closer to Spain, Saavedra and his family—he and his wife had three children by then—moved to France, where he opened a school for painters and renewed his friendships with the Spanish liberals. In 1834, after the death of Ferdinand VII, the liberal exiles returned to Spain, and Saavedra published his long poem, El moro expósito, a vigorous expression of Romantic precepts in literature. In that same year, he became a member of the Royal Spanish Academy and also inherited the title duke of Rivas from his brother. In the following year, 1835, he presented the play Don Álvaro in Madrid, and thus the Romantic movement was definitively launched in Spain. In 1841, Saavedra published the Romances históricos, a collection of ballads that would mark the shift of Romanticism in Spain from the European and cosmopolitan to the nationalistic and traditional.

In 1844, Saavedra was appointed ambassador to the kingdom of Naples and Sicily. There he wrote poetry, the last of his major dramas, El desengaño en un sueño, and continued work on another book of poetry, Leyendas, a collection of traditional Spanish legends. He returned to Madrid in 1850, and in 1857, he was named ambassador to France but returned once more to Madrid in 1858 because of a severe illness. In 1862, Saavedra was elected director of the Spanish Academy, and in 1863, he was elected president of the Council of State. His death in 1865 was mourned by the public, the politicians, and the writers of his time.

Analysis

Ángel de Saavedra’s theatrical production consists mainly of tragedies and dramas, and even those works written late in his career and called comedias were written in the vein of the Spanish drama of the Golden Age, mixing serious themes with some comical incidents. His only two true comedies were written, as he declared, to distract him from the preoccupations of everyday life and affairs of state. This attitude reveals the thrust of Saavedra’s theater—a theater based on the intellectual concerns of the author. Thus, his early neoclassical and Romantic works focus on political freedom, the individual, and liberalism, and his later works, written when he had become more conservative, center on traditional Spanish themes and preoccupations.

Aliatar

Among Saavedra’s early plays, the tragedy Aliatar is noteworthy. It is neoclassical in form, divided into five acts, respecting the unities of time, place, and action. It also confines itself to one verse form, the assonant hendecasyllable, has lofty characters as protagonists, and comes to a tragic end. Despite this neoclassical format, however, Aliatar has definite pre-Romantic characteristics. It is the dramatization of the love of the Moorish chief Aliatar for his Christian captive, Elvira. The themes of power, passion, and impossible love are present, and the tone of the tragedy is Romantic, as it emphasizes the characters’ despair in the face of the principles that rule the world. The tragedy ends with the suicide of Aliatar, who is unable to master the passion that consumes him.

El duque de Aquitania

The tragedy El duque de Aquitania also follows the neoclassical precepts outlined above. Based on the play Oreste (pr. 1781, pb. 1784; Orestes, 1815) by the Italian Vittorio Alfieri, it tells the story of the power struggle between Reynal, the rightful duke, and Eudon, the usurper of the duchy of Acquitaine, and underlines the themes of freedom and independence. This tragedy enjoyed great popularity when it was presented because it reflected the conditions under which the Spanish people were living during the Napoleonic invasion.

Malek-Adhél

Another tragedy that gained popularity was Malek-Adhél. This work was based on the well-known novel Mathilde (1805) by Madame Cottin, and it deals with the love story between Mathilde, sister of Richard the Lion-Hearted, and Malek-Adhél, brother of the Sultan Saladin. Here again is the theme of interracial, interreligious love that was presented in Aliatar, with the difference that in this instance the love is mutual. Again, in format, this is a neoclassical tragedy, but in spirit it is quite Romantic. The protagonist, Malek-Adhél, is overcome by desperation in his realization of the impossibility of his love for Mathilde. The tone and atmosphere of the play are somber, and the political conflict forms an appropriately turbulent background for the story of doomed love. An additional noticeably pre-Romantic characteristic of Malek-Adhél is the gloomy setting of the fifth act: midnight at the sepulchral chapel of the crusader Montmorency.

Lanuza

Lanuza, a neoclassical tragedy set in Renaissance Aragon, is a “liberal-oriented” tragedy. The plot delves into the story of Lanuza, the chief justice of Aragon, who revolted against the absolute power of Phillip II. Lanuza was successful at the beginning but was abandoned by his followers, captured by the royal troops, and decapitated. The tragedy ends with an impassioned speech by Lanuza before his death, calling the people to unite and fight absolutism. This thinly disguised call to arms to the Spaniards living under French power was received fervently by theatergoers.

Arias Gonzalo

Saavedra’s most important neoclassical tragedy is Arias Gonzalo. The setting and plot come from the siege of the city of Zamora by King Sancho of Castile in medieval Spain. This incident, recorded in the Primera crónica general by King Alfonso X of Castile, was also the theme for many traditional ballads and plays. The plot is as follows: King Sancho is killed in battle during the siege by the Zamoran warrior Bellido Dolfos. A Castilian knight, Diego Ordóñez de Lara, challenges the city of Zamora to a duel to decide the outcome of the siege. The city belongs to Doña Urraca, who is underage, and her tutor, Arias Gonzalo, accepts the challenge. His three sons take up the challenge, and the oldest two are killed by Ordóñez. The youngest, Gonzalo Arias, succeeds in defeating Ordóñez but is fatally wounded in combat. The subplot of the tragedy is the love between Urraca and Gonzalo Arias. This tragedy, considered by the critic Francisco Ruiz Ramón as one of the best of its time, brings to life the conflict it portrays through the use of forceful versification, colorful imagery, and well-described action. Divided into five acts and following all the neoclassical precepts, the tragedy nevertheless reflects a marked Romantic influence. The love between Urraca and Gonzalo, doomed to fail because of interference from the outside world, the melancholy displayed by the lovers, and the final lines spoken by Gonzalo’s father—“Zamora is free/ But alas, how much this costs Arias Gonzalo”—all speak of the approaching new sensibility and conception of life. There is more emphasis on the individual and less on the duties that bind each person; indeed, a glimpse of the fully developed Romantic hero and heroine are already evident in Arias Gonzalo.

Tanto vales cuanto tienes

A comedy written by Saavedra in the same period reveals the degree to which the neoclassical movement shaped his early work. Entitled Tanto vales cuanto tienes, it is a full-fledged comedy of manners. In the vein of Leandro Fernández de Moratín’s El sí de las niñas (wr. 1801, pr., pb. 1806; When a Girl Says Yes, 1929), Tanto vales cuanto tienes is a didactic work that stereotypes its characters to make the moral message of the comedy evident. The story is simple. Don Blas, a rich Spaniard returning from the colonies in America, pretends that his fortune was lost in the voyage. His family, especially his sister Doña Rufina, reject and mock him as a silly man, a reception quite different from the one promised in letters before he returned from America, when they knew that he still had his fortune. The only family member to show love and understanding for Don Blas is his niece, Doña Paquita, daughter of Doña Rufina. At this point, Don Blas reveals that his fortune is intact and that the only one who will benefit from it is Paquita. The comedy ends with general repentance and hilarity. The neoclassical elements of this comedy are evident. The characters are exaggerated to present extremes of behavior. Thus Doña Rufina is the villain, Doña Paquita the good daughter, and Don Blas the wise old man. Society is criticized, and greed and duplicity castigated. All of this was staged in the amiable manner preferred by neoclassical playwrights to ensure the attention of their public.

Don Álvaro

The year 1835 marked a definite change in the theatrical work of Saavedra. This was the year of the production and publication of his most famous work, the Romantic drama Don Álvaro. This play exhibits all the standard characteristics of Romanticism: freedom and unattainable love as themes; the hero as a mysterious, impassioned figure; and the heroine as a sweet, intense, passionate creature. Nature is depicted as a force that both reflects and thwarts the feelings of the individual, mostly through darkness and tempestuous panoramas. In the Romantic theater, the action typically climaxes in the destruction of the individual by the world, and this is indeed the case in Don Álvaro. The message of these plays seems to be that the Romantic hero—that is to say, the individual who differs from the norm in sensibility or talent, who tries to live by the concepts of love, beauty, and virtue, defying the established norms of society—is doomed to perish in the quest for happiness and self-expression.

The plot of Don Álvaro is a beautiful example of Romantic craftsmanship. Don Álvaro, a rich, handsome Peruvian, the son of an Inca princess and a Spanish officer, has come to Seville to clear his father’s honor. He meets and falls in love with Doña Leonor, daughter of the impoverished Marquis of Calatrava. The Marquis denies permission for the marriage on the grounds that Don Álvaro is a mestizo. At this juncture, Don Álvaro asks Leonor to elope; she consents but hesitates at the moment of leaving. The Marquis of Calatrava returns home unexpectedly and finds Don Álvaro. Don Álvaro throws his pistol down to signify humility before the Marquis; the pistol fires and fatally wounds the Marquis, who dies cursing his daughter. A struggle follows, and Don Álvaro abandons Seville, thinking that Doña Leonor is dead. He changes his name, joins the Spanish army in Italy, and tries to find death in battle. Don Carlos, oldest son of the Marquis of Calatrava, is also in Italy, and he and Don Álvaro become friends, each saving the other’s life in battle. When Don Carlos discovers Don Álvaro’s identity, however, he challenges him to a duel. Don Álvaro tries to avoid the confrontation, but Don Carlos’s insistence makes it impossible. They fight, and Don Carlos is killed. Don Álvaro is condemned to death by a law prohibiting duels, enacted by King Charles of Naples. At this moment, an Austrian attack ensues, and Don Álvaro is able to flee. He returns to Spain and joins a monastery. Meanwhile Leonor, who has spent a year in Córdoba, has herself joined another monastery, near Don Álvaro’s. Don Alfonso, the Marquis’s youngest son, who has never stopped looking for Don Álvaro, finally finds him at the monastery. He accuses Don Álvaro of having disgraced Doña Leonor as well as killing both his father and brother. Don Álvaro tries to explain the circumstances and avoid further violence, but Don Alfonso, like the Marquis and Don Carlos, is intransigent. In the ensuing conflict, Leonor comes from the cave that has served as her hermitage for some years. Don Alfonso thinks that she and Don Álvaro have been living together and kills her. At this point, Don Álvaro loses all restraint and kills Don Alfonso. The last scene of the play takes place near a precipice, with Don Álvaro laughing and cursing diabolically in front of the other monks before plunging to his death.

The Romanticism of this play is undeniable. The action spans a period of some years and takes place in several countries; there is the recurring element of anagnorisis, or recognition, in which the hero is a mysterious person recognized by others as someone with a special nature. The cast of characters is large and varied, from water sellers to the nobility. Society, represented by the rigid norms of conduct set by the Marquis of Calatrava and the obsequiousness of the clerics, is viewed as retrograde and hostile. The world is in a constant state of turmoil, and any hopes of peace or happiness are constantly denied by fate.

The role of fate in Don Álvaro has been hotly debated by critics. On one side, critics maintain that Don Álvaro is a character doomed to failure and unable to control his own destiny. Other critics, however, see fate merely as a theatrical device used by Saavedra to develop a truculent plot. The answer may lie in the play La vida es sueño (pr. 1635; Life Is a Dream, 1830) by the great Spanish dramatist of the Golden Age, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, the basic thesis of which is that the stars influence but do not determine an individual’s life. So is the role of fate in Don Álvaro, where unfortunate coincidences provide opportunities for mishaps, but the real catalysts for violence and doom are the actions of the characters themselves. If society had not frowned on interracial marriages, Don Álvaro would not have been rejected as a suitor for the daughter of the Marquis of Calatrava; if the nobility were not so prejudiced and prideful, none of the incidents related in the play would have occurred. Saavedra has a message to convey, even though a simple one: Eliminate prejudice and intransigence in society, and all will attain a better life. The merit of the play goes beyond the presentation of a simple moral message. The masterful portraiture of the environment, the colorful description of characters and places, and the powerful and varied versification make Don Álvaro one of the highlights of European Romanticism.

Saavedra’s dramatic career did not end with Don Álvaro. He wrote one more comedy in the neoclassical style, El parador de Bailén, and three dramas in the style of the Golden Age comedias. These three dramas, Solaces de un prisionero, La morisca de Alajuar, and El crisol de la lealtad, marked another shift in Saavedra’s work, away from the purely Romantic format and closer to the traditions of Spanish theater.

El desengaño en un sueño

El desengaño en un sueño, the last of his major works, is a good example of the new dramatic route taken by Saavedra. This play is also written in the style of the Golden Age comedias, and it was loosely inspired by Calderón’s Life Is a Dream, as well as a famous story by the fourteenth century writer Juan Manuel entitled “The Magician of Toledo.” It is the only play by Saavedra without a historical background; perhaps this is the reason that he called it a “fantasy drama.” Divided into three acts, it has an uncomplicated plot. Marcolán the magician and his son Lisardo live on a deserted island. Lisardo is a young man who feels trapped by the isolation of their domain. He asks his father to allow him to go into the outside world. Marcolán hesitates but finally consents. Before Lisardo’s departure, Marcolán puts him into a trance and makes him experience, through dreams, life in the world. Lisardo is exposed to every emotion and feels the pain of love and rejection, the struggle for power, the darkness of evil, and the horror of treachery and false friendship. When he is about to be executed by his enemies, Lisardo yearns for the house of his father; his wish breaks the incantation, and he finds himself on the island, from which in reality he never departed. Lisardo has learned his lesson in his dreams and is content to remain on the island, protected from the vagaries of society and the outside world.

The tone of El desengaño en un sueño is melancholic, with the exception of the imaginary “action scenes,” which become almost frantic in nature to underline the difference between the serenity of the island and the folly of the outside world. This play, rich in philosophical ideas, constitutes a fit closure to the work of Saavedra, a dramatist who led and participated in the shaping of drama in Spain for more than a generation, whose works reflect not only his own growth and development as a writer but also the development of literature in Spain during his lifetime.

Bibliography

Lovett, Gabriel. The Duke of Rivas. Boston: Twayne, 1977. A basic look at the life and works of Saavedra, the duke of Rivas. Includes bibliography.

Peers, E. Allison. A Short History of the Romantic Movement in Spain. 1949. Reprint. New York: AMS Press, 1976. This reprint of the 1949 edition published by the Institute of Hispanic Studies in Liverpool, England, presents a look at Romanticism in Spain, touching on Saavedra. Bibliography and index.

Schurlknight, Donald E. Spanish Romanticism in Context: Of Subversion, Contradiction, and Politics: Espronceda, Larra, Rivas, Zorrilla. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1998. Schurlknight examines Spanish Romanticism through the works of Saavedra (the duke of Rivas), José de Espronceda, Mariano José de Larra, and José Zorrilla. Bibliography and index.