129:, in the winter of 1899. His own writings, which were largely journalistic, continued to appear in the most prestigious Spanish newspapers even as his body and mind progressively deteriorated. He wrote, "I wouldn't have wanted to be born, but I find it unbearable to die." He did so on 3 March 1909, blind and insane, in his modest house on calle Conde Duque de Madrid. Shortly before his death, the great bohemian had declared:
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anointed me with his reverend right hand, ordaining me into the intellectual hierarchy, I had to sleep in a stairwell on account of having found no place cozier than that in which to take shelter. I know many things about the land called
Poverty. But I'm not a complete foreigner to the star-studded
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Death, death! Now it's all I dream about. Dying and going to wherever villainy isn't the prevailing custom, where affirmations and negations at least carry the philosophical sense that lexicons assign to them, where honor starts at the soul instead of the lips. Dying, getting out of here, for
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I've mourned for him, for me, for all the poor poets. I can't do anything, neither can you, but if enough of us were to join together we could do something. Alejandro left a book unedited. The best he's ever written. A journal of hopes and woes. The failure of every attempt he made to get it
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In 1889, he was lured to Paris by its artistic scene. For a time he worked on the staff of the
Garnier publishing house, editing an encyclopedic dictionary, and had ample opportunity to strike up friendships with many of the luminaries of
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rescinding an assignment worth seventy pesetas, were what drove him mad in his final days. A desperate madness. He was on the verge of killing himself. He died like a king in a tragedy: mad, blind, and
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dignity's sake, for art's sake, for the sake of self-preservation! I still feel like the healthy one in the middle of this leper colony!
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origin. His father was an importer of wine and sundries. After a brief flirtation with the priesthood and a stint at the seminary of
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and enjoyed what he would later regard as his "golden years". He married a
Burgundian, Jeanne Poirier, and fathered a girl, Elena.
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My early days in Madrid were stupendously vulgar - why not say it? - and noble as well. On the same winter day that
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Amelina Correa Ramón, "Alejandro Sawa, luces de bohemia", Seville, Fundación José Manuel Lara, 2008.
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27:(15 March 1862 – 3 March 1909) was a Spanish bohemian novelist, poet, and journalist.
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On his return to Madrid in 1896 he plunged headfirst into journalism, serving as editor of
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on the awarding of a literary prize to
Amelina Correa for her biography of Alejandro Sawa.
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in his honor.) After Sawa's death, Valle-Inclán wrote to RubĂ©n DarĂo:
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Digitized works of
Alejandro Sawa in the Cervantes Virtual Library
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Posthumously published in 1910 with a prologue by RubĂ©n DarĂo,
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Sawa's personality was an inspiration to the novelists of the
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literature, though he himself preferred the
Romanticism of
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256:Valle-Inclan. La fiebre del estilo
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379:19th-century Spanish male writers
305:Digitized works by Alejandro Sawa
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344:Spanish people of Greek descent
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313:Biblioteca Nacional de España
197:RamĂłn MarĂa del Valle-Inclán.
187:published, and a letter from
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101:La Correspondencia de España
315:(National Library of Spain)
67:infinities that lie beyond.
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354:20th-century Spanish poets
349:19th-century Spanish poets
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242:References
212:naturalist
189:El Liberal
144:PĂo Baroja
142:, notably
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238:(1888).
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