August 12, 2021 <Back to Index>
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Jacinto Benavente y Martínez (August 12, 1866 – July 14, 1954) was one of the foremost Spanish dramatists of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1922. Born in Madrid, the son of a celebrated pediatrician, he returned drama to reality by way of social criticism: declamatory verse giving way to prose, melodrama to comedy, formula to experience, impulsive action to dialogue and the play of minds. Benavente showed a preoccupation with aesthetics and later with ethics. A liberal monarchist and a critic of Socialism, he was a reluctant supporter of the Franco regime as the only viable alternative to what he considered the disastrous republican experiment of 1931 - 1936. Benavente died in Aldeaencabo de Escalona (Toledo) at the age of 87. He never married. According to many sources, he was homosexual. Ángel Ganivet García (13 December 1865 in Granada, Spain – 29 November 1898 in Riga), Spanish writer and diplomat. He was considered a precursor to the Generation of '98. On 29 November 1898, disillusioned in love, Ganivet drowned himself in the Daugava River. Nearly failing in his attempt, he was first rescued but managed to throw himself into the river again. Ganivet had contemplated suicide for several years, and he had suffered from progressive syphilitic paralysis. |