Xavier Villaurrutia

Xavier Villaurrutia

Xavier Villaurrutia (born March 27, 1903 in Mexico City , † December 25, 1950 ) was a Mexican writer, poet and playwright. He belonged to the group of poets Contemporáneos .

Life

Xavier Villaurrutia was born in Mexico City on March 27, 1903 into a middle-class family with a special affinity for French culture, a predilection that shaped his upbringing, literary interests and his own work. Villaurrutia belonged to the group of poets of the "Contemporáneos". 1936 Villaurrutia wrote the screenplay for the film Let's Go with Pancho Villa by Fernando de Fuentes , was the one of the most successful films of Latin American film history. The Argentine publisher Sur published the first edition of Nostalgia de la muerte in 1938 , in which for the most part the poems that he had written over the past 10 years are brought together. Around 1940 Villaurrutia wrote the foreword to several translations of the works of Paul Valéry , Rainer Maria Rilke and Paul Morand . During this time the screenplay for Cinco fueron escogidos was written .

On December 25, 1950, Villaurrutia died of a heart attack. A few days later one speaks of suicide. The facts have not yet been clarified.

Octavio Paz recognized that Villaurrutia showed a keen sense for the rhythm of language even in his youthful poems, as well as his talent for creating images that reveal fragile relationships between the sensory impressions of the eye and the ear. The interest shown in these works today is therefore nourished by curiosity about the beginnings of a later master. The search for unusual images and metaphors can already be seen in the early works.

Poetic work

Villaurrutia's most important works are

• Reflejos (1926),
• Nocturnos (1933),
• Nostalgia de la muerte (1938),
• Décima muerte (1941) and
• Canto a la primavera y otros poemas (1948).

The entire poetic work is in the volume Sehnsucht nach dem Tod - Nostalgia de la muerte , translated by Curt Meyer-Clason, edited by Alberto Pérez-Amador Adam, Aachen 2007, bilingual collected. ISBN 978-3-89086-651-2

Dramatic work

The dramatic works are among others

• Cars profane (1943),
• Invitación a la muerte (1944),
• La mulata de Córdoba (1948) and
• Tragedia de las equivocaciones (1951).

Literature Prize

In 1955 the Premio Xavier Villaurrutia de escritores para escritores was created.

Web links

• Literature by and about Xavier Villaurrutia in the catalog of the Ibero-American Institute of Prussian Cultural Heritage, Berlin