Andrés Bello: Biography, Neoclassicism, and Life Stages
Andrés Bello: A Biographical Overview
Biography of Andrés Bello: Born in Caracas on 29 November 1781 and died in Santiago, Chile on 15 October 1865. He was a great philosopher, poet, educator, philologist, and jurist, with a profound education. He participated in the revolutionary process leading to the independence of his country. He was part of a diplomatic mission to London where he would live for nearly two decades, and in 1829 he sailed to Chile where he was hired by the government for legal and humanities work, and where he lived the last 36 years of his life.
Neoclassicism and Andrés Bello
Neoclassicism: It was a cultural movement influencing his artistic and literary development from the mid-eighteenth century until the early decades of the nineteenth century. Their worldview (way of seeing the world) is scientific and based on reason rather than feelings.
Characteristics of Neoclassicism:
- His art is didactic.
- It is a disciplined art.
- Nature is tamed.
- Disdain for the popular and religious.
- Separation of literary genres.
- Language worship.
Andrés Bello: A Transitional Figure
Why Andrés Bello is considered a transitional man:
He is considered transitional as a man and writer, straddling two centuries: the eighteenth century, framed in the most rigid neoclassicism, and the nineteenth, influenced by Romanticism.
Life Stages of Andrés Bello
Life Stages of Andrés Bello:
1) Caracas Stage (1781-1810)
Covers the first 29 years of his life, from 1781 to 1810, the year in which he went to London on a special mission.
A) Overview of the Stage:
This stage was to prepare Bello, and partly to prepare him for London when he was a grown man, ready for the weight and shock.
B) Environmental Conditions:
The Caracas of Andrés Bello is not the Caracas of today. The city is modest and quiet, almost idyllic, and worthy of being sung in a Virgil in Eclogue.
C) Cultural Formation:
The formation of Andrés Bello is eminently humanistic and neoclassical.
2) London Stage (1810-1829)
Covering 19 years of his life since his arrival in London in 1810 until February 14, 1829.
A) Overview of the Stage:
This stage we could label as the cultural edification of Andrés Bello, who arrives in London bearing a large assimilative capacity.
B) Environmental Conditions:
The London that Andrés Bello receives is a true cultural center. While passing those long years in London, the world lives far away from America, a hard day of independence and post-independence.
C) Cultural Training:
This stage of his life, he embraces Romanticism, as is the current literature in vogue in London.
3) Chilean Stage (1829-1865)
Covering the last 36 years of his life, from when he was 47 until his death at the age of 84.
A) Overview of the Stage:
This stage is considered one of donation; everything he had learned in Caracas and had stored in London, he will apply and project in Chile.
B) Environmental Circumstances:
When he comes to Chile, throughout tropical America from Mexico to Argentina is a seething volcano: turbulences, intrigues of the colonial order crumbled.
C) Cultural Training:
This is the time for Andrés Bello. By this time, he had been preparing. The time is right. Need to restore order, peace, balance.