SPania and bullfighting: is there a worse stereotype? One approaches the book “Juan Belmonte – Stieröter”, originally published in 1935, with a certain skepticism, especially since the legendary fame of the protagonist, the torero (1892 to 1962) from Seville and from a poor background, is just as historically remote today as it is the golden age of Spanish bullfighting. The life story of Juan Belmonte, presented here for the first time in a German translation, is an autobiography only in the sense that Belmonte told his life to the journalist Manuel Chaves Nogales (1897 to 1944) and commissioned him to write it. In a way, they wrote the book together: it’s hard to tell how Belmonte’s first-person narration could be separated from the author’s style.
The book was first published in June 1935 in the weekly features section of the magazine Estampa, and then in book form at the end of that year. If it once had the function of witnessing the “real life” of the celebrated torero — the name of the actual author was initially suppressed — for today’s readers it is precisely this authorship of Chaves Nogales that accounts for the primary interest in the book.
The long-forgotten Manuel Chaves Nogales has been considered one of the most spectacular literary rediscoveries in Spain for around three decades, now widely recognized as one of the most important literary reporters in Europe of his time, praised by contemporary Spanish writers from Javier Marías to Andrés Barba. The German translator and publisher Frank Henseleit has set out with great verve and perseverance to make this author known in this country as well. A generous work edition with sixteen individual volumes has been announced in his Kupido publishing house (FAZ from September 24, 2020); the Belmonte volume now appeared separately in Henseleit’s smooth translation, also in the Friedenau press.
What is interesting about Nogales’ book is its novelistic features, the echoes of the Spanish tradition of picaresque novels, the tragicomic elements, the sketches of people and places, the bizarre anecdotes, the description of Belmonte’s rivalry and friendship with Joselito (José Gómez Ortega) , another great bullfighter of those years. Belmonte’s (fictitious) voice repeatedly emphasizes his understanding of bullfighting as an art, as a “spiritual exercise”. He also shows himself to be a manic reader who, to the astonishment of the customs officer, takes not only the usual accessories of a bullfighter but also a suitcase full of books with him on a tour in South America. From an early age Belmonte showed a penchant for literary imagination, at times he associated very closely with important Spanish writers of his time, including Ramon del Valle-Inclán and Pérez de Ayala; he was also friends with Ernest Hemingway.
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