Ana María Matute and her particular universe, at the Cervantes Institute in Madrid
- ‘He who does not invent does not live’
- Childhood, youth, maturity, depression and rebirth
- All the prizes
- Censorship
- The Cervantes Prize
- Photo gallery
This year marks the centenary of the birth of the writer Ana María Matute, a woman who always cared for the child she was and who claimed not to have lost the innocence of her childhood.
A childhood in which she already thought she was different, out of place in a world she did not feel was her own, sensitive to sensitivities that other girls did not have, and with an overflowing imagination that found refuge in literature. Perhaps that is why, from the age of five, she began to write, and perhaps that was also the reason why she liked to crawl under the kitchen table at home to listen to the stories told by Isabel and Anastasia, the names of the cook and the tata.
Ana María Matute was the second of five siblings and a lonely girl who had an imaginary friend, Gorogó, who lived through the civil war, who at 17 had already written her first novel, and at 20, published it, who also married very young, who suffered in her marriage, whose separation meant something much more cruel: That her son was taken away from her, that she became the third woman to be admitted to the Real Academia de la Lengua, that she was also awarded the Cervantes Prize... Glorious days when she reached the top and days of enormous sadness and loneliness.
The author of Olvidado Rey Gudú (1996), undoubtedly one of her greatest works, declared in one of her many interviews that happiness is not like love, which comes without looking for it, but that one must help to find it. She knew very well what she was talking about.
‘He who does not invent does not live’
What Ana María Matute's life was like, both personal and literary, can be seen at the Cervantes Institute in Madrid, an institution that is hosting an exhibition on the Cervantes Prize winner under the beautiful title of ‘Ana María Matute. He who does not invent does not live’, which can be visited until 9 February.
And when you enter the headquarters on Calle Alcalá 49, you stand there reading that phrase so typical of her before climbing the steps that lead you into her already known secrets, which show you her curiosities, unpublished texts, letters, drawings of the author, her own self-portrait made when she was 14 years old, files, her short stories, books dedicated to her and important objects for this writer, such as her typewriter and that last sheet of paper that was left unfinished when the catrina came to visit her and on which you can read the name of the tata in her novel Family Demons: Mada.
Other curiosities that can be seen are the notebook in which she wrote by hand her magnificent play Pequeño teatro, with which she would later win the Planeta Prize; ‘El ahogadito’, an unpublished story from the collection Los niños tontos (1956) that was censored and that visitors can now read; or the things she always had on her table: a medieval glass, a crossword puzzle from La Vanguardia, a small bottle of her grandmother's potions, a cigar case with her image on it...
Childhood, youth, maturity, depression and rebirth
Curated by the philologist Maria Paz Ortuño Ortín, the exhibition has been divided into five sections: Childhood, youth, maturity, depression and rebirth. ‘Vital above all else and full of love, Matute drank life in spurts’, reads one of the panels at the beginning of the exhibition, which also includes the three circumstances that marked the writer: her birth into a well-to-do family; her experience in Mansilla de la Sierra in La Rioja, where her family was from and where she discovered freedom and also injustice; and the civil war that broke out when she was 11 years old: ‘We were, then, fundamentally astonished children, the children of the long stupor’, the writer stated in a lecture she gave at the University of Indiana in 1965-66.
All the prizes
Through panels and documents, letters, books and drawings in the display cases, we are told about the life and literary evolution of the Barcelona-born writer, her marriage to Ramón Eugenio Goicoechea, her financial difficulties, their separation and the loss of guardianship of her son, Juan Pablo, a great blow for Ana María Matute, who always spoke of how well her mother-in-law behaved, who secretly took the child to her so that she could see him.
In time, the author rebuilt her life and lived moments of great happiness in Sitges. The 50s and 60s were very important years in the author's life and full of successes. In 1952 she won the Café Gijón Prize for Fiesta al Noroeste; two years later she won the Planeta Prize for Pequeño teatro); and in 1958, the Critics' Prize and the National Literature Prize for Los hijos muertos (1958); and the decade ended with the Nadal Prize for her novel Primera memoria (First Memory).
The National Prize for Children's and Young People's Literature was awarded to him in 1984 for Sólo un pie descalzo. But after those marvellous moments, sadness won the battle again, he was not at his best emotionally. And that part of her life is also reflected in this exhibition: her depression.
Censorship
The part devoted to censorship is curious - let us not forget that in those times any publication had to be subjected to rigid control - in which we can see that except for his book Luciérnagas, which was severely punished, not being authorised for publication because it was ‘destructive of essential human and religious values’, other books suffered only the crossing out of some paragraphs or words, such as The Abels ‘because they were an attack on morals’ or The Soldiers Cry at Night, which was described as absurd.
‘I believe and I repeat that the worst and most serious prejudice caused by censorship is self-censorship,’ she said.
The Cervantes Prize
In 2010 she was awarded the Cervantes Prize. In an emotional ceremony held at the University of Alcalá de Henares, she read her speech on 27 April 2011. A large photograph of Ana María Matute gives way to a small corner with two chairs where you can find those small, more personal objects that the writer had on her table and a screen where you can watch the event, listen to this great writer who also, she said on occasion, without forgetting her great vitalism, felt disillusioned with a society that had not given her what she expected.
Matute is one of the great Spanish writers, her work has been translated into all languages. A huge panel shows the covers of her various novels such as The Soldiers Cry at Night in Arabic, Birds in Japanese, Uninhabited Paradise in Polish...
Photo gallery
The tour ends with a series of photographs, ‘Las amistades’, where Ana María Matute can be seen with different characters and in different places. Matute died in Barcelona on 25 June 2014, aged almost 89. Looking at that small gallery, one can imagine the number of photographs with other characters and friends who have had to be left out for space. There are the writers Camilo José Cela, Alfredo Brice Echenique, Fernando Delgado, Francisco Ayala, Augusto Monterroso, Cabrera Infante; writers such as Ana María Moix, Cristina Fernández Cubas, Clara Janés, Gloria Fuertes, Carmen Conde, Rosa Chacel, Esther Tusquets, a young Almudena Grandes... and other characters such as Santiago Carrillo, Carmen Alborch, Josefina Molina, Raphael and Rigoberta Menchú. Among all these photos, which are not too many for the long life lived, one stands out in our eyes: two mature women with white hair, two faces that do not fear the passing of time, two great writers, two fighters, two very marked personalities, two examples that one can reach great heights if one sets one's mind to it. They are Ana María Matute and Carmen Martín Gaite, who was also born a hundred years ago.