Ramón del Valle-Inclán

Ramón María del Valle-Inclán y de la Peña (in Vilanova de Arousa,Galicia, Spain, 28 October 1866 – Santiago de Compostela, 5 January 1936) was a Spanish dramatist, novelist and member of the Spanish Generation of 98. He is considered perhaps the most noteworthy and certainly the most radical dramatist working to subvert the traditionalism of the Spanish theatrical establishment in the early part of the 20th century. His drama is made all the more important by its influence on later generations of Spanish dramatists. His statue in Madrid therefore receives the homage of the theatrical profession on the national theater day.

His early writings were in line with French symbolism and modernism; however, his later evolution took his works to more radical formal experiments. He despised literary realism and openly disregarded Benito Pérez Galdós, its most prominent Spanish representative. His political views, accordingly, changed from traditional absolutism (in Spain known as Carlismo) towards anarchism. This also caused him problems.

All his life he struggled to live up to his bohemian ideals, and stayed loyal to his aestheticist beliefs. However, he had to write undercover for serialised popular novels. During a row with a fellow writer his wrist was wounded and became infected, and he lost his arm.

Valle-Inclán's work (for example, Divine Words (Divinas palabras) and Bohemian Lights (Luces de Bohemia) attacks what he saw as the hypocrisy, moralising and sentimentality of the bourgeois playwrights, satirises the views of the ruling classes and targets in particular concepts such as masculine honour, militarism, patriotism and attitudes to the Crown and the Roman Catholic Church. His drama also featured irreverent portrayal of figures from Spain's political past and deployed crude, obscene language and vulgar imagery in a mocking attack on theatrical blandness.

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