María Zambrano
Whoever is lucky enough to read her finds in her writings, the mere essence of the most recent thoughts worries, the presence of such Andalusian philosophers, and therefore, so Spanish, like Seneca, Solomon Ibn Gabirol, Suárez, Antonio Machado, and on the other hand Spinoza, Ortega, Unamuno… And while doing so, not falling into a cheap and frustrating chauvinism. That is because even if its solutions of the philosophic problems, which are ultimately the firsts and transcendental human problems, are inspired by the purest Spanish thought, the philosophic culture of the Western Europe is present, assumed and materialized in all her approach. As Jaspers would say: “Every philosopher’s theory analysed, leads step by step to the whole philosophy and to the entire philosophy’s history.”
Juan Fernando Ortega Muñoz, “María Zambrano o la metafísica recuperada”.
In 1904 María Zambrano was born and her early years began
Biography
Childhood: 1904 – 1907
When María Zambrano’s parents moved to a graduated school (children separated by age and knowledge level), in Vélez Málaga, they made possible the naissance of what is now consider as the most important thinker of the twentieth century. While Blas José Zambrano García de Carabante (1874 – 1938), thinker and a liberal educationalist, was studying in Granada, he met Araceli Alarcón Delgado (1878 – 1946) also teacher and educationalist. Once they got married, they both came to Vélez-Málaga, a paradise land remembered by María along her long and fruitful life. María was born in the spring of 1904, specifically on Friday April 22nd, at half past two in the afternoon. She brought joy to the recent married couple of teachers, Araceli Alarcón and Blas Zambrano. She was born in her own residence on Calle Mendrugo 4, as it was usual in that times (now the residence of Federico Matías). As she said herself: “I was born half dead”, talking about the fact that her birth was complicated, as she was facing life and death all that weekend.
Youth: 1908 – 1939
Once her first childhood years of living in Vélez-Málaga flew away, her parents moved to Madrid due to work reasons in 1908, where Blas Zambrano taught Spanish Grammar. A year later, in 1909, they moved to Segovia where María’s mother began working as a schoolteacher and her father took up a professorship of Spanish Grammar at the Escuela Normal (Spanish Institution that provided teacher training to students). There, her sister Araceli will be born in 1911, and in 1913, María will start her last two years of Secondary Education, being one of the only two female students.
María’s higher education took place in Madrid, between 1924 and 1930, where she enrolled as a free student in philosophy studies in the Universidad Central, receiving classes from Xavier Zubiri and José Ortega y Gasset. When this period of her life ended, she was politically involved in the Second Spanish Republic from 1930 to 1936, in addition to teaching metaphysics at the Universidad Central in 1931. Between the years of 1932 and 1935, she participated in the Misiones Pedagógicas, promoted by Manuel Bartolomé Cossío, a project whose objective was to improve people life conditions who live in rural Spain through education and access to culture. Later, María and her husband, Alfonso Rodríguez Aldave, a secretary at the Spanish embassy in Chile, got married in October 1936. After this, the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) became a turning point in María’s life, leading the couple to leave Spain. They returned to Spain on the 19th of June in 1937 and then María left for Valencia alongside other intellectuals, though eventually she moved with her family to live in Barcelona in 1938. In 1939, she forced herself to cross the French border with her family, while her mother and sister remained in Paris as the same time as she was leaving for Mexico with her husband.
Exile in America: 1939 – 1952
From 1939, María Zambrano lived in a long exile, initially with her husband and later with her sister Araceli, with whom she was close until she passed away. In the beginning, the exile took place in America (1939 – 1953) in Morelia (Mexico), Havana (Cuba), and Puerto Rico. Then, she returned to Europe travelling to Paris in 1946 after her mother’s death. There, she joined her sister and together they travelled to Florence, Venice and Rome. They faced economic difficulties while María worked tirelessly in her most important books such as the essay La violencia europea (1941), part of her book La agonía de Europa o El hombre y lo divino (1955), to name a few.
Exile in Europe: 1953 – 1980
During this second stage of the exile of María Zambrano she decided to come back to Europe, initially to Rome where she will have a long stay, always with Araceli by her side (1953 – 1964), before moving to La Pièce, France, in the Jura mountains and where her sister died in 1972, and then to Ferney Voltaire and Geneve in 1980. Those years she wrote a big part of her main works, El hombre y lo divino, Persona y democracia and Claros del bosque, which have been considered her most important works in the philosophical world.
As always, during her lengthy exile, María was surrounded by good friends, thinkers, artists that were always by her side, some of them supporting her financially, being her protectors. They were able to help the Zambrano sisters to live even with needs, some of them deserve to be mentioned here, such as the English painter Timothy Osborne, Josefina Tarafa or the Venezuelan couple Reyna Rivas, poet and singer and the painter Armando Barrios, who always tried to help her as much as possible with true friendship and financial support.
Before María’s Zambrano return to Spain in 1984, she unexpectedly finds the recognition of very important figures such as the philosopher José Luis López Aranguren, who wrote in Revista de Occidente an article about her with the suggestive title of “The dreams of María Zambrano”, 1966; in addition to the José Luis Abellán and the poet José Ángel Valente ones. The awards started to begin at the start of the 1980’s decade, in the same year she was awarded with the Honorary Citizen of the Principality of Asturias. In 1981 she was awarded with the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities, and, in addition, she was awarded as the Honorary Daughter by the townhall of Vélez-Málaga, being visited in Geneve by it’s major, Juan Gámez and a group of friends such as the poet Joaquín Lobato among others.
Later on, the awards continued when she was awarded the Honorary Doctorate by the Universidad de Málaga in 1982; institutes of baccalaureate wearing her name such as the Leganés one; or diverse conferences in tribute to her.
Return to Spain:: 1984 – 1991
It won’t be until 1984 when María Zambrano returned definitively to Spain, Jesús Moreno Sanz Travelled to Switzerland and accompanied her back. She was received on the Barajas airport by Jaime Salinas, who in that moment was Director-General for Publishing and Literature and son of Pedro Salinas. She decided on her return to settle down in Madrid, in Calle Antonio Maura, 14, from where she will carry a fruitful intellectual activity until 1986, publishing De la aurora (1986), Notas de un método (1989) and Los bienaventurados (1990).
In 1987 the María Zambrano Foundation was created in Vélez-Málaga, to which she left her archive and library, and which has continued to work until the present day to make known the rich and immense legacy left by the thinker.
In 1988 she was awarded with the Cervantes Prize, being recognised for her intellectual and humanistic facet and becoming the first woman to be distinguished. She died in Madrid on 6th February 1991, and was buried in her hometown, Vélez-Málaga, as she wished, in the shade of a lemon tree and next to the mortal remains of her sister Araceli. The tombstone bears the phrase from El Cantar de los cantares “Surge, amica mea, et veni”.
Thoughts and works
Thought:
Her first considerations were to deal with the most vulnerable groups (such as, at that time, women, young people, workers and peasants, groups that lacked a voice in public opinion and, as was the case with women, also lacked the vote). Over time, her thought would evolve towards wider horizons where the idea of the person would become the paradigm of dignity and human coexistence. In the project of the realisation of the person lies her true work. On the political front too, her vindictive and combative stance in favour of a republican Spain would initially turn, at first, against the uncontrolled situation of a country on the verge of war and, in successive years, would become deeper and reflexive because of the immediate events that predicted a fascist shift in the old Europe. Philosophically, the germinal drop of his teacher Ortega will soon be transformed into a renovating approach where rationalist thought will be overcome by Zambrano’s poetic reason, where reason and poetic intuition will awake in us and in our conscience with the same force.
Chronology of works:
1930.- “Nuevo liberalismo”
1937.- “Los intelectuales en el drama de España”
1939.- “Pensamiento y poesía en la vida española”
1939.- “Filosofía y poesía”
1940.- “El freudismo, testimonio del hombre actual”
1940.- “Isla de Puerto Rico. (Nostalgia y esperanza de un mundo mejor)”
1943.- “La confesión, género literario y método”
1944.- “El pensamiento vivo de Séneca”
1945.- “La agonía de Europa”
1950.- “Hacia un saber sobre el alma”
1955.- “El hombre y lo divino”
1958.- “Persona y democracia”
1960.- “La España de Galdós”
1960.- “I sogni e il tempo”
1964.- “Spagna, pensiero, poesia e una cittá”
1965.- “España, sueño y verdad”
1965.- “El sueño creador”
1967.- “La tumba de Antígona”
1971.- “Obras reunidas”
1977.- “Claros del bosque”
1981.- “El nacimiento. Dos escritos autobiográficos”
1982.- “Dos fragmentos sobre el amor”
1984.- “Andalucía, sueño y realidad”
1986.- “De la aurora”
1986.- “Senderos. Los intelectuales en el drama de España y La tumba de Antígona”
1987.- “María Zambrano en Orígenes”
1989.- “Notas de un método”
1989.- “Delirio y destino”
1989.- “Para una historia de la piedad”
1989.- “Algunos lugares de la pintura”
1990.- “Los bienaventurados”
1991.- “El parpadeo de la luz”
1992.- “Los sueños y el tiempo”
Most important awards
- Hija Adoptiva del Principado de Asturias (Honorary Daughter of the Principality of Asturias), 1978
- Hija Predilecta de Andalucía (Distinguished Daughter of Andalusia), 1981
- Premio Príncipe de Asturias en comunicación y humanidades (Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities), 1981
- Doctora Honoris Causa (Honorary Doctorate) (Universidad de Málaga), 1982
- Premio Extraordinario Pablo Iglesias (Pablo Iglesias Extraordinary Award), 1983
- Medalla de Oro de Madrid (Gold Medal of Madrid), 1986
- Premio Miguel de Cervantes (Miguel de Cervantes Prize) (Spain), 1988