Family Name: García de la Huerta
First Name: Vicente
Birth Date: Sun, Mar 07, 1734
Birth Place: Zafra
Death Date: Sat, Mar 10, 1787
Death Place: Madrid
Main places of activity:
Place From To
Madrid 1755 1764
Place From To
Oran 1764 1775
Place From To
Madrid 1775 1785
Personal info:
Education

García de la Huerta was the son of Juan Francisco and María Muñoz, both members of the Spanish nobility.

After being educated at home by his parents, in 1748 García de la Huerta immatriculated at Salamanca University but never graduated in grammar and arts, notwithstanding the tutelage of his uncle the lawyer Joaquín.
Career

García de la Huerta was a prolific author in many different fields, from poetry and theatre to academia and literary critique.

In 1756, he settled in Madrid, where he married Gertrudis Carrera y Larrea and he became father of his first and only son, Luis. Soon after, García de la Huerta was appointed librarian of the duke of Huéscar, son of the duke of Alba, to whom he dedicated his first heroic poem Endymion. His powerful patron allowed him to work his way into many different local academic institutions and pursue his literary goals.

First admitted to the Academia Española, García de la Huerta soon entered the Academia de la Historia as a honorary member, the Academia Sevillana de Buenas Letras and, in 1760, the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. In addition, he was member of the Roman academies of the Arcadians, as Aletofilo Deliade, and of the Fuertes, under the pseudonym Antioro.

García de la Huerta's fast ascent, which brought him to become first clerk of the Real Biblioteca in 1761 and to compose official poems for Madrid's public events, was abrutly interrupted in the wake of the Esquilache Riots in 1766: because of his sympathies for the "partido ensenadista" supporting Spanish aristocracy against Bourbon absolutism, he was suspected of having taken part in the riots and escaped to Paris. After he was sentenced to exile in Granada in 1767, anonymous letters criticizing the government were pinned on him, and the political persecution of which he allegedly was a victim culminated in his confinement in Oran for having composed the seditious tragedy Raquel, considered the finest example of eighteenth-century Spanish neoclassical drama.

His return to Madrid in 1777 proved difficult, and García de la Huerta struggled to adapt to the new political and cultural trends. He managed to get his job as first clerk back, but never recovered his status, mainly because of his bitter defence of outdated literary canons and traditional Spanish theatre.
Translations Other Works

translations activities

As it was often the case in eighteenth-century Spanish theatre, García de la Huerta's translations of Voltaire and Sophocles are rather cultural than textual, as he adapted, reworked and paraphrased previous translations together with the original texts.

His "justa idea de traducción", which he theorized in the preface to his version of Zaïre, showed his aversion for literal versions, and encouraged the cutting of scenes, the addition of dialogues and the creativity of the translator generally. In part, this position was due to García de la Huerta's attempt to defend traditional Spanish theatre from the Siglo de Oro, in a cultural context where French taste was becoming increasingly dominant.

Besides the plays listed in the translation works section, García de la Huerta also included paraphrases and translations of Latin authors in his Obras poeticas: see the Paráfrasis de la oda XVI de libro II de Horacio, the Traducción de un pasaje de Ovidio en el libro 13 de los "Metamorphoses", and the Traducción en romance endecalílabo. Medea y Jasón, epístola XII de Ovidio. See also Varias traducciones de fragmentos de algunos poetas franceses.

secondary bibliography references

  • René Andioc, «Vicente Antonio García de la Huerta», in Real Academia de la Historia, Diccionario Biográfico electrónico.

  • Philip Deacon, 'García de la Huerta, Raquel y el motín de Madrid de 1766', Boletín de la Real Academia Española, 56 (1976), 369-87

Margarita Santos Zas, 'De Zaïre de Voltaire a Xayra de García de la Huerta', in Homenaxe ó Profesor Camilo Flores: Literatures Específicas, ed. by Xosé Luis Couceiro and Camilo Flores Varela, Santiago de Compostela University Press, 457-79.

Jesús Cañas Murillo, 'García de la Huerta y la tragedia neoclásica', in Historia del teatro español, ed. by Javier Huerta Calvo, Gredos, 2003, 1577-602.

Jesús Cañas Murillo, Miguel Àngel Lama Hernández and José Roso Díaz (eds.), Vicente García de la Huerta y su obra, 1734-1787, Visor Libros, 2013.


Translations

  • Zaïre

  • Translation Title: La Fé triunfante del amor y cetro tragedia, en que se ofrece a los aficionados la justa idea de una traducción poetica La Fé triunfante del amor y cetro tragedia, en que se ofrece a los aficionados la justa idea de una traducción poetica
  • Original Author: Voltaire
  • Original title: Zaïre
  • Publ. Year From: 1731 to:
  • lang: French
  • Title: Tragedia la Zayda ;traducida del francés al español
  • Publisher: Carlos Gibert y Tutó
  • Pub. Place: Barcelona
  • Pub. Year: 1781
  • Lang: Spanish
  • Translation: La Fé triunfante del amor y cetro tragedia, en que se ofrece a los aficionados la justa idea de una traducción poetica La Fé triunfante del amor y cetro tragedia, en que se ofrece a los aficionados la justa idea de una traducción poetica
  • Publisher: Pantaleon Aznar
  • N° Editions: 2
  • Pub. Place: Madrid
  • Pub. Date: 1783
  • Lang: Spanish
  • Note:

    In the preface, García de la Huerta mentions a Spanish edition of 1782 as the text from which he elaborated his own translation.

  • Ἠλέκτρα

  • Translation Title: Agamenón vengado
  • Original Author: Sophocles
  • Original title: Ἠλέκτρα
  • Publ. Year From: 0419 to: 0409
  • lang: Greek
  • Title: La Venganza de Agamenon. Tragedia, cuyo argumento es de Sofocles, poeta griego
  • Pub. Place: Burgos
  • Pub. Year: 1527
  • Lang: Spanish
  • Translation: Agamenón vengado
  • Pub. Place: Madrid
  • Pub. Date: 1777
  • Lang: Spanish
  • Note:

    This text, published in the second volume of the collection of Obras poéticas, was composed from a reworking of Sophocles' Electra from 1528.

calamaio

By:

  • Giovanni Lista