Juan Ramón Jiménez

Juan Ramón Jiménez Mantecón (; 23 December 1881 – 29 May 1958) was a Spanish poet, a prolific writer who received the 1956 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his lyrical poetry, which in the Spanish language constitutes an example of high spirit and artistic purity". One of Jiménez's most important contributions to modern poetry was his advocacy of the concept of "pure poetry".

Biography

Early life Juan Ramón Jiménez was born in Moguer, near Huelva, in Andalucia, on 23 December 1881. He was educated in the Jesuit institution of San Luis Gonzaga, in El Puerto de Santa María, near Cádiz. Later, he studied law and painting at the University of Seville, but he soon discovered that his talents were better used for writing. He then dedicated himself to literature, under the influence of Rubén Darío and French symbolism. Jiménez fell in love with their creation and planned to travel to Peru to meet the young woman. The plan was only aborted by a telegram they arranged via the Spanish consul to the poet, giving him the fabricated news of Georgina's death.

Career He was among the contributors of the Madrid-based avant-garde magazine Prometeo between 1908 and 1912. In 1911 and 1912, he wrote many erotic poems depicting romps with numerous women in numerous locales. Some of them alluded to sex with novices who were nurses. Eventually, apparently, their mother superior discovered the activity and expelled him, although it is not known whether the sexual activity described in his poems actually occurred.

The main subjects of many of his other poems were music and color, which, at times, he compared to love or lust.

He suffered a mental breakdown and depression, so he stayed hospitalised in France and Madrid. The university named a building on campus and a writing program in his honor. He was also a professor at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. While living in Coral Gables he wrote "Romances de Coral Gables". In addition, he was a professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Maryland, which renamed Jimenez Hall for him in 1981.

Although he was primarily a poet, Jiménez' prose work Platero y yo (1917; "Platero and I"; Platero is a donkey) sold well in Latin America and in translation won him popularity in the USA. He also collaborated with his wife in the translation of the Irish playwright John Millington Synge's Riders to the Sea (1920). His poetic output during his life was immense.

Among his better known works are:

Sonetos espirituales 1914–1916 (1916; "Spiritual Sonnets, 1914–15") Piedra y cielo (1919; "Stones and Sky") Poesía en verso, 1917–1923 (1923; "Poetry in Verse") Poesía en prosa y verso (1932; "Poetry in Prose and Verse") Voces de mi copla (1945; "Voices of My Song"), and Animal de fondo (1947; "Animal at Bottom").

Both Jiménez and Camprubí used a simplified Spanish orthography different from the RAE standard. A collection of 300 poems (1903–53) in English translation by Eloise Roach was published in 1962.

Later life and death In 1956, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature; two days later, his wife died of ovarian cancer. Jiménez never recovered from the emotional devastation, and he died two years afterwards, on 29 May 1958, in the same clinic where his wife had died. Both are buried in his hometown of Moguer, Spain.thumb

In popular culture

A quotation from Jiménez, "If they give you ruled paper, write the other way," is the epigraph to Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953). The same quotation used in Fahrenheit 451 is used in The Lovely Bones (2002) by Alice Sebold. In 1968, the Spanish film director Alfredo Castellón adapted Jiménez's novel Platero and I into a movie by the same title. The Spanglish novel Yo-Yo Boing! (1998) by the Puerto Rican author Giannina Braschi features a scene in which poets and artists debate Jiménez's genius versus that of other Spanish-language poets Francisco de Quevedo, Luis de Góngora, Rubén Darío, Pablo Neruda, Federico García Lorca, and Julia de Burgos. A rock band in Spain is named Platero y Tú after Jiménez's novel

Streets named after Jiménez Several streets have been named after Jiménez, including one in Madrid, one in Valencia, and one in Quintanar de la Orden, Toledo.

Published works (original editions)

I Am Not I

Published works (translations) Books of Love: The Lost Poems of Juan Ramon Jimenez. Athens:Kinchafoonee Creek Press, 2022.