Baltasar Gracián

Baltasar Gracián y Morales (Spanish: [baltaˈsaɾ ɣɾaˈθjan]; 8 January 1601 – 6 December 1658), better known as Baltasar Gracián, was a Spanish Jesuit priest and Baroque prose writer and philosopher. He was born in Belmonte, near Calatayud (Aragón). His writings were lauded by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.

He is best known for his book The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647), but his novel El Criticón (1651-57) is considered his greatest work.

The son of a doctor, in his childhood Gracián lived with his uncle, who was a priest. He studied at a Jesuit school in 1621 and 1623 and theology in Zaragoza. He was ordained in 1627 and took his final vows in 1635.

He assumed the vows of the Jesuits in 1633 and dedicated himself to teaching in various Jesuit schools. He spent time in Huesca, where he befriended the local scholar Vincencio Juan de Lastanosa, who helped him achieve an important milestone in his intellectual upbringing. He acquired fame as a preacher, although some of his oratorical displays, such as reading a letter sent from Hell from the pulpit, were frowned upon by his superiors. He was named Rector of the Jesuit College of Tarragona and wrote works proposing models for courtly conduct such as El héroe (The Hero), El político (The Politician), and El discreto (The Discreet One). During the Catalan Revolt, he was chaplain for the Spanish army that lifted the French siege of Lleida (Lérida) in 1646.

In 1651, he published the first part of the El Criticón without the permission of his superiors, whom he disobeyed repeatedly. That attracted the Society's displeasure. Ignoring the reprimands, he published the second part of Criticón in 1657 and so he was sanctioned and exiled to Graus in early 1658. Soon, Gracián wrote to apply for membership in another religious order. His demand was not met, but his sanction was reduced. In April 1658, he was sent to several minor positions under the college of Tarazona. His physical decline prevented him from attending the provincial congregation of Calatayud and on 6 December 1658 Gracián died in Tarazona, near Zaragoza in the Kingdom of Aragón.

Gracián is the most representative writer of the Spanish Baroque literary style known as Conceptismo (Conceptism), of which he was the most important theoretician; his Agudeza y arte de ingenio (Wit and the Art of Inventiveness) is at once a poetic, a rhetoric and an anthology of the conceptist style.

In 1985, the Aragonese village in which he was born, Belmonte de Calatayud (Belmonte del Río Perejiles) officially changed its name to Belmonte de Gracián in his honour.

Gracián's style, generically called conceptism, is characterized by ellipsis and the concentration of a maximum of significance in a minimum of form, an approach referred to in Spanish as agudeza (wit), and which is brought to its extreme in the Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia (literally Manual Oracle and Art of Discretion, commonly translated as The Art of Worldly Wisdom), which is almost entirely composed of three hundred maxims with commentary. He constantly plays with words: each phrase becomes a puzzle, using the most diverse rhetorical devices.

Its appeal has endured: in 1992, Christopher Maurer's translation of this book remained 18 weeks (2 weeks in first place) in The Washington Post's list of Nonfiction General Best Sellers. It has sold nearly 200,000 copies.

The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica wrote of Gracián that: "He has been excessively praised by Schopenhauer, whose appreciation of the author induced him to translate his works into German, and he has also been praised by Ticknor and others. He is an acute thinker and observer, led by his systematic misanthropy and by his fantastic literary theories".

Nietzsche wrote of El Discreto, "Europe has never produced anything finer or more complicated in matters of moral subtlety," and Schopenhauer, who translated it into German, considered the book "Absolutely unique... a book made for constant use... a companion for life" for "those who wish to prosper in the great world."

The English translation of Oráculo manual by Joseph Jacobs (London: Macmillan and Co., Limited), first published in 1892, was a huge commercial success, with many reprintings over the years (most recently by Shambala). Jacobs's translation is alleged to have been read by Winston Churchill, seven years later, on the ship taking him to the Boer Wars.

In Paris, in 1924, a revision and reprint of the translation into French by Abraham Nicolas Amelot de La Houssaye, with a preface by André Rouveyre, attracted a wide readership there, and was admired by André Gide. A new translation by Christopher Maurer (New York: Doubleday) became a national bestseller in the U.S. in 1992 [1], and the English edition, which sold almost 200,000 copies, was translated into Finnish, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and many other languages.

El Héroe (1637, The Hero), draws a portrait of the ideal Christian leader. Translated as El Héroe: The Valiant Hero (1637) by M. San Pedro.

El Político Don Fernando el Católico (1640), "The Politician King Ferdinand the Catholic", presents the ideal image of a king. Translated as El Politico: The Perfect King (1640) by M. San Pedro.

El Arte de Ingenio (1642), revised as Agudeza y Arte de Ingenio in 1648, an essay on literature and aesthetics. Translated as El Arte de Ingenio: Acuity and The Art of Ingenuity (1642) by M. San Pedro.

El Discreto (1646), describes the qualities that make a man complete and the center of perfection. Translated as El Discreto: The Complete Man (1646) by M. San Pedro.

El Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia (1647), a collection of three hundred aphorisms offering practical advice on how to make your way in a chaotic world, and how to make it well. Translated as The Art of Worldly Wisdom by Joseph Jacobs (1892) and Christopher Maurer (1992) and as The Wisdom of Baltasar Gracián by J. Leonard Kaye (1992). Also translated as El Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia: The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647) by M. San Pedro.