Juan Ramón Jiménez

Juan
Ramón Jiménez, (b. Dec. 24, 1881, Moguer,
Spain—d. May 29, 1958, San Juan, P.R.),
Spanish poet awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1956.
After
studying briefly at the University of
Salamanca, Jiménez went to Madrid (1900)
at the invitation of the poet Rubén
Darío. His first two volumes of poetry,
Almas de violeta (“Souls of Violet”) and
Ninfeas (“Waterlilies”), came out that
same year. The two books, printed in
violet and green, respectively, so
embarrassed Jiménez in his later years
by their excessive sentiment that he
destroyed every copy he could find. A
man of frail constitution, he left
Madrid for reasons of health. His
published volumes of that period,
including Pastorales (1911), Jardines
lejanos (1905; “Distant Gardens”), and
Elegías puras (1908; “Pure Elegies”),
clearly reflect the influence of Darío,
with their emphasis on individuality and
subjectivity expressed in free verse.
Jiménez
returned to Madrid in 1912 and, for the
next four years, lived at the Residencia
de Estudiantes and worked as an editor
of that educational institution’s
periodicals. In 1916 he traveled to New
York City, where he married Zenobia
Camprubí Aymar, the Spanish translator
of the Hindu poet Rabindranath Tagore.
Shortly after his return to Spain, he
published Diario de un poeta recién
casado (1917; “Diary of a Poet Recently
Married”), which was issued in 1948
under the title Diario de un poeta y mar
(“Diary of a Poet and the Sea”). That
volume marked his transition to what he
called “la poesía desnuda” (“naked
poetry”), an attempt to strip his poetry
of all extraneous matter and to produce
it in free verse, without formal metres,
of a purer nature. During the Spanish
Civil War (1936–39), he allied himself
with the Republican forces, until he
voluntarily exiled himself to Puerto
Rico, where he spent most of the rest of
his life.
Although primarily a poet, Jiménez
achieved popularity in the United States
with the translation of his prose work
Platero y yo (1917; Platero and I), the
story of a man and his donkey. 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 1914–1915
(1916; “Spiritual Sonnets, 1914–15”),
Piedra y cielo (1919; “Stones and Sky”),
Poesía, en verso, 1917–1923 (1923),
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”). A
collection of 300 poems (1903–53) in
English translation by Eloise Roach was
published in 1962.