This afternoon the Caja de las Letras del Cervantes received the legacy in memoriam of Francisco Rico (1942-2024), philologist, historian of literature from the Middle Ages to the Golden Age and recently deceased member of the Royal Spanish Academy, “who represents different facets of my father without thinking about what he would have chosen, because he was unpredictable.” As his son explained, Daniel Rico.
Along with him, his mother, the philosopher, has participated in the legacy. Victoria Camps, widow of Rico; the director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero; the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun; the director of the Royal Academy, Santiago Muñoz Machado; and the professor of Literature and disciple of the eminent philologist, Jordi Gracia. The General Director of the Book, María José Gálvezand the directors of Culture and Academics of the Cervantes Institute, Carmen Pastor and Raquel Caleyarespectively.
The legacy kept in box no. 1406 is made up of two of his works, from the beginning and the end of his career. The first, The picaresque novel and the point of view (1969), which plays between reality and fiction and was published shortly before the birth of his son with the dedication: “For V. tailored to D.” (For Victoria, his wife, to Daniel, her son) whose formula has become a now classic dedication.
The last, A long loyalty. Philologists and related, which for Daniel “is the only draft of memories that my father could have made, since it includes profiles of friends and teachers.” A third book is added to the legacy, William and the intellectualss, by the English writer Richmal Crompton, specialized in children’s books and horror stories, which was one of Rico’s first readings in his childhood.
With a tie even in the gym
Two personal objects are attached to the books. On the one hand, his son has said, an Italian tie: “my father was extremely conceited, for him elegance was wearing Italian clothes and he used the tie for everything, he even slept with it or rode his bike in the gym with it on.” .
On the other hand, a folder with small notes compiled and clippings glued together “from the thousands of folders that he had organized by subject and that represent his very peculiar and characteristic way of working,” according to his wife, Victoria Camps, who also gave a personal legacy. in 2020 to the Caja de las Letras -. The delivered folder deals with The book of good love and it even has a title, which not all of them have, in homage to its author: The first love of Juan Ruiz.
Three fundamental readings from Rico
García Montero confessed to being “melancholy happy to honor the teacher”, since it is a tribute repeatedly postponed due to the philologist’s agenda, the pandemic and his illness.
The director of the Institute chose three readings “that are part of my training” to remember Rico: “As a person and philologist, The picaresque novel and the point of view; as an intellectual, Nebrija against the barbarians, which addresses the meaning of obedience in the face of an ignorant world that does not know many of the things it wants to affirm. The freedom to impose a standard for knowledge in the face of barbarians is also a great lesson.
As his third work, García Montero chose the essay The dream of Humanism: from Petrarch to Erasmus and he confessed that this book, from 1993, discovered to him – and these are Rico’s words – that “we continue to owe humanism to have discovered that our dimension is history, that man lives in history, in variation, in the diversity of environments and experiences, in relativism, but also in hope. And that, Rico continued in that work, “implies a program of action, it implies that it is possible to change life, that the restitution of ancient culture opens new perspectives, that the world can be corrected as a text or a style is corrected.” .
The best editor The Quijote
Although most of his career as a researcher Rico dedicated to Petrarch and Italian Humanism, the Spanish Golden Age and the picaresque novel, his main interest has been Cervantes and The Quijote. Rico has been responsible for several editions of this work, as well as other classic works of medieval, Renaissance and Golden Age literature. Likewise, he directed the Classical Library collection of the Royal Spanish Academy (BCRAE).
“The best critical collection published in all of history,” as Muñoz Machado himself defined it, who announced that “more summarized editions will be made for schools and institutes as Francisco Rico always wishes.”
Professor of Medieval Hispanic Literatures at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Rico is considered one of the greatest experts in history in The Quijote and a key figure in Spanish literary historiography.
The first humanist of the 20th century
For Jordi Gracia, “we tend to relate the humanities with seriousness, but we forget the playful component, of pleasure, being happy doing slow work and in Francisco Rico the dimension of pleasure and the dimension of the first humanist of the 20th and 21st centuries merged. ». Gracia concluded that Rico “introduced the humanities into the cultural menu of Spanish society from the end of the Franco regime until recently.”
Finally, Ernest Urtasun highlighted that «Francisco Rico is part of our collective memory: the edition of The Quijote that I read at school was his. “She helped us better understand our culture and her memory will continue in Spanish society through her immense work.”
After the legacy, a round table was held around the figure of the academic in which Luis García Montero, Inés Fernández-Ordóñezphilologist and academic of the RAE; Gonzalo Ponton, editor and literary critic; Victoria Camps, philosopher and professor, and Daniel Rico, writer and professor of Art History at the Autonomous University of Barcelona; moderated by Jordi Gracia.
The film director also participated in the colloquium Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón and the philologist and academic Pedro Alvarez de Miranda who closed it by reciting some amusing “coplas de pie quebrado” by Rico read at a Three Kings luncheon at the Royal Spanish Academy in which he very ironically portrays the academics, «and if my wise sermon pricks you, ticks you off, squeaks or makes you hives, submit the claim to Mr. Víctor García de la Concha,” he concludes.
Throughout his career Francisco Rico obtained different awards, such as the Menéndez Pelayo International Award (1998), the Ramón Menéndez Pidal National Research Award (2004), the Alfonso Reyes Award (2013) or the Gold Medal for Merit in the Fine Arts (2015).
