On a day like today, specifically December 14, 1984, Vicente Aleixandre died in Madrid. He was one of the most important poetic figures of the famous Generation of 27, of our Spanish literature and today we want to remember him and pay him a small tribute.
If you don't know a bit about the life and work of this Spanish author, today is the time. Next, we will summarize the most important notes of the life and work of Vicente Aleixandre.
Life and work
Vicente Aleixandre was born in Seville In the middle of spring, on April 26, 1898, although much of his childhood would be spent in Malaga, to later move to Madrid. They say that it was his weak health that determined that this author devoted himself entirely to poetry. During the Civil War and after this, he remained in Spain, thus becoming a teacher of the new poets that were emerging.
His poetic production can be divided into three main stages:
- La primera It predates the Civil War and is characterized by a desire for communication and fusion with nature. He feels that he has to unite with the earth and with the plants and animals that live in it, leaving aside the individual reality of the human being. This is due, perhaps, to his feeling of weakness and weakness, in which he found himself as a being inferior to the rest continuously exposed to the suffering its great sensitivity. It is at this time that it is published "Swords as lips" (1932) and "Destruction or love" (1935). In his verses, the feeling of love and death are closely linked: love is conceived as something strong and positive that destroys the individual perspective of the human being.
- In the second stage, already after the Civil War, we find the Vicente Aleixandre most supportive with works such as "Shadow of Paradise" (1944) o «History of the heart» (1954)
- In his third and last stage both poetic and vital, we find the "Poems of the consummation" y "Dialogues of knowledge" (1974), in which the author becomes aware of his own old age and personally confronts the idea of death.
In the year 1977, Vicente Aleixandre received the Nobel Prize for Literature and it was also member of the Royal Academy of the Language.
3 poems by Vicente Aleixandre
Next, we leave you with 3 poems by this great Spanish author:
LOVING
What i don't want
is to give you dream words,
nor spread image with my lips
on your forehead, not even with my kiss.
The tip of your finger
with your pink nail, for my gesture
I take, and, in the air made,
I give it to you.
From your pillow, grace and hollow.
And the warmth of your eyes, alien.
And the light of your breasts
secrets.
Like the moon in spring
window
it gives us a yellow fire. And a narrow
beat
seems to flow back to you from me.
Is not that. Will not be. Your true meaning
the rest has already given me,
the nice secret,
the funny dimple,
the cute corner
and the morning
stretching.
THE FORGETTING
It is not your end like a vain cup
that you have to hurry. Drop the helmet, and die.
That's why you slowly lift in your hand
a shine or its mention, and your fingers burn,
like a sudden snow.
He is there and he was not, but he was and he is silent.
The cold burns and in your eyes it is born
his memory. Remembering is obscene
worse: it's sad. To forget is to die.
With dignity he died. His shadow crosses.
YOUTH
Sunny stay:
Where are you going, look?
To these white walls
closing of hope.
Walls, ceiling, floor:
tight segment of time.
Closed in him, my body.
My body, life, slim.
They will fall off one day
limits. How divine
nakedness! Pilgrim
light. Happiness happiness!
But they will be closed
the eyes. Demolished
walls. To the satin,
stars closed.