Countess Emilia Pardo Bazán (1851-1921)

Abstract

While Countess Emilia Pardo Bazán (1851-1921), a successful novelist, an essayist and a champion of women’s rights in Spain, was not a translator of Russian literature (although she was a very talented linguist and translated from many languages into Spanish), she was the first, and without doubt, the greatest popularizer of Russian literature in Spain and later in Spanish America. Through her three public lectures given in Madrid in 1887, which she later published as a book, she gave, first to her audience and then to Spanish readers in general, an excellent overview of Russian culture and literature––and this in a highly original and creative manner. Wherever possible, Pardo Bazán endeavoured to suggest meaningful and relevant links between the Spanish and Russian literatures; she always provided full and clear biographical materials about the Russian writers she was presenting as well as detailed and lively analyses of their works. Sadly, her valuable contribution to this field has been ignored or, at best, it has been defined as of historical interest only. In 2021, the anniversary of her death, not a single commemorative event in Madrid focussed on her outstanding work as cultural intermediary between Spain and Russia. This essay aims to redress this balance somewhat by showing that Pardo Bazán bequeathed to Spanish readers a well-informed and carefully-researched body of critical studies of Russian literature. Additionally, the influence of certain Russian authors on her own fiction, as I suggest, constitutes an important task for future scholars. Almost entirely due to Pardo Bazán’s pioneering work as the major popularizer of Russian literature in Spain, the first wave of direct translations of Russian writers into Spanish began to appear shortly after the publication of her lectures.