Sofía Casanova (1862-1958): Spanish Poet, Journalist and Author

Introduction (p. 1)

Sofía Casanova (1861-1958): Timefor a New Approach

Poet, journalist of war and revolution, prolific novelist, translator, playwright, respected society figure: Sofía Casanova intrigued and influenced the Spanish reading public for over fifty years. She was an outspoken political commentator, a conservativo feminist, a nexus of Spanish and Polish cultures, and Spain`s solé envoy at the heart of Europe. Above all, she was a rarity: a successful professional woman in a patriarchal society.

Sofía Casanova`s unique achievements should have drawn considerable critical and scholarly notice. Yet today her Ufe and works remain largely unexamined or ignored. It is the purpose of this book to reintroduce Sofía Casanova to the scholarly world and general public.

It would be reasonable to describe Sofía Casanova not only as one of the most remarkable Spanish women who has ever lived, but almost as a forcé of nature. She married a distinguished Polish philosopher, left Spain and spent most of her life as an expatríate. Yet even as she became conversan! with Eastern European politics, she remained active in the world of Spanish letters.

She reached fame thanks to her brilliant foreign correspondence during World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution, she did pioneering social work on behalf of Spanish women during the first decade of the century, she succeeded at having both a family and a professional career, she managed a prodigious journalistic and literary output between 1917 and 1945. Finally, she reached the age of ninety-five as an active if suppressed writer. Sofía Casanova has few peers in Spanish history, or indeed in the history of her time.

Why, then, has so little critical notice been taken of this extraordinary woman? Even now, over thirty years after her death, when so many Spanish woman writers of the past have been discovered or reexamined, one of Spain`s most accomplished and celebrated women remains virtually unknown in the country that once venerated her.

During most of her long life, thanks to her talent, versatility and sheer persistence, Sofía Casanova`s work was appreciated by succeeding generations of Spanish readers. At the height of her poetic career, her fellow poets made her one of the few Spanish women accepted by literary academies (the Real Academia Gallega in 1906 and the " alternativo" Academia de Poesía Española in 1911).

In an enthusiastic review of her third book of poetry, Cancionero de la dicha (1912), Ramón Pérez de Ayala called her "una poetisa completa" (Pérez de Ayala 1299). In later years, her journalistic work during World War I and the Russian revolution brought her enormous popularity and one of Spain`s most prestigious awards, the country`s highest medal for service to humanity, "La Gran Cruz de Beneficencia" `The Great Cross of Charity`.

In 1925, she was nominated by Spain for the 1925 Nobel Prize in Literature by Don Antonio Maura (then President of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language) and Don Emilio Cotarelo y Morí, the famous scholar. That same year, she was awarded the Alfonso XII medal, Spain`s highest recognition of intellectual achievement. Clearly, for severa! decades Sofía Casanova was one of Spain`s best known and most respected women writers.