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achievement clouded by the almost simul-
taneous death of his wife. He survived her
for a mere 18 months.
Jiménez, who was influenced in his youth
by Darío and other turn-of-the-century lit-
erary lights, himself became the inspiration
and stimulus for many leading poets of the
later 20th century. Some critics have ques-
tioned his designation as a Nobel laureate on
the ground that he was too inconsistent in
his thinking, and others dismissed him as a
light-weight pointing to one of his most pop-
ular works,
Platero y yo
(
Platero and I,
1914)
as an example of triviality.
Platero
was, in
fact, a poetical memoir of his boyhood
home and a recollection of an amiable don-
key that listened to his meditations. Its pop-
ularity in the United States many decades
later was a nostalgic phenomenon and no
proper gauge of the author's merits. Jimé-
nez was, like all good poets, a man perpetu-
ally in quest of “the word” and the right
way to match it with idea and emotion. As
such he deserves a respected place in 20th-
century Spanish literature.
Among the best-known works of Juan
Ramón Jiménez are
Almas de violeta
(Souls
of violet, 1900),
Elegías puras
(Pure elegies,
1908),
La soledad sonora
(Sonorous solitude,
1911)
Poemas mágicos y dolientes
(Magical
and sorrowful poems, 1911,
Diario de un
poeta recien casdo
(Diary of a newlywed poet,
1917),
Eternidades
(Eternities, 1918),
Poesia
(Poetry, 1922), and
Voces de mi copla
(Voices
of my song, 1945).
trative magistrate in Santa Marta, on the
coast of what is now C
OLOMBIA
, in 1535
when he was commissioned by the Spanish
Crown to undertake an exploration of the
Magdalena River region and pursue a
search for the fabled El Dorado. In the
course of his expedition he and his follow-
ers fought numerous battles against the
Chibchas. This highly developed indigenous
group, which has been compared to the
Maya of Southern Mexico and Central
America, was now past its peak but still put
up a stiff resistance to the invaders. Jiménez
alternated between brutality and generosity
in his dealings with them but eventually
subdued the region he had been sent to
explore, without finding El Dorado, but
bringing back great quantities of gold and
emeralds. In the course of this quest he
encountered several competing expedi-
tions that had come into the territory from
other jurisdictions. He persuaded their
leaders, B
ELALCÁZAR
and F
EDERMANN
, to
avoid violent rivalry by returning with
them to Spain to settle their competing
claims. Back in Europe, however, Jiménez
was less than successful in pursuing his
claims. When he returned to South Amer-
ica in the 1550s, he bore several honorific
titles but did not receive the recognition
he believed due to the founder of Bogotá
(one of many other accomplishments).
Another expedition in search of El
Dorado was launched in 1569. The aging
warrior and the remnant of his band
returned three years later worn, exhausted,
and poor but bringing back valuable infor-
mation on the upper reaches of the Orinoco
River. In his final expedition, when he was
already almost 80 and carried on a litter,
Jiménez rallied his soldiers to beat off a
major native onslaught. An indefatigable
Jiménez de Quesada, Gonzalo
(1499-1579)
Spanish explorer and conqueror
One of the first generation of conquistado-
res, Jiménez de Quesada was an adminis-
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