Fernando Arrabal


Fernando Arrabal Terán is a Spanish playwright, screenwriter, film director, novelist, and poet. He was born in Melilla and settled in France in 1955. Regarding his nationality, Arrabal describes himself as "desterrado", or "half-expatriate, half-exiled".
Arrabal has directed seven full-length feature films and has published over 100 plays; 14 novels; 800 poetry collections, chapbooks, and artists' books; several essays; and his notorious "Letter to General Franco" during the dictator's lifetime. His complete plays have been published, in multiple languages, in a two-volume edition totaling over two thousand pages. New York Times">New York City">New York Times theatre critic Mel Gussow has called Arrabal the last survivor among the "three avatars of modernism".
In 1962, Arrabal co-founded the Panic Movement with Alejandro Jodorowsky and Roland Topor, inspired by the god Pan. He was elected Transcendent Satrap of the Collège de Pataphysique in 1990. Forty other Transcendent Satraps have been elected over the past half-century, including Marcel Duchamp, Eugène Ionesco, Man Ray, Boris Vian, Dario Fo, Umberto Eco, and Jean Baudrillard. Arrabal spent three years as a member of André Breton's surrealist group and was a friend of Andy Warhol and Tristan Tzara.
Writer and critic Javier Villan wrote of Arrabal:
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Childhood (1932–1946)

Arrabal was born to Carmen Terán González and painter Fernando Arrabal Ruiz.
On July 17, 1936, when insurrections within the military were staged against the constitutional government of the Second Spanish Republic, launching the Spanish Civil War, Arrabal's father remained faithful to the Republic and was sentenced to death for mutiny. His sentence was later commuted to 30 years' imprisonment. He was transferred between prisons, from Santi Espiritu in Melilla to Monte Hacho in Ceuta, where he attempted suicide, as well as Ciudad Rodrigo and Burgos. On December 4, 1941, he was sent to the Burgos Hospital due to apparent mental disorder. Later research has found that he likely feigned mental order in order to be transferred to a lower security prison. On December 29, 1941, he escaped from the hospital in his pajamas, despite three feet of snow covering the countryside. Despite extensive research, he was never seen again.
About his father, Arrabal has written: "Without trying to compare what is incomparable, when I confront these twilight episodes, I often think of that scapegoat, my father. The day on which the Uncivil War began, he was locked up by his 'compassionate companions' in the flag room of the Melilla military barracks. He was meant to think carefully, since he risked a death sentence for mutiny if he did not join them in their insurrection. After an hour, Lieutenant Fernando Arrabal summoned his ex-comrades – already! – to inform them that he had pondered long enough. Today, because of this precedent, must I serve as witness, example, or symbol, as he did, of the most fundamental occurrences? I, who am a mere exile. If I am taken away from my beloved numerics, everything around me leads to over-the-counter confusion and disorder. I have no wish to be a scapegoat like my father, I only ask to die while still living, whenever Pan so wishes."
In 1936, Arrabal's mother returned to Ciudad Rodrigo with her young son, Fernando, and found a job at Burgos, then-capitol of the Nationalists and headquarters of General Franco's government. Fernando was enrolled in a local Catholic school from 1937 until 1940, when the Civil War ended and he moved with his mother to Madrid.
Arrabal was awarded the national prize for gifted children in 1941. He continued his studies at Las Escuelas Pías de San Antón, a church school whose alumni have also included Victor Hugo and Jacinto Benavente y Martínez. Arrabal later studied at another distinguished Madrid school, Colegio Padres Escolapios De Getafe. He was an avid reader and was eager to experience life.

Youth and young adulthood (1947–1976)

In 1947, when his mother ordered him to attend preparatory classes for entrance to the Academia General Militar, Arrabal protested by playing hooky. She subsequently sent him to Tolosa, where he studied business at the Escuela Teórico-Práctica de la Industria y el Comercio del Paper, in 1949. By 1950, he had begun writing several plays, which remain unpublished.
In 1951, Arrabal began working in the paper industry at La Papelera Española. He moved to Valencia and passed his bachillerato, the first non-compulsory educational option in Spain for admission to university. He later moved to Madrid and began legal studies. During these years, he frequented the cultural institution Ateneo de Madrid and heard poets from the Postismo school. He was also finishing his early play Picnic, then titled The Soldiers, and writing El triciclo, at first titled Men with a Tricycle.
In 1954, Arrabal hitchhiked to Paris to attend a performance of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children given by the touring Berliner Ensemble. Later that year, in Madrid, he met Luce Moreau, who became his wife. In 1955, he was awarded a three-month scholarship to study in Paris, during which time he lived at the Colegio de España at the Cité Universitaire. While in Paris he suffered a serious relapse of tuberculosis. He considered this disease to be a "lucky mishap" that allowed him to move permanently to his "veritable homeland, that of Kundera and Vives, Saint Ignatius of Loyola and Picasso: exile." In 1976 he appeared in Rosa von Praunheim's New York film Underground and Friends.

Politics

Arrabal had been known for being anti-Francoist and anti-monarchist and interested in anarchist trends in cultural production. Arrabal had a complicated relationship with Communism. He had ties with the Communist Party of Spain during his exile, but a rupture seems to have occurred in 1977 due to a conflict with his play The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria being performed in Barcelona with artists reputed to have Communist Party ties.

Awards and recognition

Arrabal was among the more controversial writers of his time, and his work has been recognized internationally. Awards include the Grand Prize for Theatre of the Académie Française, the Premio Mariano de Cavia for journalism, the Nabokov Prize for novels, the Espasa Prize for essays, and the World Theater Prize.
In 2001, he was nominated for the Premio Cervantes by Nobel Prize in Literature winner Camilo José Cela and José Hierro. He was reportedly a finalist for the Nobel Prize in 2005 due to the solicitation of several institutions and individuals. On July 14, 2005, he was named to France's Légion d'honneur. In 2007, he was awarded a doctorate of letters Honoris Causa by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece.
His other awards and recognition include:

Selected works

Feature-length films

Arrabal has written and directed seven feature-length films, and has been awarded the Premio Pier Paolo Pasolini for his contributions to cinema.
  • 1971: Viva la muerte; co-produced by Isabel-Films and S.A.T.P.E.C. ; starring Nuria Espert, Ivan Henriques, and Anouk Ferjac
  • 1973: J'irai comme un cheval fou; produced by Société Générale de Production – Babylone Films; starring Emmanuelle Riva, Hachemi Marzouk, and George Shannon
  • 1975: L'arbre de Guernica; produced by C.V.C. Communication, Federico Mueller, and Harry N. Blum; starring Mariangela Melato and Ron Faber
  • 1982: The Emperor of Peru ; produced by Babylone Films; starring Mickey Rooney and Monique Leclerc
  • 1983: Le cimetière des voitures; television film; co-produced by Antenne 2 and Babylone Films; starring Alain Bashung and Juliette Berto
  • 1992: Adieu, Babylone!; produced by Antenne 2 – Cinecim; starring Lélia Fischer and Spike Lee
  • 1998: Jorge Luis Borges: Una vida de poesía; produced by Alphaville – Spirali ; starring Lélia Fischer and Alessandro Atti
In 2005, a 3-disc box set of Arrabal's films was released by Cult Epics with Viva la muerte, I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse, and The Tree of Guernica.
Several of Arrabal's plays have been adapted for film, including Le grand cérémonial, directed by Pierre-Alain Jolivet; El triciclo, directed by Luis Argueta; El ladrón de sueños, directed by Arroyo; Pique-nique, directed by Louis Sénéchal; Guernica, directed by Peter Lilienthal; and Fando y Lis, directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky.
One critic wrote, "Viva la muerte is an absolute masterpiece, one of the most astonishing I have seen in my lifetime". Another, for Rolling Stone, wrote, "Arrabal is ferociously original". Amos Vogel wrote, in the Village Voice, "An audacious, paroxistic, and artistically successful work". Raymond Léopold Bruckberger wrote, for Le Monde, "I prefer Arrabal to Fellini or Ingmar Bergman... he is to cinema what Rimbaud is to poetry."

Short films

Operas

Arrabal's opera Faustbal with music by Leonardo Balada premiered at the Teatro Real de Madrid on February 13, 2009, staged by the Comediants of Barcelona. Arrabal wrote of the opera, "Faustbal is a woman who, in the third millennium, is the reincarnation of Alfred Jarry's Doctor Faustroll, a new doctor Faust who asks God and Lucifer for words and prayers so that love and charity might be unified. Nothing can satisfy the hurricane of her scientific curiosity, nor calm the storms of her desires. A genius, very beautiful, and enriched by her transports and transfigurations, she vows a torrid love for her Amazon. She leaps between galaxies while the war to end all civilization rages, and moves through space at supersonic speed. Confronting her, Margarito, supreme leader of the armed forces, dons the armor of brutal, electronic repression. He is madly in love with Faustbal under the sky's cupola. He tries to possess her through the torrent of his tower, employing the services of Mephistopheles himself. Jesús López Cobos, music director of the Teatro Real de Madrid, will conduct the world premiere, which will be sung by sopranos Ana Ibarra and María Rodríguez. The mezzo-soprano Cecilia Diaz will sing the role of the Amazon, while tenors Gerhard Siegel and Eduardo Santamaría will be the two Margaritos, bass Stefano Palatchi will perform the role of God, and baritones Tomas Tomasson and Lauri Vasar will be Mephistopheles."
Four other operas with Arrabal's librettos have been staged, and the author describes them as "always having been as complex, yet suffering from as few complexes, as did Faustbal." They are:
  • Apokaliptica, music by Milko Kelemen.
  • L'opéra de la Bastille, music by Marcel Landowski
  • Picknick im Felde, music by Constantinos Stylianou
  • Guernica, music by Ostfiend Busing
In October 1985, Arrabal made his debut as an opera stage director at the Opéra Royal de Belgique, where he directed Manuel de Falla's La vida breve and Enrique Granados' Goyescas. "Of course," Arrabal commented, "under my direction the onstage chorus was nude, or to be more precise, panically covered with clay."
In 1994, Chamber Made produced the opera of Arrabal's , with libretto by Douglas Horton and music by David Chesworth. The opera ran for two seasons in Melbourne, 1994 and 1996 at the Malthouse Theatre. Australia's The Independent Monthly wrote, "Easily the most impressive and memorable piece of music theatre in 1994."

Novels

  • Baal Babylone, 1959
  • L'enterrement de la sardine
  • Fêtes et rites de la confusion
  • La Tour prends garde
  • La Reverdie
  • La piedra iluminada
  • La vierge rouge
  • La fille de King-Kong
  • L' extravagante croisade d'un castrat amoureux
  • La tueuse du jardin d'hiver
  • Le funambule de Dieu
  • Porté disparu
  • Champagne pour tous
  • ''Como un paraíso de locos''

Artists' books

Arrabal has made over 700 artists' books in collaboration with Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Roland Topor, Julius Baltazar, Antonio Saura, Olivier O. Olivier, Maxime Godard, Jean Cortot, Jorge Camacho, Ralph Gibson, Enrico Baj, Gustavo Charif, Milan Kundera, Michel Houellebecq and others. They include:
  • L'odeur de Sainteté
  • Cinq sonnets, cincq eaux-fortes
  • Sous le flux libertin
  • Triptyque
  • ''Clitoris''

Poetry

  • La pierre de la folie
  • Cent sonnets
  • Humbles paradis
  • Liberté couleur de femme ou Adieu Babylone, Poèmes cinématographiques
  • *Arrabalesques – Lettres à Julius Baltazar
  • Diez poemas pánicos y un cuento
In 2015, some of Arrabal's poems were adapted with music by the band Seagoat Bones on their etude album Phonèmes.

Plays

Arrabal has published over 100 plays in 19 volumes. His plays include, with translations noted:
  • 1952
  • *Le toit
  • * Le char de foin
  • * La blessure incurable
  • 1958
  • *Oraison
  • * Les deux bourreaux
  • * Fando et Lis
  • * Le cimetière des voitures
  • 1961
  • *Guernica
  • * Le labyrinthe
  • * Le tricycle
  • * Pique-nique en campagne.
  • * La bicyclette du condamné
  • 1965
  • *Le grand cérémonial
  • * Cérémonie pour un noir assassiné
  • * Cérémonie pour une chèvre et un nuage
  • 1966
  • *Le couronnement
  • * Concert dans un oeuf
  • 1967
  • *L'architecte et l'empereur d'Assyrie
  • * Les amours impossibles
  • * Les quatre cubes
  • * La communion solennelle
  • * Streap-tease de la jalousie
  • * La jeunesse illustrée
  • * Dieu est-il devenu fou?
  • 1968
  • *Le jardin des délices
  • * Bestialité érotique
  • * Une tortue nommée Dostoïevski
  • * Théâtre choisi
  • 1969
  • *...Et ils passèrent des menottes aux fleurs
  • * L'aurore rouge et noire
  • * Le lai de Barrabas
  • 1970
  • *Happening at the Théâtre Plaisance in Paris in February
  • 1972
  • *Ars Amandi
  • * Dieu tenté par les mathématiques
  • * Le ciel et la merde
  • * La grande revue du XXe siècle
  • 1975
  • *Jeunes barbares d'aujourd'hui
  • 1976
  • *La guerre de mille ans
  • * Sur le fil ou la ballade du train fantôme
  • 1978
  • *La tour de Babel
  • * La marche royale
  • * Une orange sur le mont de Vénus
  • * La gloire en images
  • * Vole-moi un petit milliard
  • * Le pastaga des loufs ou Ouverture Orang-outan
  • * Punk et punk et colégram
  • 1979
  • *Inquisición
  • 1980
  • *Mon doux royaume saccagé
  • * Le roi de Sodome
  • * Le ciel et la merde II
  • 1982
  • *L'extravagante réussite de Jésus-Christ, Karl Marx et William Shakespeare
  • * Lève-toi et rêve
  • 1983
  • * Le cheval-jument ou hommage à John Kennedy T.
  • 1984
  • *Les délices de la chair
  • * La ville dont le prince était une princesse
  • 1985
  • *Bréviaire d'amour d'un haltérophile
  • * Apokalyptica
  • * La charge des centaures
  • 1988
  • *Les "cucarachas" de Yale
  • * Une pucelle pour un gorille
  • * La madonne rouge
  • * La traversée de l'Empire
  • 1989
  • *L'extravagante croisade d'un révolutionnaire obese
  • 1990
  • *La nuit est aussi un soleil
  • * Roues d'infortune
  • * L'opéra de la Bastille
  • 1992
  • *Oeuvres Tome I
  • 1994
  • *Lully
  • * Entends la nuit douce qui marche
  • * Le fou rire des liliputiens
  • 1996
  • *Comme un lis entre les épines
  • 1997
  • *Théâtre complet
  • 1999
  • *Lettre d'amour
  • * Comme un supplice chinois
  • * Théâtre complet
Arrabal's plays were frequently produced at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in the East Village of Manhattan, New York City throughout the 1970s. Productions at La MaMa included:The Two Executioners directed by Andy Milligan; Arrabal performed alongside Martine BarratFando and Lis directed by Franz MarijnenDos Obras de Arrabal directed by Delfor PeraltaThe Architect and the Emperor of Assyria directed by Tom O'HorganThe Architect and the Emperor of Assyria directed by Tom O'HorganDance/Theater of Richard S. Bach choreographed by Richard S. Bach
A traveling company from La MaMa also took The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria on tour to Philadelphia, Amsterdam, Venezuela, and Taormina in 1977–1979.
For a more extensive list of productions of Arrabal's plays, see his official website.

Paintings

  • Arrabal has described himself as a "frustrated painter". He has produced approximately 50 canvases and 100 drawings and collages, which have been exhibited in museums such as the Paris Art Center, Musée de Bayeux, and the Villa San Carlo Borromeo Art Museum in Milan.
  • His approach to painting involves close collaboration with artists who produce large-format oil paintings based on the detailed sketches he provides.
  • In 1962, his first painting was chosen for reproduction in the art publication La Brèche: Action Surréaliste Revue by its founding editor, André Breton.
  • Arrabal has collaborated with sculptor and video artist Christèle Jacob, with whom he has created a dozen videos and photomontage series, including Les artilleurs des échecs et de la littérature, inspired by a 1909 artwork by Henri Rousseau.

Essays and non-fiction

  • Carta al General Franco.
  • Le Panique.
  • Sur Fischer: Initiation aux échecs.
  • Carta a los militantes comunistas españoles .
  • Les échecs féeriques et libertaires .
  • Carta a los comunistas españoles y otras cartas .
  • Carta a Fidel Castro.
  • Echecs et mythe.
  • Introducción a Feliciano de Silva.
  • El Greco.
  • Goya / Dalí.
  • Fêtes et défaites sur l'échiquier.
  • Cartas a Baltazar.
  • Genios y figuras.
  • Las manazas del Samaritano. Conversaciones con Ionesco.
  • La dudosa luz del día.
  • Carta al Rey de España.
  • Un esclave nommé Cervantès.
  • Diccionario pánico.
  • Lettre à Staline.
  • Houellebecq!.
  • El Pánico, Manifiesto para el tercer milenio, 2007.
  • Diccionario pánico, 2008.
  • Universos arrabalescos, 2009.
  • Defensa de Kundera, 2009.

Interest in chess

Arrabal has a strong interest in chess and has attended many chess tournaments. He is close to American chess Grandmaster Gata Kamsky and advocated for Kamsky on his chess blog during Kamsky's negotiations with FIDE over a World Chess Championship match.
For over thirty years, Arrabal has written a column on chess for the French weekly news magazine L'Express. His columns have included, among many others:
  • Echecs et mythes
  • Fêtes et défaites sur l'échiquier
  • Les échecs féériques et libertaires
  • ''Bobby Fischer: el rey maldito''