Jorge Semprún | |
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 Jorge Semprún at a book festival in Montpellier, 23 May 2009. | |
| Born | Jorge Semprún Maura (1923-12-10)10 December 1923 |
| Died | 7 June 2011(2011-06-07) (aged 87) |
| Occupation | Author, screenwriter, politician |
| Language | Spanish,French,German,[citation needed]English[citation needed] |
| Nationality | Spanish |
| Notable awards |
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| Partner | Loleh Bellon |
| Children | Jaime Semprún |
| Minister of Culture | |
| In office 12 July 1989 – 13 March 1991 | |
| Prime Minister | Felipe González |
| Preceded by | Javier Solana |
| Succeeded by | Jordi Solé Tura |
| Personal details | |
| Party | Communist Party of Spain (1942–1964) |
Jorge Semprún Maura (Spanish pronunciation:[ˈxoɾxesemˈpɾumˈmawɾa]; 10 December 1923 – 7 June 2011[1]) was a Spanishwriter andpolitician who lived in France most of his life and wrote primarily in French. From 1953 to 1962, during the dictatorship ofFrancisco Franco, Semprún lived clandestinely in Spain working as an organizer for the exiledCommunist Party of Spain, but was expelled from the party in 1964. After the death of Franco and the change to a democratic government, he served asMinister of Culture in Spain's socialist government from 1988 to 1991.
He was a screenwriter for two successive films by the GreekdirectorCosta-Gavras,Z (1969) andThe Confession (1970), which dealt with the theme of persecution by governments. For his work on the filmsLa Guerre est finie (The War Is Over; Alain Renais, 1966) andZ (Costa-Gavras, 1969) Semprún was nominated for theAcademy Award. In 1996, he became the first non-French author elected to theAcadémie Goncourt, which awards an annual literary prize. Unlike most left-wing figures in Spain, Semprún was azionist[2] and in 1997 he won theJerusalem Prize inIsrael. Also, in 2002 he wonOvid Prize in Romania".
Jorge Semprún Maura was born in 1923 in Madrid. His mother, who died when Jorge was eight, was Susana Maura Gamazo, the youngest daughter ofAntonio Maura, who served several times as prime minister of Spain. His father, José María Semprún Gurrea (1893–1966), was a liberal politician and served as a diplomat for the Republic of Spain during theSpanish Civil War.
In the wake of the military uprising led by General Franco in July 1936, the Semprún family moved toFrance, and then toThe Hague where his father was a diplomat, representing the Republic of Spain in the Netherlands.[3] After the Netherlands officially recognized the Franco government in the beginning of 1939, the family returned to France as refugees. Jorge Semprún enrolled there at theLycée Henri IV and later theSorbonne.
During theNazi occupation of France, the young Semprún joined theFrancs-Tireurs et Partisans – Main-d'Œuvre Immigrée (FTP-MOI), aResistance organization made up mostly of immigrants. After joining theSpanish Communist Party in 1942 in France, Semprún was reassigned to theFrancs-Tireurs et Partisans (FTP), the Communist armed Resistance.[4] In 1943 he was arrested by theGestapo and deported toBuchenwald concentration camp for his role in the Resistance.[5] He deals with the experiences in two books:Le grand voyage (1963) treats the journey to Buchenwald, andQuel beau dimanche! (1980) his camp experiences.[6]
In 1945, Semprún returned to France and became an active member of the exiledCommunist Party of Spain (PCE). From 1953 to 1962, he was an important organizer of the PCE's clandestine activities in Spain, using thepseudonym of Federico Sánchez.[7] He entered the party's executive committee in 1956. In 1964, he was expelled from the party because of "differences regarding the party line", and from then on he concentrated on his writing career.
Semprún wrote manynovels,plays, andscreenplays, for which he received several nominations, including an Academy Award in 1970, and awards, including the 1997 Jerusalem Prize. He was a screenwriter for two successive films by the Greek directorCosta-Gavras, dealing with the theme of persecution by governments,Z (1969) andThe Confession (1970). For his work onZ, he was nominated for theAcademy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay but did not win.[8]
He was a member of the jury at the1984 Cannes Film Festival.[9] In 1988 he was appointedMinister of Culture inFelipe González's second government, despite being neither an elected MP nor a member of theSocialist Party (PSOE). He resigned the post three years later after publishing an article openly criticising the vice-president,Alfonso Guerra, and his brother Juan Guerra.
In 1996, Semprún became the first non-French author to be elected to theAcadémie Goncourt, which awards an annual prize for literature written in French. In 2002, he was awarded the inauguralOvid Prize in recognition of his entire body of work, which focuses on "tolerance and freedom of expression".[10]
Jorge Semprún served as the honorary chairman of the Spanish branch ofAction Against Hunger.[11] He lived inParis. In 2001, while giving a conference at the LycéeFrédéric Mistral inAvignon,France, he inspired youngPablo Daniel Magee to become awriter. Magee went on to write Opération Condor, prefaced byCosta Gavras.
Semprún married the actressLoleh Bellon in 1949. Their son,Jaime Semprún (1947–2010), was also a writer. Later Semprún married the French film editorColette Leloup in 1958. They had five children: Dominique Semprún, Ricardo Semprún, Lourdes Semprún, Juan Semprún andPablo Semprún. He is the brother of the writerCarlos Semprún (1926–2009).
Semprún wrote primarily in French and alluded to French authors as much as to Spanish ones. Most of his books are fictionalized accounts of his deportation to Buchenwald. His writing is non-linear and achronological. The narrative setting shifts back and forth in time, exploring the past and future in relation to key events. With each recounting, events take on different meanings. Semprún's works are self-reflexive. His narrators explore how events live on in memory and means of communicating the events of theconcentration camp to readers who cannot fathom that experience. His more recent work in this vein also includes reflections on the meaning ofEurope and of being European, as informed by this period of history, including how Buchenwald was reopened bySoviet forces as Special Camp No. 2 of theNKVD, and then largely razed and planted over byEast Germany to hide the mass graves from this second dark episode.[12]
Semprún's writing in Spanish deals with Spanish subject matter, and includes two volumes of memoirs:Autobiografía de Federico Sánchez, about his clandestine work in and later exclusion from the Spanish Communist Party (1953–64), andFederico Sánchez se despide de ustedes, which deals with his term of service as Minister of Culture in the second Socialist government ofFelipe González (1988–91). A novel in Spanish,Veinte años y un día, is set in 1956 and deals with recent history in Spain.
Semprún's first book,Le grand voyage (The Long Voyage in English; republished asThe Cattle Truck in 2005 bySerif), was published in 1963 byGallimard. It recounts Semprún'sdeportation and incarceration in Buchenwald in fictionalized form. A feature of the novel, and with Semprún's work in general, is its fractured chronology. The work recounts his train journey and arrival at the concentration camp. During the long trip, the narrator provides the reader with flashbacks to his experiences in the French Resistance and flash-forwards to life in the camp and after liberation. The novel won two literary prizes, thePrix Formentor andPrix littéraire de la Résistance ("Literary Prize of the Resistance").
In 1977, hisAutobiografía de Federico Sánchez (Autobiography of Federico Sánchez) won thePremio Planeta, the most highly remunerated literary prize in Spain. In spite of the pseudonymous title, the work is Semprún's least fictionalized volume of autobiography,[13] recounting his life as a member of the central committee of the Spanish Communist Party (PCE), and his undercover activities in Spain between 1953 and 1964. The book shows a stark view of Communist organizations during theCold War, and presents a very critical portrait of leading figures of the PCE, includingSantiago Carrillo andDolores Ibárruri.
What a Beautiful Sunday (Quel beau dimanche!), his novel of life in Buchenwald and after liberation was published byGrasset in 1980. It purports to tell what it was like to live one day, hour by hour, in the concentration camp, but like Semprún's other novels, the narrator recounts events that precede and follow that day. In part, Semprún was inspired byA Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich byAleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and the work contains criticism ofStalinism as well asfascism.
Literature or Life was published by Gallimard in 1994. The French title,L'Ecriture ou la vie, might be better translated as "Writing or Life". Semprún explores themes related to deportation, but the focus is on living with the memory of the experience and how to write about it. Semprún revisits scenes from previous works and gives rationales for his literary choices.
Semprún's essays and public lectures, published in Spanish in the collectionPensar en Europa and, somewhat less comprehensively, In Franch inUne Tombe au Creux des Nuages, include reflections on the legacy of Jewish Europeans, whether German-speaking such as Sigmund Freud, Gustav Mahler, or Edmund Husserl, or French, such as Alfred Dreyfus or Léon Blum, as well as the political and social conflicts from World War II to the Cold War and beyond into the twenty-first century
Semprún's plays are less well-known than his film scripts and prose works but offer noteworthy treatments of his key themes, such as Buchenwald and the Nazi legacy, Jewish lives in Europe before and after the Shoah, the persistence as well as perishability of memory. Of his plays, onlyLe Retour de Carola Neher(The Return ofCarola Neher) was published in his lifetime by Gallimard in 1998. It was commissioned by directorKlaus Michael Grüber and staged in German asBleiche Mutter, Zarte Schwester (Pale Mother, Gentle Sister), a title that alludes to two poems byBertolt Brecht, in the Soviet military graveyard near Buchenwald to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of the camp inmates in April 1995. Two other plays were published posthumously:Moi, Eléanor, FIlle de Karl Marx, Juive (I,Eleanor Marx, am Jewish) in 2014 by Gallimard, andGurs: une tragédie européene written in French but published in Spanish translation inTeatro completo de Jorge Semprún in 2021.
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