Baltasar Gracián: a pragmatist between ethics and aesthetics Sebastian Neumeister

1 . Biography and Historical Context

In 1992, Doubleday published a translation of a Spanish book that first appeared in 1647 with the mysterious title Oraculo manual y arte de prudencia (The Handbook of the Art of Prudence) .1 It quickly became a European best- seller and was translated into French, English, Italian and German, among other languages . So, too, to the astonishment of the publisher, the American edition saw great success, selling more than 100,000 copies and appearing for several months on the Washington Post’s best-seller list . The American public, intel- lectuals, businesspeople and politicians saw in the book a kind of handbook for private and professional success, comparable to Dale Carnegie’s enduring 1937 classic, How to Win Friends and Influence People, or so one might gather from the scene in Washington as sketched by the journalist Mark Leibovich 2. That the author of the book, the Spanish Jesuit priest Baltasar Gracián, clearly struck a nerve 350 years after his book’s original publication, was proven by another national bestseller, The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene published in 1998 and translated into German the same year 3. Gracián occupies an important place in Greene’s book, given that he stands in second place with regard to number of quotations, just after Napoleon and before Machiavelli, Talleyrand, Louis XIV, Mao Tse-Tung, Bismarck, Henry Kissinger . It is no coincidence, then, that Gracián’s Oraculo attracted great interest in the American capital 4. Who is this Baltasar Gracián Morales? Born in 1601 in Belmonte in Aragón, today Beltmonte de Gracián, Baltasr was one of ten children of the doctor Francisco Gracián and his wife Angela Morales, who bore all ten chil- dren .5 From 1611 to 1619 he attended the Jesuit college in the nearby town of Calatayud and probably also in Toledo . His education, as stipulated in the 1599 Ratio Studiorum of the Society of Jesus, initially envisaged five years of the humanities, three years of language instruction supplemented with two to

1 Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom: A Pocket Oracle, trans . Christopher Maurer (New York: Doubleday, 1991) . 2 Mark Leibovitch, This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral—Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!—in Amer- ica’s Gilded Capital (New York: Blue Rider Press, 2013) . 3 Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power (New York: Penguin, 1998) . 4 Juan Domínguez Lasierra, “El año en que Gracián fue best-seller en los USA,” Turia, November 2000, 149-154 . 5 On Gracián’s childhood and youth, see Belén Boloqui, “Niñez y adolescencia de Baltasar Gracián,” Suplementos: Materiales de Trabajo Intelectual 37 (1993), 5-61 . 20 Sebastian Neumeister three years of rhetoric and three years of philosophy 6. For those who wanted to join the Jesuit order, four to five years of theology followed the novitiate, but the highly motivated Gracián had only two . It is therefore possible to assume that as a young man, Gracián had accumulated a wealth of knowledge, the full measure of which may not have been self-evident to the Spanish elites of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries but is unbelievable today . Aristotle, the classics of ancient Rome, and the philosophers of medieval scholasticism were just as much part of that education as were the philosophers and poets of the Italian Renaissance . In addition, there were the texts from 1492 onward written, during the growth of Spanish empire, by the authors of Spain’s Golden Age: Fernando de Herrera, Teresa of Ávila, John of the Cross, Góngora, Cervantes, Quevedo, Lope de Vega, and Calderón . Nevertheless, one should not forget that Gracián grew up in politically very turbulent times, the period of the decline of the Spanish Habsburgs under Philip III (1598-1621) and Philip IV (1621-1665) . This was also the time of the Thirty Years’ War and the permanent state of war with France . There were also revolts in Catalonia, Portugal and the Netherlands . In addition there was also the displacement and expulsion of the previously forcibly converted Muslims, the moriscos, who with 60,000 persons comprised not less than 15% of Aragon’s population, and all of the subsequent political and economic consequences of a such a violent and bloody measure . All of this must be borne in mind when considering the life and writings of Baltasar Gracián .

2 . An Astonishing Career

In any event, the path of the intellectually gifted Baltasar Gracián Morales appears to be predetermined, beginning with his entrance into the Jesuit order: novitiate in 1619, first vows in 1621, theology studies in Zaragoza in 1623, priestly ordination in 1627, missioning to Valencia for tertianship, professor of moral theology in Lérida in 1631, professor of philosophy in Gandía in 1633, and final vows in 1635. Still, there is yet another side Gracián’s life: a unique writing career that lifted this Jesuit priest of the Aragonian province into the heights of world literature 7. In 1637, two years after professing final

6 Cf . s .v . “Ratio Studiorum,” in Diccionario histórico de la Compañía de Jesús, ed . by Charles E . O’Neill and Joaquín Ma. Domínguez (Madrid: Universidad Pontificia Comillas, 2011). I thank Fr . Bruno Schlegelberger, S .J . for the reference . The text of the Ratio Studiorum is available on the Internet . 7 The Obras completas de Baltasar Gracián, Biblioteca Castro, ed . by Emilio Blanco, (Madrid: Turner, 1993) is the authoritative Spanish edition of Gracián’s complete works . There are numerous editions of Gracián’s individual works . Aurora Egido offers a comprehensive overview of the complete works in La búsqueda de la inmortalidad en las obras de Baltasar Gracián (Madrid: Real Academia Española, 2014) . The most comprehensive treatment of Gracián’s works available in English is Arturo Zarzate Ruiz, Gracián, Wit and the Baroque Age (New York: Peter Lang, 1996), but many of his works have not been translated into English since the 18th century . For a critical overview of Gracián’s works, essential commentary and bibliography up to 2000, see Jorge Ayala, Aurora Egido, and María Carmen Marín Pina (eds .), Baltasar Gracián: estado de la cuestión y nuevas perspectivas (Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 2001) .