Born: Valladolid, Spain, 18 January 1893. Education: Educated at the Instituto de Valladolid, 1903-09; Maison Perreyve, Fribourg, Switzerland, 1909-11; University of Madrid, Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, 1911-13; University of Granada, 1913, degree 1913; University of Madrid, Ph.D. 1924. Family: Married 1) Germain Cahen in 1921 (died 1947), one daughter and one son; 2) Irene Mochi-Sismondi in 1961. Career: Contributor to El Norte de Castilla, from 1918; lecturer or professor of Spanish, the Sorbonne, Paris, 1917-23, University of Murcia, 1926-29, Oxford University, 1929-31, and University of Seville, 1931-38; jailed briefly in Pamplona by Nationalist forces, on suspicion of spying, 1936; went into exile, 1938; taught at Middlebury College, Vermont, 1938-39, and McGill University, Montreal, 1939-40; professor of Spanish, Wellesley College,Massachusetts, 1940-57: retired as emeritus professor; Charles Eliot Norton lecturer, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1957, 1958. Also taught at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, 1947, Colegio de Mexico, 1950, University of California, Berkeley, 1951, Ohio State University, Columbus, 1952-53, University of the Andes, Bogota, 1961, University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, 1962, 1964, University of Pittsburgh, 1966, and University of California, San Diego, 1968. Returned to Spain, 1978, and settled in Malaga. Awards: Guggenheim fellowship, 1954; American Academy award of merit, 1955; City of Florence poetry prize, 1957; Etna-Taormina prize (Italy), 1959; International Grand prize for poetry (Belgium), 1961; San Luca prize (Florence), 1964; Bennett prize (Hudson Review), 1975; Cervantes prize, 1976; Feltrinelli prize (Italy), 1977; Alfonso Reyes prize (Mexico), 1977; Yoliztli prize (Mexico), 1982. Died: 6 February 1984.
Publications
Verse
Cantico. 1928; enlarged edition, 1936, edited by Jose Manuel Blecua, 1970; further enlarged edition, as Cantico, fe de vida, 1945; complete edition, as Cantico, fe de vida, 1950; as Cantico: A Selection, translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni and others, 1965; also translated by Donald McCrory, 1998.
Tercer cantico. 1944.
El encanto de las sirenas. 1953.
Luzbel desconcertado. 1956.
Del amanecer y el despertar. 1956.
Clamor. 3 vols., 1957-63: Maremagnum. 1957.
Que van a dar en la mar. 1960.
A la altura de las circunstancias. 1963.
Lugar de Lazaro. 1957.
Viviendo, y otros poemas. 1958.
Historia natural: Breve antologia con versos ineditos. 1960.
Poemas de Castilla. 1960.
Poesias. 1960.
Versos, edited by Miguel Pizarro. 1961.
Anita. 1961.
Flores. 1961.
Las tentaciones de Antonio. 1962.
Segun las horas. 1962.
Treboles. 1964.
Suite italienne. 1964; enlarged edition, 1968.
Selection depoemas. 1965; enlarged edition, 1970.
El trasnochador. 1967.
Homenaje: Reunion de vidas. 1967.
Affirmation: A Bilingual Anthology, edited and translated by Julian Palley. 1968.
Aire nuestro (includes Cantico; Clamor; Homenaje). 1968; enlarged edition (includes Yotrospoemas and Final), 5 vols., 1977-81.
Obra poetica: Antologia, edited by Jose Manuel Blecua. 1970.
Guirnalda civil. 1970.
Obra poetica. 1970.
Al margen. 1972.
Y otros poemas. 1973.
Convivencia. 1975.
Plaza major: Antologia civil. 1977.
Final. 1981.
Poemas malaguenos (selection), edited by Antonio Gomez Yebra. 1983.
Jorge Guillen para ninos, edited by Antonio Gomez Yebra. 1984.
Sonetos completos, edited by Antonio Gomez Yebra. 1988.
Horses in the Air and Other Poems, translated by Cola Franzen, 1999.
Plays
El huerto de Melibea (dramatic poem) (produced 1955). 1954.
Other
Federico en persona: Semblanza y epistolario (on Garcia Lorca). 1959.
El argumento de la obra (Cantico) (essays), edited by V. Scheiwiller.1961; also edited by Jose Manuel Blecua, 1970.
Language and Poetry: Some Poets of Spain (Charles Eliot Norton lectures). 1961; Spanish edition, as Lenguaje y poesia, 1962.
En torno a Gabriel Miro: Breve epistolario. 1970.
La poetica de Becquer. 1973.
Mientras el aire es nuestro, edited by Philip W. Silver. 1978.
Guillen on Guillen: The Poetry and the Poet (readings and commentary), translated by Reginald Gibbons and Anthony L. Geist. 1979.
Paseo maritimo. 1990.
Correspondencia (1923-1951), with Pedro Salinas, edited by Andres Soria Olmedo. 1992.
Translator, El cementerio marino, by Paul Valery. 1930.
Critical Studies:
The Poetry of Jorge Guillen by Frances Avery Pleak, 1942; La poesia de Jorge Guillen edited by R. Gullon and Jose Manuel Blecua, 1949; Jorge Guillen by J.B. Trend, 1952; La realidad y Jorge Guillen by J. Muela Gonzalez, 1962; A. Machado; P. Salinas; J. Guillen by P. Darmangeat, 1969; A Generation of Spanish Poets 1920-1936 by Cyril Brian Morris, 1969; Luminous Reality: The Poetry of Guillen edited by Ivar Ivask and Juan Marichal, 1969; Poesia de Guillen by Andrew P. Debicki, 1973; El cantico americano de Jorge Guillen by J. Ruiz de Conde, 1973; Cantico de Guilleny Aire nuestro by Joaquin Casalduero, 1974; Jorge Guillen by Joaquin Caro Romero, 1974; The Vibrant Silence of Jorge Guillen’s Aire nuestro by Florence L. Yudin, 1974; Jorge Guillen edited by B. Ciplijauskaite, 1975; La obra poetica de Jorge Guillen (includes bibliography) by Oreste Macrf, 1976; Homenaje a Jorge Guillen by the Wellesley College Department of Spanish, 1978; Jorge Guillen by S. Carretero and C. Meneses, 1981; Jorge Guillen: Sus raices: Recuerdos alpaso by J. Guerrero Martin, 1982; Jorge Guillen (in English) by G. Grant MacCurdy, 1982; The Structured World of Jorge Guillen: A Study of Cantico and Clamor (includes translations) by Elizabeth Matthews, 1985; Jorge Guillen: Cantico by Robert Havard, 1986; Guillen at McGill: Essays for a Centenary Celebration, edited by K.M. Sibbald, 1996.
It is a cliche to say that a poet creates order out of chaos, but it is one supremely applicable to Jorge Guillen. Guillen always found a sense of order, whether it was among the proliferation of literary movements following World War I, from the experience of living most of his life in an exile both physical and linguistic, or in a recoil from the atrocities and horrors of war. This passion for order can be seen in the careful control of structure, in the reworking of many of his early poems, and in the unhurried perfection that finds its most peaceful expression in his recurrent opening and closing image of a dawn always followed by nightfall. This search for order has led his work to be compared to Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil) and Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.
A poet who has won awards in the United States and in Europe, Guillen belongs to the Generation of 1927, so-called after their tricentenary celebration of the death of the eclectic Golden-Age poet, Luis de Gongora. Theirs was a short-lived generation: after the Civil War most went into exile, some were in prison, and Garcia Lorca had been killed. However, in that short time the quality of their work led critics to proclaim a new golden age of Spanish poetry, and their work managed a successful fusion of influences, from the Spanish Golden Age to literary trends from France, in particular those of ”pure poetry” and surrealism. Guillen himself was particularly impressed by Jorge Manrique and Paul Valery.
As a university lecturer he published important critical essays and translations of poetry as well as his own work, of which the main parts were combined in the 1968 volume Aire nuestro [Our Air]. This edition is made up of the three collections, Cantico [Song], Clamor [Clamour], and Homenaje [Homage], each superficially quite different in range and theme. Cantico, with its focus on harmony, revels in life in a way the more sombre poems of Clamor would seem to deny. Clamor provides a shadowy mirror image of Cantico. It reflects the ferocity of life rather than its potential harmony, tracing the destruction and suffering caused by war and death, while Homenaje is a wide-ranging eulogy to the poetry of all ages, from Genesis to Guillen himself, offering an impressive mixture of translation and originality. This collection was supplemented by ”Y otros poemas” [And Other Poems], the modest title at once a gesture of self-effacement and a hint to the more central significance of the earlier work, and Final.
Cantico evolved from its first publication in 1928 to a definitive version in 1950. It is the most widely known of his works and owes much to the influence of Paul Valery whom Guillen grew to know well during his stay in France. Subtitled Fe de vida (the name of a document proving a person is still alive), it is an affirmation of the beauty and coherence of life, a search for a perfection of form involving precision, interaction, and fusion. The importance placed on the present tense in the search for purity of expression is equalled by that placed upon fusion and interaction, as humanity and nature work in a symbiotic relationship. This is a search for a paradise on this earth, the perfection of which is portrayed in images of solid geometric forms that have often led Guillen’s work to be considered in relation to cubism. Faith and love are constants in this search for an illumination attainable only through the experience and creation of a solid harmony and the potential of poetic form to resolve contradiction.
Clamor complements Cantico with the same rigour and control; their main difference lies in the attention given to the themes of exile, grief, and war. Clamor is about transcending the oppositions of order versus chaos, life versus death, and love versus hate, which threaten to disrupt our faith in life. That Guillen saw Clamor as the dramatization of an age can be seen in its subtitle Tiempo de historia. Where Cantico was an ecstatic song to life, Clamor is a dialogue between a man and his time, but this does not detract from the poet’s faith in life, and if Clamor contains tones of disgust at the world of human creation it does not lose the exclamatory tone of pleasure that punctuated Cantico, nor the intensely tactile and sensual evocation of the poet’s immediate surroundings.
Homenaje continues to explore this affirmation of life and poetry. Guillen has always expressed a commitment to humanity; but here there is a progression that allows the voices of other poets to blend in with this own. His wish to overcome division and chaos has meant an attempt to bridge the gap between individual and collective perception, which is nowhere more clear that in this work. Homenaje is a gesture of thanks, an invitation to a gathering where we find Calderon, Becquer, Machado, Pascal, Mallarme, and Tolstoi, among others, joined in a postmodern celebration of the death of the author and the rebirth of intertextuality.
Guillen’s work, then, traces a familiar journey from harmony to discord, and beyond. For Guillen, life is an adventure and poetry an attempt to resolve its confusion. His is a vital, optimistic, and illuminating poetry, a love poetry in its most universal sense of self-abandonment to life itself. His work is therefore, in this ecology-conscious and first decade of the 21st century, no less contemporary now than it was on its initial publication.
