Remembering JB Trend: the quiet internationalist

22 Apr 2013 - 23 Apr 2013

All day

Clare College, Cambridge

Description

Description

Conveners

Alison Sinclair (Department of Spanish and Portuguese / Clare College)

Karen Arrandale (Clare Hall)

Conference summary

Intellectual activity should be guided by the supreme art of life, that of doing good to other people rather than being great oneself; and the source of this art must be looked for in those feelings and impulses which give elevation to a man’s character, make him wise and good, and kindle in him a love for everything that is fine and true.
JB Trend A Picture of Modern Spain (1921)

This symposium, the first event of which is the annual MacColl lecture of the department, celebrates the life and work of J B Trend, the first Professor of Spanish in Cambridge, and a central figure in the history of Hispanism. Trend was an unusual figure: he was shy, but a clear enthusiast, and memorably gifted in inspiring enthusiasm in others; his first degree was in Natural Sciences; his studies of modern Spanish culture and intellectual life in the early 1920s are still a fundamental point of reference; he moved into musicology in an unofficial manner while still a student, later becoming a prime figure in Spanish musicology helping to bring it into a wider international arena; he was central to the development of a tradition in British Hispanism that was wide-ranging in its interests, and driven by similarly wide-ranging curiosity. There were important consequences of what he did and how he did it. Trend frequented Spain assiduously between his first degree and his appointment to the Chair. His contacts there memorably included the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, in some ways an institution that could be considered as a version of CRASSH, crossed with a University college or hall of residence (Trend referred to it as ‘Oxford and Cambridge in Madrid’). The cultural openness of the Residencia is mirrored by the cultural openness of Cambridge in these years. Trend’s contacts contributed to a strong tradition of the reception of contemporary poets in Cambridge (Salinas, Cernuda, Dámaso Alonso, Muñoz Rojas among others), and other prime figures such as Unamuno. The coming of the Civil War made Trend quietly significant in the reception of fleeing intellectuals. The symposium will include papers on the varied activities and aspects of Trend, and two concerts.