La marquesa Rosalinda, Volumen25

Galician by birth, Madrilenian by adoption, Ramon del Valle-Inclan was Spain's foremost prose stylist of the twentieth century. He is remembered in Spain almost as much for the colorful Bohemian persona he adopted and made famous as for his writings. Valle-Inclan began his career as a decadent aesthete, much influenced by the fin-de-siecle French symbolists. The four novels he entitled Sonatas (1902--05)---one for each season of the year---recount four erotic episodes in the life of the Marques de Bradomin, an "ugly, Catholic, sentimental Don Juan." His dramatic trilogy of "barbaric comedies"---Heraldic Eagle (1907), Romance of Wolves (1908), and Silver Face (1922)---powerfully evokes the primitive grandeur of his native Galicia. Long considered unperformable on account of their violence and obscenity, these plays have enjoyed great critical and popular success since Franco's death. The Lamp of Marvels (1916) contains Valle's aesthetic philosophy. The last stage of Valle's career was marked by the creation of a new type of novel he christened the esperpento: a stylized, dehumanized, highly objective satiric form well suited to express the crisis in values occurring all over Europe immediately after World War I. Ramón del Valle-Inclán fue un novelista, poeta y autor dramático español, además de cuentista, ensayista y periodista. Inicia estudios universitarios, pero no termina la carrera de Derecho, ya que muy pronto se decanta por la literatura. Tras pasar una temporada en Madrid, marcha a México donde escribe para la prensa y, sobre todo, conoce y asimila el Modernismo. Vuelve a Madrid y se incorpora a la vida cultural y bohemia de la ciudad como promotor del Modernismo. Provocativo y extravagante, su estilo literario evolucionó desde un exuberante modernismo y un maduro expresionismo hasta sus peculiares composiciones esperpénticas. De entre su obra destacan las cuatro Sonatas (de primavera, de estío, de otoño y de invierno), que suponen la culminación del modernismo español; Águila de blasón, la primera de sus llamadas comedias bárbaras; La lámpara maravillosa, resumen de su estética y ética; La cabeza del dragón, y Luces de Bohemia.