A Lost Voice Remembered

Abstract

María Teresa León was a Spanish writer at the forefront of political and intellectual activity during her country’s civil war (1936– 1939). Against all odds in twentieth-century Spain, her uncommon bravery and astute intellect allowed her to write prolifically and poetically about her political experience. After the Fascist defeat of the Republican democratic government, she was forced to flee Spain and spend nearly half her life in exile in France, Argentina, and Italy. Her lyrical and existential writing portrays the struggles of the women, children, workers, soldiers, intellectuals, and artists before, during, and after the war. Writing allowed her to discover her own voice, her literary identity, and the strength to combat the torment of exile. She artfully created an oral history that captures the voices of the fallen and forgotten, preserving the truth about the Republican experience, the experience Franco’s repressive Fascist dictatorship had tried to censor and erase. By reconstructing her own experience in the Civil War and describing her anguish in exile she offered solace and hope to her fellow Spaniards, suffering from the same pain. As a Republican woman living in exile and writing in the shadow of her preeminent poet husband, Marí2a Teresa León might never have been appreciated were it not for the distinguishable style and complexity of her writing.KeywordsPolitical IdeologySpanish SocietyLiterary IdentitySpanish PeopleTrue PatriotThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.