Vicente Aleixandre
| Vicente Aleixandre | |
|---|---|
Aleixandre in 1977
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|
| Born |
26 April 1898 Seville, Spain |
| Died | 14 December 1984 (aged 86) Madrid, Spain |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Nationality | Spanish |
| Notable awards |
Nobel Prize in Literature 1977 |
Vicente Pío Marcelino Cirilo Aleixandre y Merlo (26 April 1898 – 14 December 1984) was a Spanish poet who was born in Seville in 1898. Aleixandre received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1977 "for a creative poetic writing which illuminates man's condition in the cosmos and in present-day society, at the same time representing the great renewal of the traditions of Spanish poetry between the wars". He was part of the Generation of '27.
Aleixandre's early poetry, which he wrote mostly in free verse, is highly surrealistic. It also praises the beauty of nature by using symbols that represent the earth and the sea. Many of Aleixandre's early poems are filled with sadness. They reflect his feeling that people have lost the passion and free spirit that he saw in nature. He was one of the greatest gay poets of Spanish literature alongside Cernuda and Lorca. The melancholia of his poetry was also the melancholy of failed or ephemeral love affairs.
He died in Madrid in 1984.
His earl collections of poetry include Passion of the Earth (1935) and Destruction or Love (1933). In 1944, he wrote Shadow of Paradise, the poetry where he first began to concentrate on themes such as fellowship, friendliness, and spiritual unity. His later books of poetry include History of the Heart (1954) and In a Vast Dominion (1962).
Aleixandre studied law at the University of Madrid. Selections of his work were translated into English in Twenty Poems of Vicente Aleixandre (1977) and A Longing for the Light: Selected Poems of Vincent Aleixandre (1979; Copper Canyon Press, 2007) (translated by Lewis Hyde).
His first book, Ámbito, written between 1924 and 1927 and published in Málaga in 1928, is the work of an incipient poet who has not yet found his own voice. The assonated short verse and art for art's sake aesthetics of Juan Ramón Jiménez and Jorge Guillén prevail, in addition to the ultraistic echoes of classical Spanish poetry from the Golden Age, especially Fray Luis de León and Góngora.
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