Pedro Salinas

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Pedro Salinas

Pedro Salinas y Serrano (born November 27, 1891 in Madrid , † December 4, 1951 in Boston ) was a Spanish writer and poet. He was a member of the Generación del 27 and one of the greatest Spanish love poets. He spent his twilight years in exile in the United States.

biography

Pedro Salinas was born the son of the merchant Pedro Salinas Elmas and his wife Soledad Serrano Fernández. He studied law, philosophy and languages. He dedicated his life to teaching at various universities. He began his career as a lecturer in Spanish at the Sorbonne (1914–1917).

There he also wrote his doctoral thesis in the field of philology and developed a great passion for the work of Marcel Proust , whose work À la recherche du temps perdu he translated into Spanish. In 1915 he married Margarita Bonmatí Botella, a young woman from Santa Pola near Alicante , whose father was an industrialist and owned distilleries in Argel . Every day Salinas wrote his wife love letters, which were compiled by his daughter Soledad Salinas in Cartas de amor a Margarita (1912–1915). Pedro and his wife also had a son, Jaime Salinas, who was an editor and writer. Jaime won an award for his book Travesias: Memorias (1925–1955). In 1918 Pedro got a professorship at the University of Seville , where he taught Luis Cernuda. In 1922/23 he taught in Cambridge and then in Murcia (1923–1925).

In 1925 he published a modernized version of El Cantar del Mio Cid . A year later he went to the Complutense University of Madrid , where he published the magazine Índice Literario in 1932 to report on novelties in Spanish literature. He also wrote for Los Cuatro Vientos . Between 1928 and 1936 he worked at the Centro de Estudios Históricos as a researcher in the field of modern literature. He was appointed Professor of the Escuela Central de Idiomas and Secretary General of the Universidad Internacional de Verano de Santander .

There he met a North American student, Katherine R. Whitmore , who would later be professor of Spanish language and literature at the University of Berkeley and Northampton ( Massachusetts ) in the summer of 1932 . For her he wrote the trilogy La voz a ti debida , Razón de amor and Largo lamento . That romance persisted even though Katherine returned to the United States to continue her studies. She returned in 1934/1935, but Salina's wife discovered the affair and tried to kill herself. Katherine had previously tried to end the affair, but the Spanish Civil War and the exile of Salinas in North America made things difficult. In 1939, Katherine married her colleague Brewer Whitmore and their relationship with Salinas broke off.

The Spanish Civil War took Salinas in Santander by surprise . So he went to the United States, where he taught at the University of Wellesley College and at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore . In the summer of 1943 he accepted a position at the University of Puerto Rico. In 1946 he returned to Johns Hopkins University. Five years later, in 1951, he died in Boston . He is buried in the San Juan de Puerto Rico cemetery. Pedro Salinas is considered one of the great authors of the Generación del 27 . His outstanding works include Presagios , Razon de amor and Largo lamento .

plant

Compared to Salina's critical work, his poetry is outstanding. Gerardo Diego , also a member of the Generación del 27 , once described his work as auténtica, bella e ingeniosa , i.e. as authentic, beautiful and witty. Without a doubt, his environment and his life form the basis of his work, even if they are idealized in his works. In his poetry, avant-garde is linked with tradition. The central theme in his poetry is love. Along with Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer and Vicente Aleixandre (also a member of the Generación del 27), he is one of the greatest Spanish love poets.

Critics often divide his work into three phases. The first phase (1929–1931) is the time in which Salinas seeks its identity. The works he wrote during this period are very much influenced by the “poesía pura” (pure poetry) of Juan Ramón Jiménez . His poems are characterized by expressive simplicity, although the inventive, intellectual key shines through. The influence of Luis de Góngora can be clearly seen. At that time he was interested in the topics of love, humanity and looking at the world.

The central theme in his second creative phase (1933–1938) is love, which is very clear in his works such as La voz a ti debida . However, he does not talk about the abstract forms of love, but about everyday, concrete love. He describes the love adventure in a mechanical world. Salinas gives his poems a special touch through the use of the personal pronoun tú (you).

The third phase of his work (after 1938) is marked by his life in exile. The love issue must give way to other, more serious issues. For example, in 1950 he addressed the atomic bomb in La bomba increíble .

Poetry

  • Presagios , M., Índice, 1923.
  • Seguro azar , M., Revista de Occidente, 1929.
  • Fábula y signo , M., Plutarco, 1931.
  • La voz a ti debida , M., Signo, 1933.
  • Razón de amor , M., Ediciones del Árbol; Cruz y Raya, 1936.
  • Error de cálculo , México, Imp.Miguel N. Lira, 1938.
  • Lost Angel and other poems , Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins Press, 1938 (Antología bilingüe con poemas inéditos. Trad. De Eleanor L. Thurnbull).
  • Poesía junta , Bs. As., Losada, 1942.
  • El contemplado (Mar; poema) , México, Nueva Floresta; Stylo, 1946.
  • Todo más claro y otros poemas , Bs. As., Sudamericana, 1949.
  • Poesías completas , M., Aguilar, 1955 (Incluye el libro inédito Confianza).
  • Poesías completas , M., Aguilar, 1956 (Edición de Juan Marichal).
  • Volverse sombra y otros poemas , Milán, All'insegna del pesce d'oro, 1957.
  • Poesías completas , B., Barral, 1971.

Narrative texts

  • Vésperas del Gozo , 1926
  • La bomba increíble , 1950
  • Es desnudo impecable y otras narraciones , 1951

drama

  • La cabeza de Medusa , 1952
  • La estratosfera , 1952
  • La isla del tesoro , 1952

Critical works and essays

  • La Literatura Española Siglo XX , 1941
  • Jorge Manrique , 1947
  • La poesía de Rubén Darío , 1948
  • El defensor , 1948

German editions

  • The puzzle bomb. A fable of the end of the world and belief. Limes 1959. Translated and with an afterword by Eduard Fey.
  • Defense of the letter. An essay. Klett-Cotta 1988. Translated from the Spanish by Wilhelm Muster. ISBN 978-3-1290-7270-7
  • Poems. Suhrkamp Verlag 1990 (bilingual). With a homage from Jorge Guillén . ISBN 978-3-518-22049-8

Left

literature

  • The 98 generation pioneers of modern Spain? , Dtv 1978 ISBN 978-3-4230-9140-4
  • Carlos Feal Deibe: Poesía y narrativa de Pedro Salinas , Gredos 2000 ( ISBN 978-84-249-2253-5 ) in Spanish
  • Pedro Salinas: Memory in My Hands: The Love Poetry of Pedro Salinas , Peter Lang 2009. Transferred from Ruth Katz Crispin. ISBN 978-1-4331-0624-8

swell

personal data
SURNAME Salinas, Pedro
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Salinas y Serrano, Pedro; Salinas Serrano, Pedro
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish writer and poet
DATE OF BIRTH November 27, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Madrid
DATE OF DEATH 4th December 1951
Place of death Boston