Miguel Delibes - Biography - Literary Apogee

Literary Apogee

The 1960s represented the heyday of Delibes literary career. The period was marked by the birth of his sixth son, Adolfo (later a graduate in biology) and a visit by the writer to Germany, where he visited several universities. The literary period opened with the publication of Viejas historias de Castilla la Vieja (Old tales of Old Castile) (1960) and Por esos mundos (In these worlds) (1961). In 1962, Delibes published Las ratas (The rats), one of his masterpieces. It constructs a story from a series of autobiographical anecdotes which evoke the rural environment of a Castilian village that has disappeared. The book won the Premio de la Crítica (Critics Award for Castilian fiction). In the same year Camino, the last of his seven children, would be born. Camino later graduated in Philosophy and Letters. Also in that year, the film version of El camino, directed by Ana Mariscal, was shot. 1963 was a turbulent year: Delibes resigned on 8 June as director of El Norte de Castilla after several disagreements with Manuel Fraga, Minister of Information and Tourism. In 1964, he spent six months in the United States as a visiting professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature of the University of Maryland. After his return, he wrote and published Cinco horas con Mario (Five hours with Mario), which is considered his masterpiece. The novel is the monologue of a woman who holds a wake at her husband's body while she recounts the memories of her dead husband. Other books published upon his return from the US included USA y yo (The USA and I) and La milana. In the following years he visited Czechoslovakia and published Parábola del náufrago (literally: The parable of the shipwreck, translated into English as The hedge by Frances M. Lopez-Morillas). Later in the 1970s, he followed up with several books about hunting, an activity about which he was passionate, and stories. Subsequently he published Un año de mi vida (A year of my life), a personal diary.

On February 1, 1973, Miguel Delibes was elected to the Royal Spanish Academy, occupying chair "e", vacant after the death of Julio Guillén. That same year, in December, he was also elected to the Hispanic Society of America. Before the end of the year, he published El príncipe destronado (The dethroned prince), his eleventh novel. On November 22, 1974 his wife, Angela de Castro, died at the age of 50. Her death profoundly marked the writer for the rest of his life.

Finally, on May 25, 1975 he delivered his inaugural address to the Royal Spanish Academy. Damaso Alonso, one of the leading members of the Generation of '27 and then president of the Royal Spanish Academy handed the academic medal to Miguel Delibes His induction speech which dealt with The meaning of progress from my work was later edited by him as a book entitled Un mundo que agoniza (A world that is dying). That same year, his twelfth novel Las guerras de nuestros antepasados (The wars of our ancestors ) saw the light. In the next three years, he published several books on hunting and his only book about fishing, Mis amigas las truchas (My friends the trouts). The period closed with the publication of El disputado voto del señor Cayo (The contested vote of Mr Cayo), his thirteenth novel. In 1979, the stage adaptation of Five hours with Mario premiered in Spain starring the leading actress of Valladolid Herrera Lola. Due to its success, the play was revived several times. That year, he released Castilla, lo castellano, los castellanos (Castile, Castilian, the Castilians), a narrative anthology.