Angel de saavedra duque de rivas

monumento al duque de rivas en córdoba

Don Ángel de Saavedra y Ramírez de Baquedano, III Duque de Rivas (español: Ángel de Saavedra y Ramírez de Baquedano, Duque de Rivas; 10 de marzo de 1791 – 22 de junio de 1865) fue un poeta, dramaturgo y político español nacido en Córdoba. Es conocido por su obra Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino (1835), el primer éxito romántico del teatro español.

De Saavedra luchó en la guerra de la Independencia y fue también un miembro destacado del avanzado partido liberal de 1820 a 1823. En 1823, Rivas fue condenado a muerte por sus opiniones liberales y huyó a Inglaterra. Vivió sucesivamente en Italia, Malta y Francia, hasta la muerte de Fernando VII en 1833 y la amnistía de 1834, cuando regresó a España, sucediendo poco después a su hermano como duque de Rivas[1].

En 1813 publicó Ensayos poéticos, y entre esa fecha y su primer exilio se pusieron en escena varias de sus tragedias (las más notables son Alatar, 1814, y Lanuza, 1822). Las huellas de la influencia extranjera son observables en El Moro expósito (1833), poema narrativo dedicado a John Hookham Frere; éstas son aún más marcadas en Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino (estrenada el 22 de marzo de 1835 en Madrid),[1] drama surgido de una encendida polémica literaria[cita requerida].

don álvaro or the force of sino

But after the fall of Espartero, he was appointed mayor of Madrid, formed part of the provisional government and, as vice-president of the Senate, was a strong supporter of declaring the Queen of legal age. The government of González Bravo appointed him minister plenipotentiary to the King of the Two Sicilies, to whom he presented his credentials in Naples on March 11, 1844.

Undoubtedly, the composition of El paso honroso shows an early interest in remote national history; nevertheless, the words with which Rivas dedicated El moro to Frere are those of a grateful disciple: … You have shown me, and set me on this path on which I have entered, I fear, with more daring than success. And further on,

“I repeat that I fear I have not profited by its benefits as I should have done, at least not as much as I would have wished. However, if my poetic taste has improved, it has been thanks to you. I hope that this improvement is worthy of your approval and your encouragement”.

Among the scholars of our time, Walter T. Pattison considers that the fate of Don Alvaro does not consist in any external and supernatural force, but in the circumstances of his origin and in the way he and the society around him react to them (1967: 67 ff.). The arbitrary events in Don Alvaro’s life reveal, and in the drama symbolize, the absurdity of the illusion of finding in divine or human love, the key to a harmonious interpretation of life (Cardwell cited by Shaw, 1986: 20).

the work ‘poesías completas’ is presented at casa del lector.

But after the fall of Espartero, he was appointed mayor of Madrid, formed part of the provisional government and, as vice-president of the Senate, he was a strong supporter of declaring the Queen of age. The government of González Bravo appointed him minister plenipotentiary to the King of the Two Sicilies, to whom he presented his credentials in Naples on March 11, 1844.

romanticism ii: zorrilla and the duke of rivas

Later in Cadiz he met Alcala Galiano -later a close friend-, Martinez de la Rosa, the Count of Toreno, Jose Joaquin de Mora, and the most famous poet of the time, Quintana, who had a strong influence on his first patriotic poems.

The intended effect is to strengthen readers’ confidence in their ability to understand a docile and unambiguous reality, the opposite of what a true romantic would aim for. The first volume of Rivas’s poetry appeared in Cadiz in 1814, followed by a second edition in two volumes in 1820, which already included two tragedies, The Duke of Aquitaine (1817) and Malek-Adhel (1818).

It clearly derives from Raquel (1778) by García de la Huerta. To understand it and to understand Rivas’s other tragedies prior to Don Álvaro, it is necessary to remember that the mentality of the intellectual minority during the Enlightenment – with its adherence to reason, humanity, virtue and moderation – was intrinsically anti-tragic. The main characteristic of tragedy is to question cosmic harmony, whose existence the writers of the Age of Enlightenment rarely questioned. Rivas’s problem in Ataulfo seems to lie in his instinctive rejection of the idea that the force of human passions was enough to subvert the equilibrium of a society conceived as the work of a benevolent God. Therefore, Ataulfo’s character lacks any kind of tragic evolution. Rivas, in 1814, does not deny the tragic potential inherent in the human condition; but he balances it with the greatness of spirit of the individual.