Born: Seville, Spain, 26 April 1898, Family moved to Malaga, 1900, and to Madrid, 1909. Education: Educated at the Colegio Teresiano, Madrid, 1909-13; entered Central School of Commerce and the University of Madrid (Faculty of Law), 1914, licence in law and diploma in business administration, both 1919. Career: Lecturer in mercantile law, Central School of Commerce, Madrid, 1919-22; worked for Andalusian Railroads, 1921-25: had to retire on grounds of ill health, 1925; staff member, La Semana Financiera magazine; full-time writer from 1925; suffered serious illness, 1936-39. Awards: National literature prize, 1933; Spanish Academy prize, 1934; Critics prize, 1963, 1969, 1975; Nobel prize for literature, 1977. Honorary fellow, Professors of Spanish Association (USA). Grand Cross of Order of Carlos III, 1977. Member: Royal Spanish Academy, 1949, Hispanic Society of America, and Monde Latin Academy, Paris. Corresponding member, Arts Academy, Malaga, and Sciences and Arts Academy, Puerto Rico. Died: 13 December 1984.
Publications
Verse
Ambito. 1928.
Espadas como labios. 1932; edited by Jose Luis Cano, with La destruccion o El amor, 1972.
Pasion de la tierra. 1935; revised edition, 1946; edited by Luis
Antonio de Villena, 1976, and by Gabriele Morelli, 1987.
La destruction o el amor. 1935; edited by Jose Luis Cano, with Espadas como labios, 1972; as Destruction of Love, in Destruction of Love and Other Poems, translated by S. Kessler, 1977.
Sombra del paraiso. 1944; edited by Leopoldo de Luis, 1976; selection as Poemas paradisiacos, 1952, edited by Jose Luis Cano, 1977; as Shadow of Paradise, translated by Hugh A. Harter (bilingual edition), 1987.
Mundo a solas 1934-1936. 1950. Nacimiento ultimo. 1953.
Historia del corazon. 1954.
Mis poemas mejores. 1956; revised editions, 1966, 1968, 1976.
Poesias completas. 1960.
Poemas amorosos. 1960; revised edition, 1970.
Antigua casa madrilena. 1961.
Picasso, edited by A. Caffarena Such. 1961.
En un vasto dominio. 1962.
Presencias. 1965.
Retratos con nombre. 1965.
Dos vidas. 1967.
Poemas de la consumacion. 1968.
Poemas varios. 1968.
Poesia superrealista. 1971.
Antologia del mar y la noche, edited by J. Lostale. 1971.
Sonido de la guerra. 1972.
Arguijo: Obra poetica. 1972.
Dialogos del conocimiento. 1974.
Antologia total, edited by Pere Gimferrer. 1975.
Antologia poetica, edited by Leopoldo de Luis. 1977.
Twenty Poems (bilingual edition), translated by Robert Bly and Lewis Hyde. 1977.
A Longing for the Light: Selected Poems, edited and translated by Lewis Hyde. 1979.
The Crackling Sun: Selected Poems, translated by Louis M. Bourne.1981.
A Bird of Paper, translated by Willis Barnstone and David Garrison.1982.
Primeros poemas. 1985.
Nuevos poemas varios, edited by Irma Emiliozzi and Alejandro Duque Amuseo. 1987.
Vicente Aleixandrepara ninos, edited by Leopoldo de Luis. 1988.
En gran noche: Ultimos poemas, edited by Carlos Bousono and Alejandro Duque Amusco. 1991.
Other
En la vida del poeta: El amor y la poesia. 1950.
El nino ciego de Vazquez Diaz. 1954.
Algunos caracteres de la nuevapoesia espanola. 1955.
Los encuentros. 1958; enlarged edition, edited by Jose Luis Cano, 1985.
Obras completas. 1968; revised edition, 2 vols., 1977-78.
Epistolario, edited by Jose Luis Cano, 1986.
Prosas recobradas, edited by Alejandro Duque Amusco. 1987.
Mire los muros: Textos ineditos y olvidados. 1991.
Antologia esencial. 1993.
Album: Versos de Juventud: Vicente Aleixandre, Damaso Alonso y Otros, edition, prologue and notes by Alenjandro Duque Amuscoy Maria-Jesus Velo Garcia, 1993.
Critical Studies:
La poesia de Vicente Aleixandre by Carlos Bousono, 1950, revised editions, 1968, 1977; Vicente Aleixandre by Leopoldo de Luis, 1970, revised edition as Vida y obra de Vicente Aleixandre, 1978; Vicente Aleixandre (in English) by Kessel Schwartz, 1970; Lapoesia superrealista de Vicente Aleixandre by Hernan Galilea, 1971; ”The Spiritualization of Matter in the Poetry of Vicente Aleixandre” by Louis M. Bourne, in Revista de Letras, 22, 1974; Tres poetas a la luz de la metafora: Salinas, Aleixandre y Guillen by Vicente Cabrera, 1975, and Critical Views on Vicente Aleixandre’s Poetry (includes translations) edited by Cabrera and Harriet Boyar, 1979; Vicente Aleixandre edited by Jose Luis Cano, 1977; Conocer: Vicente Aleixandre y su obra by Antonio Colinas, 1977; La poesia de Vicente Aleixandre (formacion y evolucion) by Vicente Granados, 1977; La palabra poetica de Vicente Aleixandre by D. Puccini, 1979; Vicente Aleixandre: A Critical Appraisal edited by Santiago Daydf-Tolson, 1981; Vicente Aleixandre by J.O. Jimenez, 1981; Vicente Aleixandre’s Stream of Lyric Consciousness by Daniel Murphy, 2001.
Educated in strict religious private schools, Vicente Aleixandre had no contact with poetry until a chance acquaintance with the future poetry critic Damaso Alonso, in the summer of 1917, initiated him into it, via the latter’s enthusiasm for Ruben Dano. Aleixandre read Antonio Machado and Juan Ramon Jimenez, under whose influence he wrote his first lyrics (never published). The modernist sensibility was foreign to him, but Gustavo Adolfo Becquer and the Romantics were to be lasting influences, as were the mystic poets, especially St. John of the Cross.
Fearing an adverse reception, he kept his poetic activity secret until some poems composed in isolated convalescence in the Guadarrama Mountains were read by friends, who published them in Ortega y Gasset’s prestigious Revista de Occidente under the title ”Numero” [Number], reflecting the ”dehumanized” vogue of poetry of the day. Aleixandre’s association with other poets of the Generation of 1927 dates from this time: friendships were initiated with Gerardo Diego, Jorge Guillen, Luis Cernuda, Frederico Garcia Lorca, and Miguel Hernandez (and he had met Rafael Alberti at an art exhibition in 1922). Aleixandre participated in the group’s homage to the baroque poet Gongora in 1927, and with these colleagues he subsequently moved toward vanguardism.
His first collection, Ambito [Ambit], like ”pure poetry” of that time, sought the geometric ideal of its practitioners whose poems were conceived as polyhedrons. None the less, Ambito was typical of Aleixandre, in its symbols of sea and night (which recur throughout his work) and in its irrational, elusive imagery. Insistent chiaroscuro and visions of cosmic love convey the poet’s attempts to fuse with the universe. The surrealistic prose poems of Pasion de la tierra [Passion of the Earth] reflect Aleixandre’s discovery of Freud (he read the Spanish translation of The Interpretation of Dreams in 1928). Pasion de la tierra has been considered one of the key works of Spanish surrealism, despite the author’s denials of such descriptions. In 1971, Aleixandre published an anthology entitled Poesia superrealista, seemingly accepting the label at last. Spanish surrealism is an unorthodox variant, also called ”super-realism,” ”hyper-realism,” and even ”neo-Romanticism.” While some critics consider it an offshoot of French surrealism, others find its origins in the painters Goya and Solana, and the ”grotesque” plays (esperpentos) of Valle-Inclan. Vanguardism in Spain in the late 1920s was not exclusively surrealist, nor were there collective surrealist manifestos, although Aleixandre is reputed to have planned one together with Luis Cernuda and Emilio Prados. Irrationalism and a search for new techniques stand in lieu of common norms, formulated doctrines, and the desire to scandalize.
Like most other Spanish writers classed as surrealist (Lorca, Cernuda, Alberti), Aleixandre is unorthodox, rejecting ”automatic writing,” but suppressing logical control via elimination of nexus. He employs normal punctuation in Pasion de la tierra, but not in Espadas como labios [Swords like Lips] which juxtaposes love and death, offering glimpses of an irrational, erotic pantheism in which Thanatos and Eros are interchangeable.
La destruccion o el amor (Destruction of Love), won the National literature prize in 1933, and for many represents the zenith of Aleixandre’s surrealism. Its exuberant vitalism, directly linked to his illness and successful fight for life, depicts unleashed cosmic forces in a mysterious universe, where nature is simultaneously destroyed and created, and where the inanimate triumphs over the living. Filled with images of light and darkness, the volume has an internal logic resulting from its amorous unity showing love as an all-consuming force.
The pessimistic Mundo a solas [World Alone], written shortly after the death of his mother, abounds in telluric beings and powers, expressing a passionate striving towards love, but not exempt from cruelty and morbidity. Sombra del paraiso (Shadow of Paradise), a book of light and clarity, masterful chiaroscuro, and experimental metaphors, depicts a purified pre-human world of beauty and innocence. The atmosphere is Mediterranean, pantheistic, mythic, with the major theme being the poet’s lost paradise of infancy and childhood in Melaga.
Aleixandre describes his works as being illuminated by varicoloured lights—black in Pasion, red in Destruction of Love, brighter colours in Mundo a solas, and, in Shadow of Paradise, the white glare of midday. In Nacimiento ultimo [Final Birth], a transitional work closing his cosmic cycle, light becomes diaphanous, transparent. Aleixandre’s development from the surrealistic prose poems of Pasion de la tierra to the stark vision of death in Nacimiento ultimo becomes, metaphorically, a drama of progressive enlightenment or illumination. The final stage of this progression is Historia del corazon [History of the Heart], with its gamut of light and shade, a turning point emphasizing historical existence, human joys, and sorrows, in a temporal rather than cosmic universe. Considered Aleixandre’s masterpiece by most critics, Historia del corazon marks man’s emergence from the background of the poetry to assume the role of protagonist in the poet’s post-war historical and social preoccupations.
En un vasto dominio [In a Vast Domain] unites the human and the cosmic elements through love, its title reflecting the presence of the collectivity. Poemas de ta consumacion [Poems of Consummation] explores the epistemological preoccupations of the ageing poet, who meditates on knowledge, doubt, hope, youth, and old age, as he approaches death. Dialogos del conocimiento [Dialogues of Knowledge], Aleixandre’s final collection, published when the poet was 76, introduces several speakers whose monologues contrast sensuality and meditation and juxtapose intuitive, existential, idealistic, cynical, and transcendental views.
Social poetry in Spain during the 1950s and 1960s was essentially political, an implied indictment of the ideology perpetuating social injustice—poetry of protest. Aleixandre’s treatment of existential material is far removed from sociopolitical criticism and the manner of a sociological casebook to which much poetry of these years descended. His final poetry is less exuberant in its imagery, more restrained and reflective, without being totally purged of surrealistic elements. His last works do not merely repeat the forms of earlier ones, but evolve toward greater sobriety and thoughtfulness—poetry of the intellect and intuition, poetry as epistemology, meditations upon the metaphysical, rendered in a manner somewhere between that of the philosopher and the mystic.
