Gumersindo Laverde

Gumersindo Laverde Ruiz (5 April 1835 – 12 October 1890) was a Spanish writer, journalist and philosopher.

Biography

Gumersindo Laverde was born in Estrada, Val de San Vicente, the son of Toribio Laverde González and Asunción Ruiz Puertas. At the age of four his parents moved to the village of Nueva, in Llanes, where he studied his first letters and Latin with Antonio González. He went to Oviedo in 1847, when he was barely twelve years old, and there he studied philosophy and extension studies for five years. From 1853 onwards, at the same university and at those of Madrid, Valladolid and Salamanca, he studied in both rights until he graduated in 1859, and in Philosophy and Letters in Oviedo. He later obtained a doctorate in both subjects. He did his studies in Valladolid and Salamanca while serving in jobs under the protection of the poet José Heriberto García de Quevedo and Lorenzo Nicolás Quintana.

Throughout his life he suffered from poor health. In 1860, after a year's rest in Nueva with his family, he moved to Madrid, where he was employed in the Secretariat of the Welfare Committee.

In 1862 he competed for several chairs of rhetoric and poetics, obtaining one at the Lugo Institute in 1863; he was later appointed director of this institute, a post he held from 1870 to 1873. Having vacated the chair of Latin Literature at the Universities of Valladolid and Santiago, he applied for both at the same time and was appointed to both. He opted for that of Valladolid, taking possession of it on 1st October 1873, until he exchanged the chair for that of General Spanish Literature at the same school, being appointed dean of the free faculty of Philosophy and Letters.

In 1874 he was a member of the panel that awarded the Extraordinary Licentiate Prize to Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, with whom he established a lasting and deep friendship: it was to him that Menéndez y Pelayo received the first impulse and encouragement for his projects, in particular his La ciencia española (1879), which he wrote the prologue to. Laverde also led the initially liberal Marcellin to neo-Catholicism.

Since his youth, Laverde had been planning a History of the Spanish Saints since Roman Times, which was in reality a study of the process of the Spanish Church throughout its history, but this idea did not come to fruition. Transferred to the same subject at the University of Santiago on 18 October 1876, he held this post until his death on 12 October 1890.

He devoted himself to literary and philosophical studies rather than to legal studies and became known as a prose writer and poet. He was one of Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo's closest friends and adviser, with whom he maintained a long and fruitful epistolary relationship, to the extent that a year before his death Menéndez y Pelayo confessed that many of his works would not have been done without Laverde's encouragement. He also corresponded with other great intellectuals of his time, such as Juan Valera.

In 1865 he published the Gran almanaque de las dos Asturias, and defended the Cantabrian railway project in letters and articles published in El Trabajo, Revista Ovetense and La Abeja Montañesa of Santander, in which he was opposed by almost all the Asturian press. He also strongly defended the union of the Asturias of Oviedo and Santander, that is, the union of the Principality and the Mountains in ecclesiastical and university matters, creating a single district; the administration of justice with a territorial audience; in military matters with the creation of a general captaincy for the two territories; agricultural, industrial and artistic union, holding congresses, exhibitions and competitions; the worship of glories and traditions by erecting a pantheon in Covadonga to house the ashes of its illustrious men and, finally, union in "everything and for everything honest, beautiful and useful", proposing the creation of infrastructures to promote mutual trade. This is how Laverde saw the union of the two Asturias: "To work in solidarity in the work of their common civilisation, as well as in that of the general civilisation of the peninsula, as the main part that they are of the Iberian nationality".

While he was already a corresponding member of the Academy, he was awarded an honourable mention in the poetry competition of the Royal Spanish Academy held in 1865. He was appointed Head of Administration, fourth class, officer of the third class of the Ministry of Public Works, by Royal Order of 24 February 1872. He was a corresponding member of the Royal Academies of Language (1864) and History (1868). He was noted for his defence of Spain's philosophical past in the face of the discredit of the time. He had a great influence on Menéndez y Pelayo, especially in his early works.

Works

His written production is not very extensive and is compiled mainly in the Ensayos críticos sobre Filosofía, Literatura e Instrucción Pública (1868), the rest remaining scattered in journals of the time; in these essays he shows himself to be a neo-Catholic philosopher and fiercely combats Krausism. On the death of his widow, Josefa Gayoso, he sent his archive to Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo with the idea that he would edit his works, which was not carried out due to the death of his friend. His poems were published in 1952 with a fundamental prologue by José María de Cossío, and they fall within the framework of romantic pathos, although he prefers to express his feelings by means of classical metrics, in particular the Sapphic strophe, as he was always particularly concerned with formal care and even made some metrical innovations that were discussed by his contemporaries. His poems are amatory, with a strong presence of phantasmagorical themes, apparitions and nocturnes, always with the pathos that comes from the mists of his land and in which his painful illness plunges him, and there are echoes of Alphonse de Lamartine, and of MacPherson (Ossian) in poems such as The Moon and the Lily.

He contributed to several newspapers and magazines: from Asturias, Álbum de la Juventud, El Faro Asturiano, La Revista literaria de Asturias, El Trabajo, Revista de Asturias and El Oriente de Asturias. From Salamanca, Eco de Salamanca and La Crónica de Salamanca. From Seville, España Literaria. From Madrid, Círculo Científico y Literario, Revista de Instrucción pública, Revista Ibérica, La Concordia, Revista de España, La Enseñanza, El Progreso, Revista de Madrid, La llustracción Gallega y Asturiana, Revista Europea and various others. From Santander, La Abeja Montañesa, La Tertulia, Revista Cántabro Asturiana and El Libro de Cantabria. He also left many unpublished articles and verses.

References

• Abellán, José Luis (1979). Historia crítica del pensamiento español, Vol. 1. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.
• Aguilera, Ignacio (1967). Epistolario de Laverde Ruiz y Menéndez Pelayo, 1874-1890. Santander: Imprenta provincial.
• Bueno Sánchez, Gustavo (1990). "Gumersindo Laverde y la Historia de la Filosofía Española", El Basilisco, 2ª época, No. 4, pp. 49–85.
• Brey Mariño, María (1984). Juan Valera, 151 cartas inéditas a Gumersindo Laverde. Madrid: Diáz-Casariego.
• Cossío, José María de (1951). Gumersindo Laverde Ruiz. Santander: Librería Moderna.
• Cossio, José Maria de (1973). "Gumersindo Laverde y Ruiz." In: Estudios sobre escritores montañeses, Vol. 2. Santander: Institución Cultural de Cantabria.
• Fraguas Fraguas, Antonio (1956). "Don Gumersindo Laverde y Ruiz, catedrático del Instituto de Lugo," Cuadernos de Estudios Gallegos, Vol. XI, pp. 307–12.
• Juderías, Julían (1917). "Don Juan Valera y don Gumersindo Laverde. Fragmentos de una correspondencia inédita," La lectura, pp. 15–27, 165–78.
• Revuelta Sañudo, Manuel (1982). Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, Epistolario, Vol. 1. Madrid: Fundacion Universitaria Española.
• Revuelta Sañudo, Manuel (1982). Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, Epistolario, Vol. 2. Madrid: Fundacion Universitaria Española.
• Revuelta Sañudo, Manuel (1983). Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, Epistolario, Vol. 3. Madrid: Fundacion Universitaria Española.
• Revuelta Sañudo, Manuel (1983). Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, Epistolario, Vol. 4. Madrid: Fundacion Universitaria Española.

External links

• Gumersindo Laverde
• Works by Gumersindo Laverde at Open Library
• Works by Gumersindo Laverde at National Library of Spain