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regained the high status that it had achieved
during its Golden Age.
the meaning of the cosmos. While younger
poets might dismiss some of his work as
ponderous and overly cerebral, he earned a
well-deserved respect until the very end of
his literary career.
Aleixandre, Vicente
(1898-1984)
Spanish poet
Born in S
EVILLE
, the son of a railway engi-
neer, Aleixandre was trained for the law
and briefly taught that subject. After 1925
his poor health led him to quit his profes-
sion and devote the remainder of his life
(with several interruptions due to recurring
bouts of illness) to poetry. Although evi-
dently a supporter of the Second Republic,
he took no active part in the S
PANISH
C
IVIL
W
AR
and remained in Spain during the
Franco era. While his poetry was banned
for a time, he was elected to the Royal
Academy in 1949, having already won
major literary prizes. In 1977 he was
awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in rec-
ognition of the whole body of his work.
Despite his fragile health Aleixandre
lived a long and remarkably productive life,
authoring dozens of volumes of poetry,
including an anthology that ran to more
than 800 pages and was by no means the
sum total of his work. A pioneer in the sur-
realist approach to poetry and in the use of
free verse, he was a living link between the
poets of the G
ENERATION
OF
'27 and those
who emerged in the post-Franco period.
Aleixandre's work, from
La destrucción o el
amor
(Destruction or love, 1935) and
Som-
bra del paraíso
(Shadow of paradise, 1944)
to
Poemas de la consumación
(Poems of con-
summation, 1968) and
Diálogos del cono-
cimiento
(Dialogues of knowledge, 1974)
had as its recurring themes the great ques-
tions that have absorbed philosophers and
theologians as well as poets—the essence of
human nature, the destiny of humans, and
Alemán, Mateo
(1547-1614)
Spanish novelist
The son of an attending physician in a
prison hospital in S
EVILLE
, Alemán origi-
nally intended to follow his father's profes-
sion but evidently either did not finish his
studies or did not practice. Instead, he
became a government accountant but nev-
ertheless had to face debtor's prison. After
taking up residence in N
EW
S
PAIN
, he had a
more prosperous later life. The principal
reason for his changing fortunes was the
novel
Guzmán de Alfarache
(first part, 1559;
second part, 1604). Although not the first
picaresque novel,
Guzmán
scored an instant
triumph and was promptly translated into
most of the major European languages. The
protagonist, Guzmán, relates the story of
his life and of how he has lived by his wits,
pursuing a long series of deceptions, frauds,
and outright crimes under many guises.
Alemán's vivid depictions of criminal types
may owe their origin to his youthful
encounters with the inmates he met while
accompanying his father on his rounds. The
idea of the picaro (rogue) as hero or anti-
hero became so appealing to readers that
scores of writers in Spain and other coun-
tries produced their own version of Guzmán
or created characters inspired by this arche-
type. Alemán inserted in his novel philo-
sophical and moral reflections and pious
warnings by the aging Guzmán not to fol-
low his roguish path, passages which some
commentators have called distractions and
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