Federico de Onís (1888-1966)Author(s): Howard YoungSource: Hispania, Vol. 80, No. 2 (May, 1997), pp. 268-270Published by: American Association of Teachers of Spanish and PortugueseStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/345886 .

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268 HISPANIA 80 MAY 1997

Federico de Onis (1888-1966) Howard Young Pomona College

is father was the University of Salamanca's head librarian, and his great grandfather was Spain's am-

bassador to the government of James Mon- roe. As if preordained, books and the United States awaited him in the future, but, as a child and a student, quintessential Salamancan and Castilian experiences would stamp him for life.

The Onis family had extensive landhold- ings outside of Salamanca. When Federico was five years old, his father said to him, "Vamos a La Granja con Unamuno" (Onis 29). The young boy asked himself what kind of people were the amunos. He met a man with a dark beard, aquiline nose, and owl eyes, who defined himself in constant conversation, who dressed differently from others, and who would go against the main- stream all his life. The young Onis discov- ered a vigorous role model: a man who be- lieved passionately in the importance of the individual and whose intellectual interests (from Sarmiento to Kierkegaard, Thomas Hardy to Marti) were in their dimensions unique among his countrymen and in Eu- rope. With Unamuno as one of his profes- sors, Onis finished the bachillerato in 1905 and completed his Ph.D. in Spanish litera- ture at Madrid in 1908. A year later his es- say "La lengua de Salamanca en la Edad Media" received a prize from the Real Academia.

Shortly after earning his Ph.D., he met Ortega y Gasset at Unamuno's house. Onis and Ortega, caught up in each other's intel- lectual intensity, walked the ancient streets of Salamanca all night discussing el pro- blema espailol, each man excited by the other's intellect. Later Ortega inscribed to Onis a copy of Meditaciones del Quijote with the words: "como si fuera a mi mismo" (Onis 163).

The third key figure in Onis's intellectual development was Ram6n Men6ndez Pidal,

the exemplary Spanish philologist who was trying to bring Spanish research up to the level of the rest of Europe. He drew Onis into the work of the Centro de Estudios Hist6ricos, whose standards Onis carried with him to Columbia University. An edition for ClIsicos Castellanos of Fray Luis de Le6n's Los nombres de Cristo was followed in 1911 by successful oposiciones for a chair in Spanish literature at Oviedo. In 1915 he was transferred to the same chair at the University of Salamanca, where a long ca- reer undoubtedly awaited him.

But the United States beckoned. Nicho- las Murray Butler, the president of Colum- bia University, asked Archer Huntington to recommend a Spanish university professor to give classes at Columbia and take charge of the growing interest in the Spanish lan- guage. Onis arrived in Morningside Heights in 1916, saw the challenge, and, af- ter considerable soul searching, resigned his chair at Salamanca to establish what would become for at least two decades the outstanding Spanish Department in the country, the most influential in terms of the numbers of students it produced, and the most dazzling with regard to its list of visit- ing professors: Ramon Menendez Pidal, Tomais Navarro Tomais, Angel del Rio, Jorge Mafiach, Uslar Pietri, Fernando de los Rios, Francisco Garcia Lorca, Gabriela Mistral, Mariano Pic6n Salas, and German Arciniegas, to name only a few. He founded the Casa Hispainica in 1930 as a site for con- certs, lectures, and social gatherings (there Lorca's magnetic personality made itself known) and as the headquarters of the Revista Hispdnica Moderna, which he cre- ated in 1934.

Onis confessed that he learned his love of Latin American literature from Unamuno. In the face of stiff opposition, he introduced Latin American literature as a Ph. D. sub- ject, and in 1923 Columbia granted its first

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EMIGRES 269

doctorate in that area. He traveled exten- sively in Latin America and held open house for Latin American writers at the Casa

Hispainica. His invitation to Gabriela Mistral to lecture at Columbia launched her inter- national career which culminated in the Nobel Prize. He was a great fan of the short stories of Toma's Carrasquilla. Long before the boom, Harriet de Onis, his wife of forty- two years, became the premier translator of Latin American literature into English, and introduced Ciro Alegria, Ricardo Giiiraldes, and German Arciniegas to U.S. readers.

In 1934, the Centro de Estudios Hist6ricos published his influential Antologia de la poesia espafiola e hispa- noamericana (1882-1932). His observation that modernismo was not a literary school but rather the general Hispanic reaction to the turn of the century foretold the notion of Modernism that holds sway today. One year before his retirement in 1954, he pub- lished, with the assistance of Susana Redondo, then secretary of the Hispanic Institute, the first edition of Unamuno's Cancionero. To make available the poetic autobiography of Unamuno from 1928 to a few days before his death was a fitting trib- ute to the man Onis considered the great- est Spaniard of his time. After this closure to his life at Columbia, Onis went to the University of Puerto Rico, where he had al- ready founded a Seminario de Estudios

Hispinicos over which he would preside until his death.

Don Federico became a legend in his own lifetime. His irascible, outspoken na- ture took delight in polemics, and his impa- tience with ponderous professorial dis- course provoked acute reactions. In his fa- mous tertulias, he would often cut off a contertuliano: "Cdllese; usted no sabe lo que estti diciendo."

"Aspero y dulce / como un paisaje espafiol / de piedra y cielo" reads Juan Ram6n's dedication to Federico de Onis of the Sonetos espirituales in 1917, and the dulce side was evident in the Don Federico one saw from ten to five at the Casa

Hispinica. He was conceined with the well- being of those who worked with him, went

out of his way to inquire after them and their children, spent long hours with his gradu- ate students, cared greatly for animals, and unabashedly displayed his love for poetry. "Don Federico, que hacia alarde de bairbaro, era poeta" (42), wrote German Arciniegas, characterizing exactly the com- piler of the then most influential anthology of Spanish-language poets since Gerardo Diego, the declaimer of Jorge Manrique, Fray Luis, Zorrilla, and Lorca. His fondness for romances and corridos turned him into an enthusiastic and affable singer.

Until the Civil War broke out, Onis vis- ited Spain frequently. After 1936, he spoke to Republican rallies in New York but re- fused further political activity. He never re- turned to his native land, a decision that must have cost him greatly. By a self-im- posed exile, the emigrante became an emigrado. His farm at Newburgh, New York, welcomed the contentious professor on weekends, and he tore into his garden and vegetables with single-minded energy, losing himself in the task. "La naturaleza no engafia," he was fond of saying.

Onis's great strength was, like Pio Baroja's, to remain true to himself, to be the same at the end as at the beginning, or, in the words of Juan Ram6n Jimenez, "Siempre es Onis igual al si de ayer y al de hace un afio, igual por fuera y por dentro; y creo que seguirfi siendo igual hasta su fin espahiol o americano" (137). His persona as "el castellano de Nueva York" was free of hypocrisy, but he must have been well aware that by not going "native" in New York, he was twice over a teacher of Span- ish, that Salamanca would live not only on the page but in the "hombre de carne y hueso" that his maestro had posited as the only true subject of philosophy.

orking in the same building with Onis on a daily basis was a unique linguistic experience.

The man was a tireless torrent of words. "Hablaba un idioma sabroso," said Victoria Ocampo (42), "no desvaido como el que oimos de boca de los intelectuales." During the day, in the classroom, and at the tertulias, his Salmantine accent brought

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270 HISPANIA 80 MAY 1997

Spain sharply to life at Columbia University. He lectured without notes, carried along by his feeling for the text (Cervantes or Fray Luis), impervious to time, resonating with words, in love with literature in a way that seems rare today in the classroom. On the last day of his famous Quijote course, his eyes sparkled more than usual, but his voice betrayed no emotion of farewell. The stu- dents, however, seemed reluctant to leave.

0 WORKS CITED

Arciniegas, German. "Don Federico, o el conquista- dor conquistado." La Torre 16.59 (1968): 37-44.

Jimenez, Juan Ram6n. Los espafoles de tres mundos. Viejo mundo, nuevo mundo, otro mundo. Caricatu- ra lirica, 1914-1940. Con tres apendices de retra- tos ineditos. Ed. Ricardo Gull6n. Madrid: Aguilar, 1969.

Ocampo, Victoria. "Recordando a don Federico." La Torre 16.59 (1968): 25-28.

Onis, Federico de. Unamuno en su Salamanca. Car- tas y recuerdos. Prol. Carlos William de Onis. Salamanca: Universidad de Salmanca, 1988.

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