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In-Depth Information
Through Portuguese merchants Japanese
wares began reaching European markets,
and a more informed knowledge of Japa-
nese civilization developed. There were
numerous conversions to Catholicism
thanks to the efforts of the Jesuits, who
concentrated on winning the allegiance of
feudal nobles who in turn mandated the
conversion of their dependents. Firearms
brought in by the Europeans were an
increasing factor in the internal warfare of
Japanese clans and political factions. After
1603 the consolidation of central govern-
ment in Japan under the Tokugawa shogu-
nate (military-political leaders who usurped
the power of the emperor) undercut the
influence of the Portuguese. There were
massive persecutions of Japanese Catholics
and edicts against the presence of foreign-
ers. By 1642 the Portuguese had been
expelled from Japan, and their converts,
reduced to a handful of clandestine Chris-
tians. As happened in many parts of Portu-
guese Asia, the rising power of the Dutch
Republic filled the gap that Portugal had
left. From 1642 to 1854 Japan closed itself
to the outside world. Half a dozen Dutch
trade agents living on the offshore island of
Deshima were the only reminders of Japan's
original contacts—through Portugal—with
Europe.
“new” Spain. Although not formally a
member of the G
ENERATION
OF
'98, he
shared in the cultural debates of the early
20th century, often internalizing the con-
flicts, as when he repudiated his earlier
work and actually sought to buy up and
destroy all copies of his first two topics of
poetry. Of a more sensitive temperament
than many of his colleagues, he suffered
from ill health and melancholia that
impelled him to return for several years to
his native town. After 1916, however, a
much more self-confident and assertive
Jiménez emerged. He rejected the “mod-
ernist” school of poetry, preferring a pared-
down style that eschewed florid verse in
favor of what he described as
“poesía des-
nuda”
(naked poetry). It was at this time,
too, that he married Zenobia Camprubí,
after paying a short but influential visit to
the United States to renew his acquaintance
with her. A translator of authors such as the
Indian Rabindranath Tagore and the Irish
John Millington Synge, she was his psycho-
logical support and sometime literary col-
laborator for the next 40 years.
Jiménez gave some time to teaching and
editing but was primarily engaged in the
writing and revision of his poems, publish-
ing a steady stream of collected verse,
encompassing hundreds of poems. He
experimented with various forms and con-
cepts and frequently analyzed the merits or
demerits of the shifting tastes in Spanish
poetical composition. During the S
PANISH
CIVIL
WAR
Jiménez left Spain to travel in
Europe and then to reside in the Western
Hemisphere for most of his later life. A sig-
nificant portion of this period was spent in
P
UERTO
R
ICO
, a favorite refuge of self-exiled
Spanish intellectuals. In 1956 he was
awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, an
Jiménez, Juan Ramón
(1881-1958)
Spanish poet
Poems published in the local press of his
native A
NDALUSIA
brought the young Jimé-
nez to the attention of the poet R
UBÉN
D
ARÍO
and other writers who urged him to
move to M
ADRID
. During the early 1900s he
became part of the intellectual circle that
was shaping the hoped-for transition to a
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