Camilo José Cela

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Don Camilo José Cela Trulock, Marquis of Iria Flavia (es: Don Camilo José Cela Trulock, marqués de Iria Flavia) (May 11, 1916 – January 17, 2002) was an influential Spanish writer and member of the Generation of '50.

[edit] Biography

Camilo José Cela was born in Iria Flavia, Padrón, Galicia, Spain. Before he became a professional writer, Cela attended the University of Madrid, where he briefly pursued a law degree. He also fought in the Spanish Civil War on the side of Franco, until he was wounded by an errant grenade and his military service necessarily came to an end. After the war, Cela dedicated himself to newspaper work and took several jobs of an essentially bureaucratic nature, including a position of censor that would later bring him criticism. In 1944 he married Rosario Conde Picavea with whom he had a son, Camilo José Cela Conde, in 1946.

Cela published his first novel, La Familia de Pascual Duarte (The Family of Pascual Duarte), when he was 26. This novel has similarities to other contemporary works that feature an existential, morally ambiguous protagonist. Pascual Duarte has trouble finding validity in conventional morality and commits a number of crimes, including murders, for which he feels nothing. In this sense he is similar to Mersault in Albert Camus's novel The Stranger. This novel is also of particular importance as it played a large part in shaping the direction of the post-war Spanish novel.

Cela's best known work, La Colmena (The Hive) was published in 1951, featuring more than 300 characters and a style showing the influence of both Spanish realism (best exemplified by Miguel de Cervantes and Benito Pérez Galdós) and contemporary English- and French-language authors, such as Sartre and Joyce. Cela's typical style — a sarcastic, often grotesque, form of realism — is exemplified in La Colmena. It should be also noted that, as with some of his other works in this period, La Colmena was first published in Argentina, as Generalísimo Franco's Roman Catholic Church-affiliated government banned it because of the perceived immorality of its content.

From the late 1960s, with the publication of San Camilo 1936, Cela's work became increasingly experimental. In 1988, for example, he wrote Cristo versus Arizona (Christ versus Arizona), which tells the story of a duel in the OK Corral in a single sentence that is more than a hundred pages long.

In 1957 he was appointed a member of the Real Academia Española. Cela was also named Marquis of Iria Flavia by King Juan Carlos I. He was appointed Royal Senator in the Constituent Cortes, where he exerted some influence in the wording of the Spanish Constitution of 1978. In 1989, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

In his later years he was infamous for his boutades: he boasted in an TVE interview with Mercedes Milá about his capability to absorb a litre of water via his anus, offering to demonstrate. He described the Spanish Cervantes Prize as a piece of shit, to be later awarded with it. He contested in the Premio Planeta, which many despise as a commercial operation.

He died in Madrid on January 17, 2002.

His testament was disputed because he favoured his widow and second younger wife Marina Castaño over his son Camilo José Cela Conde from a previous marriage.

[edit] External links

• BBC obituary
• Biography of Camilo José Cela
• Photos
• The Nobel Foundation has a site on him, including speeches, biography and bibliography.