Ventura de la Vega and El hombre de mundo

Reviewed by: Ventura de la Vega and El hombre de mundo: At the Threshold of the Realist Period in Spain by Michael Schinasi Luis Álvarez-Castro Schinasi, Michael. Ventura de la Vega and El hombre de mundo: At the Threshold of the Realist Period in Spain. Vigo: Academia del Hispanismo, 2015. Pp. 150. ISBN 978-84-16187-13-3. Traditional literary historiography, with its neatly divided chronological periods and aesthetic classifications, is not kind to transitional figures. At best, they can pass on to posterity as epigones or precursors of a given style. At worst, they simply risk being forgotten under a pile of categories that do not sufficiently apply to them. To a large extent, the latter has been Ventura de la Vega’s fate. His very biography (1807–65) was marked by a state of in-betweeness: born in the soon-to-be independent Buenos Aires, he spent most of his life in Spain; moreover, while lacking any noble origins, he would become secretary of a queen. His literary work, on the other hand, evidences the transition from Romanticism to Realism. Both of these aspects—biography and literature—make up the subject matter of Michael Schinasi’s book, which aims to restore Vega’s significance in nineteenth-century Spanish studies by vindicating his role in the development of Realist theater. Ventura de la Vega and El hombre de mundo: At the Threshold of the Realist Period in Spain’s first part, entitled “The Life and Work of a Worldly Man,” compiles, organizes, and corrects Vega’s extant biographical accounts in much detail. However, Schinasi seems not to add significant new data on the playwright’s life, notwithstanding the apparent existence of periods or aspects that still necessitate clarification. For instance, the author points out: “Ventura de la Vega’s biographers do not give us any information about why in 1822, at age fifteen, he changed schools and began to attend the Colegio de San Mateo” (21). Likewise, the lack of documentation forces the author to speculate when he tries to find a cause for Vega’s trips to London and Paris in 1853, following his dismissal as director of the Teatro Español (37). Due to such voids of information, and despite the attention conferred to the writer’s life (which takes up a third of this book), it could be argued that Ventura de la Vega’s definite biography remains to be written. Nevertheless, it could similarly be argued that not knowing the accurateness of a given date or the rationale of certain actions should not pose much concern for literary and cultural critics. In fact, beyond the anecdotal information on the different positions that Ventura de la Vega occupied in the public administration during Ferdinand VII’s and Isabella II’s reigns, the major interest of this biographical section is the portrait that it conveys of Spain’s cultural politics and the lasting influence of Enlightened ethics—as well as its aesthetics—in the transition from Romanticism to Realism. In this regard, Schinasi explains that, as a disciple of Alberto Lista, Ventura de la Vega “was intellectually raised on the enlightened belief that the theater industry plays an important civic role in the life of a nation” (32). The second part of book offers a thorough analysis of Ventura de la Vega’s acclaimed comedy, El hombre de mundo, under the title “At the Threshold of the Realist Period in Spain.” Vega’s contributions to mid-nineteenth-century Spanish literature include poetry (both lyrical and political), around eighty translations of French plays (many of them by Scribe), eight librettos for zarzuelas, and fourteen original plays. As for his historical significance in Spain’s stage, Schinasi highlights his role in both introducing Romanticism (through his translations of works such as Dumas’s 1836 Teresa) and consolidating the popularity of modern lyrical theater thanks to the raving success of his zarzuela Jugar con fuego. His original plays, on the other hand, are revealing testimonies of the evolution of mid-nineteenth-century Spanish theater. His most celebrated titles, Don Fernando el de Antequera (1847), La muerte de César (1865), and El hombre de mundo (1845), can be labeled

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Biography · Humanities · Literature · Period (music) · Realism · Romanticism · Style (visual arts) · Vega · Early Modern Spanish Literature · Philosophy