NUNEZ DE ARCE, GASPAR

born Aug. 4, 1832, Valladolid, Spain died June 9, 1903, Madrid Spanish poet and statesman, once regarded as the great poet of doubt and disillusionment, though his rhetoric is no longer found moving. Nez de Arce became a journalist and Liberal deputy, took part in the 1868 revolution, and was colonial minister for a time after the Restoration. As a dramatist he had some success, his best play being the historical El haz de lea (1872; The Bundle of Kindling), on the imprisonment of Don Carlos, but he attained celebrity with Gritos del combate (1875; Cries of Combat)a volume of verse that tried to give poetic utterance to religious questionings and the current political problems of freedom and order.