Poems by Gil de Biedma

Poems by Gil de Biedma.

Poems by Gil de Biedma.

Gil de Biedma's poems are regularly searched on the net. The personal, colloquial and intimate touch of his lyrics — a powerful and well-developed mix — has made possible a deep relationship between the poet and a sizable audience of poetry lovers worldwide over the years. All this, yes, despite the fact that many did not even know about him while he was still alive.

But, who was Jaime Gil de Biedma? Why this impact on Spanish poetry in the mid-twentieth century and even in the twenty-first century? We are the product of circumstances, and those that surrounded the life of this poet allowed the perfect breeding ground for his work to transcend and will mark not only a generation, but an entire country. For that and more he is remembered every Poetry Day in every inch of the planet.

Another view on Jaime Gil de Biedma

Read the poem or read the poet ...

Reading a poem or several poems and thereby believing that you understand the poet's life is, broadly speaking - and to say the least - an act of daring. However, reading the life of the poet, from the moment he receives consciousness until his last breath is gone, gives, in a certain way, some power to express an opinion regarding what his verses meant.

«What happens in a poem has never happened to you»

Biedma himself affirmed "what happens in a poem has never happened to one." And this does not mean, literally, that there is not an experiential trace in each letter, in each verse, in each stanza… no; in fact, there are, and many. However, the general vision of the trees cannot be deduced by their recent leaves, but by their deeper roots, by the sage that runs through the old trunk resisting the termites of life and the many pests that surround the little bustle of light that was conferred on each one.

What is said about Gil de Biedma

It is well known that Jaime Gil de Biedma was born in Barcelona in 1929. He arrived on November 13, as specified by his birth document. All the portals reply that he came from a wealthy family and of lineage and that this had a definitive impact on his life. That his first studies and high school took place at the Navas de la Asunción educational center, firstly, and then at the Luis Vives General Studies center.

The 7-year-old boy who had fun reading to the Quijote

Martha Gil, her sister, commented with joy in an interview that Biedma, just 7 years old, “laughed out loud reading the Quijote". Already this could predict a little that there would be in him a certain inclination to the letters. Let's not say that it would be known that he would be a poet, but there was a passion for literature, and that was already a lot.

Crises due to contradictions, university, friendships

Also that in his development he began to have an existential crisis as a result of a continuous denial of his birthplace opulence and an almost uncontrollable attraction for the marginalized by society.. This situation worsened as of 1946, after entering the University of Barcelona, ​​subsequent change to the University of Salamanca (where he graduated in law) and after reading Marxism and beginning to get along with communist ideas. It is in the Salamancan university environment where Biedma meets such figures as:

  • Jose Angel Valente
  • Juan Marse.
  • Gabriel Ferrater.
  • Jamie Salinas.
  • Carlos Barral.
  • Joan Ferrate.
  • Jose Agustin Goytisolo.
  • Angel González.
  • Claudio Rodriguez.

First works

These were, nothing more and nothing less than the writers who gave life to the so-called "Generation of 50". In an important part, it was thanks to the continuous conversations with these lawyers and intellectuals that Biedma's literary ideas took shape and color. Out of all of them, it was with Carlos Barral with whom he created a special connection and to whom he dedicates his first work Versos a carlos barral (1952) Later publishes According to time sentence (1953)

English poetry, the missing ingredient

In addition to the ingredients mentioned above, there is another factor that spices up Biedma's poetry before it reaches its final form. This element is decisive in his style - and it bursts in before publishing his third work - and is none other than the almost obligatory crossing of the Barcelonian with English poetry. Said event occurs after a trip to Oxford (1953) and by the hand of Paco Mayans, who introduces him to read TS Eliot. This encounter with Anglo-Saxon poetics gave the remaining and necessary nuance to Biedma's work.

The entrance to the Philippine Tobacco Company, the works and the dual life

After this - already graduated and with a blank pen in two previous works, but which claimed to be used in a more transcendental poetic act -, Jaime joined the Philippine Tobacco Company (the family business) in 1955. At this moment we find ourselves before a 27-year-old man with an enormous intellect, a poet with two books in tow, with a defined sexuality that is rejected by society, and who, belonging to the Spanish opulent class, smiles and embraces ideas. Marxists.

Under this panorama of supposed contradictions and rejections (and with an undeniable talent product of life and providence) arises one of the purest and most representative poetic works of Spain. in recent years.

Gil de Biedma's themes

His verses revolved around relentless time, everyday life, and how - really - current politics does not work in favor of citizens. They had and have a beautiful sound and rhythm, hence many singers sing them.

His nostalgia for the youth that left without return is evident. Not to mention love, that need to show oneself without masks, with the real essence that everyone fears, but that everyone possesses and secretly loves.

Jaime Gil de Biedma.

Jaime Gil de Biedma.

Collapse

His life continued to flow between family work, his continuous internal struggles over contradictions and a prevailing need to live his sexuality and his poetry in a free way.

However, in 1974, and after a fruitful career of 8 literary works, Biedma collapsed. The struggles in his mind were reflected in his body. The impact was such that the author stopped writing. The rejection was not only against the society that he described as "bourgeois", but against the left movement itself and its little strength to fight for the rights of the dispossessed. While that was being raised, internally he also judged himself and rejected himself for his wealthy origin and for never having really lived what he was trying to fight for.

AIDS and the fading light

As if that were not enough, Jaime is infected with AIDS. The complications surrounding this disease are what end his life. His last appearance in front of an audience to recite his work took place at the Residencia de Estudiantes, in Madrid, in 1988.

Due to the complications of AIDS, the poet passed away on January 8, 1990. It was in Barcelona, ​​and he was 60 years old.

Works

  • Versos a carlos barral (author's edition, Orense, 1952)
  • According to time sentence (1953)
  • Travel companions (Barcelona: Joaquin Horta, 1959).
  • In favor of Venus (1965)
  • Moralities (1966)
  • Posthumous poems (1968)
  • private collection (Seix Barral, 1969).
  • Seriously ill artist's diary (1974), memory.
  • The persons of the verb (Seix Barral, 1975; 2nd edition: 1982).
  • Verbatim: Essays 1955-1979 (Critic, Barcelona, ​​1980).
  • Poetic anthology (Alliance, 1981).
  • Jaime Gil de Biedma. Conversations (The Aleph, 2002).
  • The plot of the play. Correspondence (Lume, 2010).
  • Journals 1956-1985 (Lume, 2015).
  • Jaime Gil de Biedma. Conversations (Southern, 2015).

Poems by Gil de Biedma

Sad october night

Definitely

it seems to be confirmed that this winter

that comes, it will be hard.

They advanced

the rains, and the government,

meeting in council of ministers,

it is not known if he studies at this time

unemployment benefit

or the right to dismissal,

or if simply, isolated in an ocean,

he just waits for the storm to pass

and the day comes, the day when, finally,

things stop coming bad.

In the October night

as I read the newspaper between the lines,

I have stopped to listen to the heartbeat

the silence in my room, the conversations

of the neighbors lying down,

all those rumors

suddenly regain a life

and a meaning of its own, mysterious.

And I have thought of the thousands of human beings,

men and women who at this very moment,

with the first chill,

they have wondered about their worries again,

for his anticipated fatigue,

for your anxiety for this winter,

while outside it rains.

All over the coast of Catalonia it rains

with real cruelty, with smoke and low clouds,

blackening walls,

leaking factories, leaking

in poorly lit workshops.

And the water drags seeds into the sea

incipient, mixed in the mud,

trees, lame shoes, utensils

abandoned and all mixed up

with the first letters protested.

Loca

The night, which is always ambiguous,

infuriates you —color

of bad gin, they are

your eyes a few bichas.

I know that you will break

in insults and in tears

hysterical. In bed,

then i'll calm you down

with kisses that makes me sad

give them to you. And when sleeping

will you press against me

Like a sick bitch

I will never be young again

Fragment of a poem by Gil de Biedma.

Fragment of a poem by Gil de Biedma.

That life was serious

one begins to understand later

—Like all young people, I came

to take life ahead of me.

Leave a mark

and leave between applause

—To grow old, die, they were just

the dimensions of the theater.

But time has passed

and the unpleasant truth appears:

to grow old, to die

it is the only argument of the work.

Peeping Tom

Lonely eyes, stunned boy

that I surprised looking at us

in that little pinarcillo, next to the Faculty of Letters,

more than eleven years ago,

when I go to separate,

still groggy with saliva and sand,

after we both wallowed half dressed,

happy as beasts.

I remember you, it's funny

with what concentrated intensity of symbol,

is linked to that story,

my first experience of reciprocated love.

Sometimes I wonder what happened to you.

And if now in your nights next to a body

the old scene returns

and you still spy our kisses.

So it comes back to me from the past,

like a disjointed scream,

the image of your eyes. Expression

of my own desire.

Decision

Resolution to be happy

above all, against all

and against me, again

—Above all, be happy—

I take that resolution again.

But more than the purpose of amendment

the heartache lasts.

Nights of the month of June

Do i ever remember

certain nights in June of that year,

almost blurry, of my adolescence

(it was in nineteen hundred it seems to me

forty nine)

because in that month

I always felt a restlessness, a small anguish

the same as the heat that began,

nothing else

that the special sound of the air

and a vaguely affective disposition.

They were the incurable nights

and fever.

The high school hours alone

and the untimely book

next to the wide open balcony (the street

freshly watered it disappeared

below, among the lighted foliage)

without a soul to put in my mouth.

How many times do I remember

from you, far away

nights of the month of June, how many times

tears came to my eyes, tears

for being more than a man, how much I wanted

morir

or dreamed of selling myself to the devil,

you never listened to me.

But also

life holds us because precisely

It is not how we expected it.


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