Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez (1867-1928) was a notable Spanish writer, celebrated more widely abroad than in his native Spain. Born in Valencia, his literary career was marked by a blend of rebellious spirit and idealism, influenced by his Aragonese heritage and Valencian environment. Throughout his life, he faced political repression, including imprisonment for his antiroyalist views and eventual exile due to his opposition to dictatorship. Blasco Ibáñez began his literary journey as an assistant in a fiction factory and struggled initially to find recognition, but his works later gained popularity, showcasing his transition from regionalism to broader social themes. His renowned novels include *The Cabin* and *Blood and Sand*, the latter of which was adapted into a successful film starring Rudolph Valentino. Blasco Ibáñez's writing often tackled social issues, and his ambitious plans for novels focusing on Latin American countries were interrupted by World War I. His ability to combine colorful storytelling with suspense made him a significant figure in early 20th-century literature, with several of his works adapted for both stage and film.
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Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
Spanish novelist
- Born: January 29, 1867
- Died: January 28, 1928
Biography
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez (BLAHS-koh ee-BAHN-yayz) is an example of a writer better known and more greatly admired outside his country than in it. Except in his earliest works, in which he was truly regional in writing about Valencia, his work has been classified by Spaniards as journalistic, based on contemporary fads and interests.
He was born on January 29, 1867, in Valencia. Perhaps his Aragonese blood gave him the tenacious and rebellious temperament that characterizes his writing as much as does the dreamy idealism of his Valencian environment, for the pen that reinforced his idealism earned him several imprisonments while he was still in school. He was a political exile in France in 1889 for antiroyalist propaganda, and in Italy in 1898 for upholding Cuba’s right to revolt. On January 28, 1928, he died in Mentone, France, exiled for attacking dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera. Not until Spain became a republic was his body brought home.
Running away from home at the age of sixteen, Blasco Ibáñez entered the literary world as secretary in the fiction factory of Manuel Fernández y González, a Spanish writer of thrilling adventure yarns. Later he resigned, thinking that he might as well sign what he wrote, but his earliest efforts found no publisher. Much later, after he became famous, a number of his earlier pseudohistorical novels appeared in Spain and in translation in U.S. magazines to reveal him as a belated romanticist. His best works are The Cabin and the naturalistic Reeds and Mud, realistic tragedies of Valencian life.
To escape the tag of regionalist, he began a series of controversial novels attacking social evils and set in different Spanish cities. The anticlerical The Shadow of the Cathedral contains wonderful descriptions of Toledo. The Fruit of the Vine, set in Jerez and published in 1905, attacks the evils of drinking. The very popular Blood and Sand attacks Seville’s bullfighting. Its film version, starring Rudolph Valentino, gave Blasco Ibáñez world renown.
His ambition to devote a novel to each Latin American nation was interrupted by World War I, but two novels about the war, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and Mare Nostrum, made him a best-selling author in the United States. Seven of his novels have been dramatized, and seven have film versions, including two U.S. versions of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. He wrote too quickly perhaps, but he was a good observer; he wrote colorfully and with suspense.
Bibliography
Anderson, Christopher L. Primitives, Patriarchy, and the Picaresque in Blasco Ibáñez’s “Cañas y barro.” Potomac, Md.: Scripta Humanistica, 1995. Anderson reevaluates the novel Reeds and Mud, focusing on the portrayal of its female characters, whom he considers within the context of a male-dominated society.
Anderson, Christopher L., and Paul C. Smith. Vicente Blasco Ibañez: An Annotated Bibliography, 1975-2002. Newark, Del.: Juan de la Cuesta, 2005. Extensively annotated compilation of writings by and about Blasco Ibáñez that updates Paul Smith’s Vicente Blasco Ibáñez: An Annotated Bibliography (1976), which lists works published between 1882 and 1974.
Day, A. Grove, and Edgar C. Knowlton. V. Blasco Ibáñez. New York: Twayne, 1972. Survey of Blasco Ibáñez’s life and canon that includes a discussion of his revolutionary influences, cosmopolitan experiences, interest in social protest and human psychology, glorification of Spain, and intense dislike of Germans.
Howells, William Dean. “The Fiction of Blasco Ibáñez.” Harper’s 131 (1915): 956-960. Howells, an American novelist and literary critic, praises Blasco Ibáñez’s literary skill.
Medina, Jeremy T. The Valencian Novels of Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. Valencia, Spain: Albatros Ediciones, 1984. A study of five novels with themes relating to Valencia: The Three Roses, The Mayflower, The Cabin, The Torrent, and Reeds and Mud. Medina has written two other studies of Blasco Ibáñez’s novels, both published by Albatros Ediciones. These studies are The “Psychological” Novels of Vicente Blasco Ibáñez (1990) and From Sermon to Art: The Thesis Novels of Vicente Blasco Ibáñez (1998).
Oxford, Jeffrey Thomas. Vicente Blasco Ibáñez: Color Symbolism in Selected Novels. New York: Peter Lang, 1997. Analyzes the use of color in some of Blasco Ibáñez’s novels, arguing that although he was a naturalist, he often depicted life in a subjectively artificial way that belied the naturalists’ attempt to objectively portray reality.
Swain, James O. Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, General Study: Special Emphasis on Realistic Techniques. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1959. A critical study of Blasco Ibáñez’s work, with one chapter focusing on the realistic images of war in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Wedel, Alfred R. “Blasco Ibáñez’s Antipathy Toward Germans.” Revista de Istorie si Teorie Literara 35 (July-December, 1987): 3-4, 192-200. Discusses the negative portrait of Germans in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.