Hérib Campos Cervera
| Hérib Campos Cervera | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
March 30, 1905 Asunción, Paraguay |
| Died | August 28, 1953 (aged 48) Asunción, Paraguay |
| Occupation | Poet, short story writer, play writer |
| Nationality | Paraguayan |
| Literary movement | Modernist literature |
| Notable works | Ceniza Redimida |
Paraguayan poet Hérib Campos Cervera was born in Asunción, Paraguay, on March 30, 1905, son of Spanish parents, Herib Campos Cervera, also a poet, and of Alicia Diaz Perez, sister of the great intellectual Viriato Díaz Pérez.
He was an intern at the Colegio San Jose de Asuncion, an institution he was to call “a jail” more than once, which shows his vital and free spirit as a youth. Besides philosophy and math, he also dedicated himself to literary criticism and especially to poetry.
In the prologue of the second edition of “Ceniza Redimida” the scholar Miguel Angel Fernandez writes: “An unhappy childhood, far away from his parents, apparently marked his life, and in his poetry we may find the traces of this first stage of his life. His adolescence and youth were not more fortunate...”
His value as a poet is undeniable. All of the scholars on Paraguayan literature say that his work is the starting point of a new poetic conception joining the not always easy new path of vanguardism.
In his book “La poesia paraguaya - Historia de una incognita” the critical and intellectual Brazilian Walter Wey says: “Campos Cervera put the Paraguayan literature in the American rhythm and at the same level of the actual poetry of the continent. For that, he didn't need to get into the heart of the Hispanic-American. He only did what was expected from his country: a deep study of the modern natives which stayed in the objective aspects of life and nature. He then moved to the social and human subjects deepening, taking advantage of the immense and unexplored folk stories. In this sense, he also opened the way to the new generations.
If he didn’t show completely the revelation of Paraguay as it was expected from his intuition, he did show how the future could be revealed. He also showed that in almost 100 years of poetry, the Paraguayan poets despite describing the county they didn’t identify with it and the life style.”
He was a collaborator of magazines such as Juventud, Ideal and Alas in the 20's, his production of the time is similar to the current of the postmodernism. He used to sign with the pseudonym "Alfonso Monteverde”. In 1931, his participation in the acts of October 23 marked his first exile, first to Buenos Aires, Argentina and then to Montevideo, Uruguay. By then, he was clear in his ideas towards the left, maybe influenced by the anarchy and the Marxist socialists he contacted in Argentina and Uruguay.
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Wikipedia