María Zambrano Alarcón (22 April 1904 – 6 February 1991) was a Spanish

essayist An essay ( ) is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a Letter (message), letter, a term paper, paper, an article (publishing), article, a pamphlet, and a s ...

and philosopher associated with the

Generation of '36 The Generation of '36 () is the name given to a group of Spanish artists, poets and playwrights who were working about the time of the Spanish Civil War (1936 - 1939). The Generation of '36 was a literary movement that suffered harsh criticism and ...

movement. Her extensive work between the civic engagement and the poetic reflection started to be recognised in Spain over the last quarter of the 20th century after living many years in exile. She was awarded the

Prince of Asturias Award The Princess of Asturias Awards (, ), formerly the Prince of Asturias Awards from 1981 to 2014 (), are a series of annual prizes awarded in Spain by the Princess of Asturias Foundation (previously the Prince of Asturias Foundation) to individuals ...

(1981) and the

Miguel de Cervantes Prize The Miguel de Cervantes Prize () is awarded annually to honour the lifetime achievement of an outstanding writer in the Spanish language. The ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' calls it "most prestigious and remunerative award given for Spanish-languag ...

(1988).

Biography

María Zambrano Alarcón was born on 22 April 1904 in Vélez-Málaga, Spain, daughter of Blas José Zambrano García de Carabante, friend and collaborator of

Antonio Machado Antonio Cipriano José María y Francisco de Santa Ana Machado y Ruiz (26 July 1875 – 22 February 1939), known as Antonio Machado, was a Spanish poet and one of the leading figures of the Spanish literary movement known as the Generation ...

, and Araceli Alarcón Delgado. In 1905, the family moved to

Madrid Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It i ...

and a year afterwards to

Segovia Segovia ( , , ) is a city in the autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Castile and León, Spain. It is the capital and most populated municipality of the Province of Segovia. Segovia is located in the Meseta central, Inner Pl ...

, where her father obtained a job as Spanish Grammar professor. She spent her teenage years there. Zambrano studied under and was influenced by

José Ortega y Gasset José Ortega y Gasset (; ; 9 May 1883 – 18 October 1955) was a Spanish philosopher and essayist. He worked during the first half of the 20th century while Spain oscillated between monarchy, republicanism and dictatorship. His philosoph ...

and went on to teach metaphysics at Madrid University and at the

Instituto Cervantes Instituto Cervantes (, the Cervantes Institute) is a worldwide nonprofit organization created by the Spanish government in 1991. It is named after Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616), the author of ''Don Quixote'' and perhaps the most important fi ...

from 1931 to 1936. During the 20s and 30s, she actively campaigned for the establishment of the

Spanish Second Republic The Spanish Republic (), commonly known as the Second Spanish Republic (), was the form of democratic government in Spain from 1931 to 1939. The Republic was proclaimed on 14 April 1931 after the deposition of King Alfonso XIII. It was dissol ...

. However, after Spain became a Republic again, disillusioned with the realities of party politics, she declined the possibility of becoming an MP and refused further participation in party politics. Nevertheless, with the outbreak of the

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War () was a military conflict fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republican faction (Spanish Civil War), Republicans and the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the Left-wing p ...

in 1936, she openly sided with the Republic and consequently went into

exile Exile or banishment is primarily penal expulsion from one's native country, and secondarily expatriation or prolonged absence from one's homeland under either the compulsion of circumstance or the rigors of some high purpose. Usually persons ...

after its defeat in 1939. After living in France, Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Italy, France again and Switzerland, Zambrano finally returned to Madrid in 1984, almost nine years after the death of Franco. She died on 6 February 1991 in Madrid and was buried in the cemetery of her hometown Vélez-Málaga.

Recognition

Respected by her peers, she maintained contact with Italian intellectuals as well as her compatriots Rafael Alberti and Jorge Guillén. A slow process of recognition of her work commenced in Spain in 1966 with the publication of J. L. Aranguren's article "Los sueños de María Zambrano" (The Dreams of María Zambrano) in the important cultural and scientific '' Revista de Occidente'', founded by Ortega y Gasset, a review to which leading contemporary philosophers such as

Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, and public intellectual. He had influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, and various areas of analytic ...

and

Edmund Husserl Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (; 8 April 1859 – 27 April 1938) was an Austrian-German philosopher and mathematician who established the school of Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenology. In his early work, he elaborated critiques of histori ...

contributed. In 1981, she was awarded the

for Communications and Humanities in its first edition, and in 1983 Malaga University named her

Doctor honoris causa An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hono ...

. In 1988, she became the first woman to be awarded the

. ''María querida'' (''Dearest Maria''), a film directed by

José Luis García Sánchez José Luis García Sánchez (born 22 September 1941) is a Spanish film director, screenwriter and producer. He has directed 30 films since 1968. He wrote for the 1973 film '' Habla, mudita'', which was entered into the 23rd Berlin Internation ...

in 2004, is about her life. In December 2007, when the Madrid-Málaga high-speed rail line was opened, railway company

RENFE Renfe (, ), officially Renfe-Operadora, is Spain's national state-owned railway company. It was created in 2005 upon the split of the former Spanish National Railway Network (RENFE) into the Administrador de Infraestructuras Ferroviarias ( ...

renamed Málaga railway station María Zambrano. Likewise, the central library of her alma mater, the

Complutense University of Madrid The Complutense University of Madrid (, UCM; ) is a public research university located in Madrid. Founded in Alcalá in 1293 (before relocating to Madrid in 1836), it is one of the oldest operating universities in the world, and one of Spain's ...

was named after her. In 2017 the

City Council unanimously approved to declare her an adopted daughter of the city. The campus of the Universidad of Valladolid in Segovia is named after her as well.

Philosophy

For Zambrano, there are two main attitudes towards life: the philosophical and the poetic. Philosophy starts with the divine: daily things are explained with recourse to the gods, until someone ask himself: what are things? Thus, the philosophical attitude emerges when human beings wonder, i.e. because of ignorance. The poetic attitude is the answer, the calmness in which we explore the answers to everything, moved not by wonder born from ignorance, but by our human interest and desire to know, to understand, to share, to express. Her philosophical attitude is conveyed by means of an unusual language and a creative expression of her way of thinking. It determines her literary style and is the basis for what she named her "method".

Politics

In all Zambrano's work there is a political spirit manifested in very different ways in her thinking. Her political action was more direct in the years preceding the establishment of the Second Republic and during the Civil War. Nonetheless, she refused to take part in any political party and thus rejected a seat in the Spanish Parliament (''Cortes Generales'') offered by Jimenez de Asua. Although she opted to go on with her philosophical vocation, she did not give up on politics, and which she engaged from the core of thought itself. She explained in her first book "Horizonte del liberalismo"(1930), that "politics are done always when it is thought to direct life" and that is precisely what she aspired to achieve by means of her poetic activity, criticism of fascist movements, the discursive reason, and rationalism.

Tributes

Malaga's main railway station is named after Maria Zambrano.

Bibliography

;Selected primary literature: * ''Horizonte del liberalismo'' (Horizon of Liberalism) (1930). * ''Hacia un saber del alma'' (1934). * ''Filosofía y poesía'' (Philosophy and Poetry) (1940). * ''La agonía de Europa'' (The Agony of Europe) (1945). * ''Hacia un saber sobre el alma'' (Towards a Knowledge of the Soul) (1950). * ''El hombre y lo divino '' (Man and the Divine) (1955). * ''Persona y democracia'' (Person and Democracy) (1959). * ''España, sueño y verdad'' (Spain, dream and truth) (1965). * ''La tumba de Antígona'' (Antigone's Tomb) (1967). * ''Claros del bosque'' (1977). * ''De la aurora'' (1986). * ''Los bienaventurados'' (1979). * ''El pensamiento vivo de Séneca'' (1941). * ''El sueño creador'' (1965). * ''Los sueños y el tiempo'' (reissued in 1998). * ''El reposo de la luz'' (1986). * ''Para una historia de la piedad'' (Towards a history of charity) (1989). * ''Delirio y destino'' (written in 1953; published in 1989), translated by Carol Maier, with a commentary by Roberta Johnson, ''Delirium and Destiny: A Spaniard in Her Twenties'' (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999). * ''Unamuno'' (written in 1940; published in 2003). * ''Cartas de la Pièce. Correspondencia con Agustín Andreu'' (2002). * ''Islas'' (Islands) (Ed. Jorge Luis Arcos) (2007). ;Secondary literature: * Bush, Andrew. "María Zambrano and the Survival of Antigone," ''

diacritics A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...

'' 34 (3–4) (2004): 90–111. * Caballero, Beatriz. "La centralidad del concepto de delirio en el pensamiento de María Zambrano," ''Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies'' (12) (2008): 89–106. * Caballero Rodríguez, Beatriz. ''María Zambrano: A Life of Poetic Reason and Political Commitment''. Cardiff: University of Wales Press (2017).
Special Issue: María Zambrano In Dialogue. ''Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies'' 16.
4 * Ros, Xon. ''The Cultural Legacy of María Zambrano''. Cambridge: Legenda (2017). * Källgren, Karolina Enquist. ''María Zambrano’s Ontology of Exile: Expressive Subjectivity''. Palgrave Macmillan Cham (2019).

Sources

* Claire Buck (ed.), ''Bloomsbury Guide to Women's Literature'' (1992) * Caballero Rodríguez, Beatriz, ''María Zambrano: A Life of Poetic Reason and Political Commitment'' (Wales University Press, 2017).

External links

Biographical chronology in Spanish.

Extensive bibliography in Spanish.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zambrano, Maria 1904 births 1991 deaths People from Vélez-Málaga Premio Cervantes winners 20th-century Spanish philosophers Spanish people of the Spanish Civil War (Republican faction) Exiles of the Spanish Civil War in France Spanish women philosophers Spanish women essayists 20th-century Spanish essayists Exiles of the Spanish Civil War in Switzerland Exiles of the Spanish Civil War in Cuba Exiles of the Spanish Civil War in the United States Spanish women of the Spanish Civil War (Republican faction) Spanish women of the Spanish Civil War Las Sinsombrero members Writers from Madrid 20th-century Spanish women writers People from Segovia Complutense University of Madrid alumni