Alfonso Reyes Ochoa
Alfonso Reyes Ochoa (Monterrey, Nuevo León, May 17, 1889 — Mexico City, December 27, 1959) was a poet, essayist, narrator, translator, humanist, diplomat, and thinker. Mexican, five times nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Nicknamed "El Regiomontano Universal", he is considered one of the greatest figures of letters in the Spanish language.He served as Mexico's ambassador to Argentina and Brazil.
Family origins
Alfonso Reyes Ochoa was the ninth of the twelve children of General Bernardo Reyes Ogazón, Secretary of War and Navy and Governor of Nuevo León, preferred successor to the presidency of Mexico by General Porfirio Díaz, and his wife, the aristocrat Mrs. Aurelia de Ochoa-Garibay y Sapién, from Jalisco. These were, in order of birth: Bernardo, Rodolfo, María, Roberto, Aurelia, Amalia, Eloísa, Otilia, Alfonso, Guadalupe, Eva and Alejandro.
He also had a half-brother on his father's side: León Reyes, father of the muralist Aurora Reyes, León was the son of a girlfriend of Bernardo Reyes, had before his marriage to Aurelia Ochoa. León was born in Durango on June 29, 1870 and joined the family four years before Alfonso Reyes was born. He was all a pardon, and with him Alfonso had a special relationship. As Alfonso Reyes explains: "he would let himself be seen from time to time. A military engineer attached to a geographical commission, he toured the country and sometimes appeared at home. As he possessed prodigious strength, with his fingers he doubled the silver quints". ] 'peeling the kettle' with a gallant next to one of those windows with iron bars... He opened the bars a little, stuck his rival's head in, closed them again as essential, and left him imprisoned there and screaming.
León gave Reyes his first fountain pen "[so] you can write to me from wherever you go". Alfonso admired this brother who & # 34; he had known the most remote places in the country, the strangest tribes & # 34;. Also Aurelia, Alfonso's mother, had a certain trust with León that she could not have with her children: "One day I surprised my mother talking to León about the hopes she had in me future. The effect was almost tragic: a tear, a lost candor. I have let it be felt in my poem 'The sad man'. From the words of the poem it is clear that this must have happened when Alfonso Reyes was ten years old, around 1899. About León Reyes, it is worth reading in Adolfo Castañón, Alfonso Reyes, Knight of the Wandering Voice.
Alfonso Reyes's father, General Bernardo Reyes Ogazón, held important positions during the governments of Porfirio Díaz (he was governor of the state of Nuevo León and secretary of War and Navy). His mother, Aurelia, was the granddaughter of Don José Ignacio de Ochoa-Garibay y Móxica, one of the four children of Don José Justo de Ochoa-Garibay y Ximénez and Doña Juana María de Móxica y Eguía, first descendants of the conquistador Diego de Ochoa-Garibay. Garibay to settle in Zapotlán el Grande, as described by Reyes himself in his Parentalia.
Training and beginnings
Alfonso Reyes completed his first studies in schools in Monterrey, at the French Lyceum in Mexico, at the Monterrey Civil College, and later at the National Preparatory School and the National School of Jurisprudence, which would later become the Faculty of Law, in Mexico City, where on July 16, 1913 he graduated as a lawyer. In 1909, he founded, with other writers, the Ateneo de la Juventud, where Pedro Henríquez Ureña, Antonio Caso Andrade and José Vasconcelos Calderón, among other intellectuals, organized to read and discuss the Greek classics to which they had access (Homer, Plato, Aeschylus, Sophocles, among others), and formulate acute reflections on universal literature and philosophy, and carry out an important task of humanistic training. Of great relevance were the criticisms made of positivism and the development that it had in Mexico during the Porfiriato, parallel to the revolutionary cycle in the country.[citation required]
The Mexican Revolution of 1910 did not favor the Reyes family, by virtue of its association with the Porfirian dictatorship. Reyes remembers that he wrote in his room in Mexico City with a loaded carbine, near his desk; from time to time, he looked at it, wondering if he would have to use it.In 1911, when she was twenty-one years old, he published her first book, Aesthetic Questions, which he had begun. to write from years before.
In August 1912, he was appointed secretary of the Escuela Nacional de Altos Estudios, antecedent of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the UNAM, where he taught the chair of "History of the Spanish Language and Literature".
In 1913, his father participated in the coup against President Francisco I. Madero, a fact that would lead to the fratricidal fight known as the Tragical Ten. General Bernardo Reyes died on the first day of combat, in the Zócalo of Mexico City; due to that he is the only one of the coup plotters not to be considered a villain. Moved by this tragic event, Alfonso Reyes would publish the dramatic poem "Ifigenia Cruel" in 1923 and later in 1930 he would compose the Oración del 9 de febrero in commemoration of that afternoon, which was published posthumously in 1969 by his wife Manuela Mota. This fact and the subsequent participation of his brother in the government of Victoriano Huerta made him go to Europe in June of that year and join the Mexican Legation in France, a position he held until 1914.
Stay in Spain
After having been second secretary of the Legation of the Mexican Embassy of the then President Victoriano Huerta, Reyes moved to Spain, where he lived from 1914 to 1924. This period would be one of his most productive; during it he would become a master of literary research and a recognized writer in the Hispanic world.
During those years he suffered financial difficulties, he was forced to dedicate himself to journalism, translation, research and literary life, without losing his poetic vocation. He worked at the Centro de Estudios Históricos de Madrid under the direction of Don Ramón Menéndez Pidal and under his supervision, in 1919 he published the prose version of the Cantar de mio Cid. That same year he was appointed secretary of the Mexican commission "Francisco del Paso y Troncoso" whose mission was to locate and eventually repatriate Mexican historical documents in Europe, with this appointment begins his approach to post-revolutionary Mexico.
Several of his friends urged him to become a naturalized Spaniard so that he could hold a position in the government. Reyes did not follow the advice. He was once offered a teaching offer and he turned it down.
He has published numerous essays on classical Spanish literature and letters from the Golden Age, including: "El Arcipreste de Hita y su Libro de Buen Amor" (1917); & # 34; Lope de Vega and The pilgrim in his homeland & # 34; (1919); "Prologue to Quevedo" (1917) and "Apostilles to Quevedo" (1918), "Gracian" (1918); "Three silhouettes of Ruiz de Alarcón" (1918), not to mention his studies on Luis de Góngora such as & # 34; Góngora y & # 39; La gloria de Niquea & # 39; & # 34; (1915).
At that time Reyes collaborated with the French Hispanist Raymond Foulché-Delbosc in the edition of the Complete Works of Góngora (the first complete edition by this author). This work opened many doors for him among contemporary Spanish poets and writers and strengthened it in the world of criticism and philology. Reyes' relationship with Góngora will last a lifetime and an entire volume of his Complete Works is dedicated to the Cordovan poet.
In 1917 he gave the print Cartones de Madrid (a journey through the contemporary city and the subsoils of its history); as well as his brief and magisterial work, Vision of Anahuac (1519). In this fresco in prose, the Valley of Mexico is described from the gaze of the conqueror. Throughout his narration there are echoes of the Cartas de Relación by Hernán Cortés, the chronicles of Antonio de Solís, among others. Also in those years he published The Suicide, and from 1921, El cazador and Calendario (1924), record and proof of his participation in literary life in Madrid.
Around 1919, Reyes was collaborating with El Sol of Madrid, while he was engaged in literary and philological criticism on the Spanish classics described above and was building letter by letter, poem by poem, article by article, his own work. In order not to get lost in the labyrinths, he followed certain threads, one of them was that of Benedetto Croce's thought: "All history," Benedetto Croce wrote for this reason, "all true history is contemporary history." No wonder he has been a contributor to the Revista de Filología Española, the Revista de Occidente, and the Revue Hispanique.
Reyes recalls an act from 1923 as follows: "On October 14, at my anonymously distributed invitation, some friends gathered in the Botanical Garden of Madrid to dedicate five minutes of silence to the memory of Mallarmé& #34;. José Ortega y Gasset gave an account of this initiative in the first issue of the Revista de Occidente (November, 1923).
During these years he maintained an intense correspondence with Hispanic Americans: Jorge Luis Borges, Pedro Henríquez Ureña, José María Chacón y Calvo; Mexicans: Julio Torri, Martín Luis Guzmán, Rafael Cabrera, Artemio de Valle-Arizpe, Manuel Toussaint, Genaro Estrada, Enrique González Martínez and Diego Rivera; Spanish: Unamuno, Azorín, Jiménez, Valle-Inclán and Gómez de la Serna; Ortega y Gasset and French such as Valery Larbaud and Raymond Foulché- Delbosc.
The figure of Reyes was not ignored by the Mexican government and he would soon be called back to his country for a brief period. On Saturday, April 12, 1924, Alfonso Reyes recounts, & # 34; my colleagues, meeting at half past one in the afternoon at the Lhardy restaurant, offered me their farewell to him. The invitation was signed by Eduardo Gómez de Baquero, Francisco A. de Icaza, 'Azorín', Enrique Díez-Canedo, José María Chacón y Calvo, Manuel Azaña, Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Melchor Fernández Almagro, Antonio Marichalar, Edgar Neville and Cipriano Rivas Cherif".
For more on Reyes' period, see Alfonso Reyes and Spain: his dialogue with Unamuno, Valle-Inclan, Ortega y Gasset, Jimenez, and Gomez de la Serna by Barbara Bockus Aponte.
Parenthesis in Mexico (1924)
Reyes leaves Madrid on April 17, 1924 "fired effusively by friends" numerous. Reyes arrives in Veracruz on May 7, her arrival did not go unnoticed, and she was greeted by writers such as Francisco Monterde and Enrique Fernández Ledesma. On June 1st, the Pen Club of Mexico, directed by Genaro Estrada, organizes a meal for him in which the poem "Noche de mayo" as a "Pajarita de Papel" (i.e. a finely printed flyer). On May 20, he is received as a corresponding member of the Mexican Academy of Language and presented the initiative of the Technological Dictionary. On July 3 of that same year, he bids "Farewell to José Vasconcelos", his friend and a colleague from the Ateneo de la Juventud, who until then was in charge of the Public Secretariat. He will also meet another dear friend from that time, Antonio Caso.
One day after the Farewell, on July 4, Alfonso Reyes begins writing his Diary that will only end until his death.
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The lively return to Mexico lasted until the end of 1924. He left Mexico City on September 23 and arrived the next day by train in Monterrey, his hometown. Upon arrival, he met old friends and acquaintances such as his civil school classmate, Ignacio H. Valdés, with whom he had a correspondence and Corporal Maximino Mata Cabello, who taught him to shoot quail, pigeons and rabbits with a shotgun and to ride by horse. Reyes says that Cabo Mata was "one of the grooms of my childhood who gave me my first horse 'El grano de oro' (see my poem 'The Horses'")
Madrid, Paris and Rome (1924)
September 30 arrives in New York. Only he knows that he is carrying a confidential letter from President Álvaro Obregón to Alfonso XIII, King of Spain, with a private assignment: to intercede in the conflict that then affected Spain and the "Moroccan chiefs". On October 15, he visited General Plutarco Elías Calles at the Hotel Majestic (Paris) and gave him a message from the then president, Obregón. After a train trip, he arrived in Madrid on October 23, 1924.
On November 3, he visits Alfonso XIII, fulfills his order and takes a few days to visit Paris on his way to Mexico. In this city, he asks Genaro Estrada to stay in Paris. On the 29th of that month, he meets Ramón Menéndez Pidal (who on that day receives an honorary doctorate) and a colleague of his, Américo Castro.
On December 14, he was given the news that he would be a minister and two days later, on December 16, 1924, he received the agrément (that is, the approval of the French government) to become a representative of Mexico and is waiting to receive his credentials. At the end of the year he decides to travel to Rome to spend the end of the year and goes to the capital of Italy to visit his friend Justo Gómez Ocerín and his wife Conchita, with whom he had lived in the Spanish ranch. Counselor of the Spanish Embassy to the Holy See, Justo was staying at the Palazzo di Spagna. Alfonso Reyes takes advantage of those days in Rome, not only to get to know it at its different levels, but also to make short lightning trips to Turin, Milan, Venice, Florence and Genoa.
Life and diplomatic mission
Paris (1925-1927)
On January 8, 1925, he left on his way to Paris and arrived four days later, on January 12. In the Paris of 1925, Reyes will meet some friends he had met in 1913, such as the Peruvian critic Francisco García-Calderón, author of the prologue to Cuestiones estéticas (1910) and to make new relationships with the Ecuadorian writer and ambassador Gonzalo Zaldumbide. In his residence, on December 12, 1925, there will be a public reading of Iphigenia Cruel in which Francisco I. Ventura, José Vasconcelos, Jules Supervielle and Ernest will be present. Martinenche.
He presents his credentials as ambassador on January 25, 1925 and finds himself "in the middle of the ocean of diplomatic tournée" consequently barely time to read and write. He gives interviews and is greeted in the press by the Paris Times, L & # 39; europe nouvelle and La revue de la Amerique Latine (among others). On March 15, 25, the latter medium offers him a banquet with 180 covers.
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Beyond the diplomatic world, Reyes deals with visual artists such as Gregorio Prieto, Pedro Figari, the painter and poet Ángel Zárraga and his countryman, the sculptor Carlos Bracho, Foujita, the caricaturist Toño Salazar, Robert and Sonia Delaunay among others. His friendship with the legendary actress, model and singer Kiki de Montparnasse is well known. He is also in contact with other authors, some of them are Corpus Barga, Jean Cassou, Válery Larbaud, Marcel Auclair, Mathilde Pomès, the brothers Francisco and Ventura García-Calderón, the Mexican José María González de Mendoza; Hispanists Charles Lesca and Raymond Foulché-Delbosc, Alcides Arguedas, Vicente Huidobro, Armand Godoy, president of the France-Amerique Latine Association, Mariano Brull and his two daughters, for whom he would later compose the famous jitanjáforas, Paul Valéry, Henri Focillon, Paul Groussac, Gabriela Mistral (with whom he corresponded) and Palma Guillén, Jean Giraudoux, Paul Morand, with whom he would have a great friendship, Jules Romains, Francis de Miomandre, Jean Cocteau, and the bookseller Adrienne Monnier, with the poet and diplomat Saint-John Perse, author of Anabasis, a poem that some believe is in tune with Visión de Anáhuac by Alfonso Reyes, as well as the translator of this same book Jean Guerandel.
On September 16, 1925, the feast of Mexican Independence, Reyes organized a banquet attended by 650 people. In it Manuel M. Ponce played the piano and his wife sang & # 34; Las Mañanitas & # 34; and "The little star".
In January 1926, he composed "Letter to two friends" (refers to Enrique Díez Canedo in Paris and Genaro Estrada in Mexico) in which he makes a sketch to organize his books and papers. This epistle allows the reader to have an image of the editorial project that the 35-year-old Alfonso Reyes had; which was divided into three large categories: "true books"; "casual aggregation books"; and & # 34; prehistoric papers & # 34;. That same year he promotes the entry of Mexico into the Institute for Intellectual Cooperation dependent on the League of Nations, an institution that will be the predecessor of UNESCO.
On March 10, 1926, he gave the conference "Simples remarques sur le Mexique", which contains a vision of Mexico in which he salutes the constructive process of the Mexican revolution. Also in that year he would meet the former rector of UNAM, Ezequiel A. Chávez, who gave a lecture on December 16 at the Sorbonne. Other figures that Reyes dealt with at that time were Miguel de Unamuno, a great reader, like Reyes, of Marcel Proust. By the way, Reyes happened to occupy the apartment where the author of In Search of Lost Time had spent the last three years of his life, at number 44 Rue Hamelin, on the fifth floor. Reyes was surprised, as Paulette Patout says, by this "strange coincidence, on November 18, 1924, two exact years after the death of the writer" he settled in Paris. There Reyes made friends with the doorman of the building. Another character linked to the world of Marcel Proust, with whom Reyes had contact, was the writer Ramón Fernández.
That year he published the book of verses Pausa and Reloj de Sol that would later deserve a review by Jorge Luis Borges.
In Paris, he also worked on the manuscript of Cuestiones Gongorinas that would be published in Spain in Espasa Calpe in 1927 and that would open the doors of the esteem of the Spanish poets of the generation of '27 (Gerardo Diego, Dámaso Alonso, José Moreno Villa, Pedro Salinas, Jorge Guillén, among others) who were determined to put Góngora in the forefront of creation.
In diplomatic terms, on August 27, 1926 and thanks to the efforts of Reyes, a Mexican legation was established in Switzerland; he obtained the Swiss approval as minister of Mexico, but this was not effective immediately.
After having spent a few months of uncertainty in relation to his diplomatic destiny, Reyes delivered his letters of retirement to the president of the Third French Republic (Gastón Doumerge) on March 14, 1927. Two farewell banquets are offered to him on March 19, one with 200 people and another with 1,000. That same day Paul Valéry sent him a dedicated copy of his poem "The young grim reaper" (La Jeune Parque).
He left France on March 20, 1927 from the port of Saint-Nazaire towards Veracruz passing through Havana. She landed in Veracruz on April 7, 1927.
Mexico (April 7 - June 4, 1927)
In Veracruz he was received by Major General Arnulfo R. Gómez and by a delegation from the stridentist publication Horizonte and from Xalapa, Manuel Aples Arce sent him a telegram of welcome.
During the weeks he was in Mexico (less than two months) Reyes reunited with his family, friends and co-workers (such as Genaro Estrada and Xavier Icaza).
On April 8, he learns that his next diplomatic destination will be Argentina (a position for which he had been appointed since April 1), where he will head the first Mexican embassy in that country, based in Buenos Aires. After the obligatory conferences in Foreign Relations, he meets with the President of the Republic, General Plutarco Elías Calles on April 22. Topics of conversation: the general lines of the next mission, agriculture and the suggestion made by the president to visit the agricultural school in Michoacán (remember the great interest that the leaders of that time had in the development of rural education and the youth training in agronomy issues). Reyes says that he reminded her "of Hidalgo's plans to introduce the vine and the silkworm."
In those days the literary and poetic group organized around the magazine Contemporáneos (Xavier Villaurrutia, José Gorostiza, Carlos Pellicer, etc.) offers him a banquet and another group led by the Pen Club headed by Genaro Estrada also offered him a meeting in his honor.
He moved to Monterrey for a few days (from May 10 to 16, 1927) and was received by the press and a delegation led by the soon to be governor Aarón Sáenz, had family and friendly meetings, and made visits and excursions to places like the Cola de Caballo waterfall and the house of El Mirador.
On May 17, he returns to the capital, via Querétaro, where he turns 38 and in the third week of that same month, already in Mexico City, he holds conferences and meetings related to his next mission in Argentina, which In general, it covered the following points:
- Establish a direct navigation line Mexico-Argentina
- May Argentina send representatives to Central America and support a union of republics in that region
- Arrange a press agency
- Establish a radio service (which then only arrived from Mexico to Santiago and which is expected to reach Buenos Aires on a scale in Colombia)
- Host a meeting for the Sixth Pan American Confederation and take care of the details of your organization
On Friday, June 3 at nine o'clock at night, he leaves for Laredo. On June 4, he arrives in Monterrey at night, continues to San Antonio and on the 6th, he arrives in San Luis (Missouri) and attends an opera in the "great park". He takes the train to New York and arrives on June 8, 1927, sees Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare staged by the legendary company of the Famous Players (founded by Sarah Bernhardt and Adolph Zukor) at the New Amsterdam. He stays in this city until June 12, during which time he meets Antonio Castro Leal, Carlos Chávez, José Juan Tablada who shows him his Mexican iconographic collection and a 28-year-old Rufino Tamayo, who shows him the watercolors he exhibited. in Art Center of that city. Consul Prieto gives him news of his upcoming mission in Argentina.
Journey on the Vauban (June 11 - July 2, 1927)
On June 11, he embarks on a "nice little boat" called Vauban at two in the afternoon and will be on that boat until the 26th of that month. The small ship is large enough for golf to be played on the deck, a sport Reyes was fond of. Championships and competitions for various sports were also organized on board. On that journey, on the night of June 16, he sees "the Southern Cross" for the first time (... des étoiles nouvelles ) & # 34;. On June 18, he receives a telegram from Ortiz Rubio, former president of Mexico and ambassador in Rio de Janeiro, informing him that he has received the approval of the Argentine government for his appointment as ambassador. On June 20 he crosses the Equator and for this event it is customary on the ship to have a costume party and baptize the uninitiated with flour and eggs. On June 25, a farewell to the captain is celebrated, he tells Scottish tales, he meets a commission of American architects who are going to a Congress in Buenos Aires. On June 26 he arrives in Rio de Janeiro and before disembarking he is welcomed by Ambassador Ortiz Rubio and Councilor Nervo. The Rio newspapers announce his arrival and he has meetings with the representatives of La Razón and La Nación (Buenos Aires). That same day, at his welcome dinner, Ortiz Rubio gives him a telegram from Genaro Estrada informing him that the embassy decree will take effect on July 9 and that he must wait for his new credentials in Buenos Aires. Aires.
In Rio de Janeiro, he visits the beaches, goes to the botanical garden, gives interviews, and returns on board on June 29, and that day he sends Carlos Pellicer the poem entitled: "Passing through Rio"
He continued his trip to Uruguay and arrived in Montevideo on June 30, 1927. He exchanged passwords with the members of the embassy in Uruguay. He arrived in Buenos Aires on July 2 of that same year and was received by friends, the press, and the government.
Embassy in Argentina (July 2, 1927 - April 4, 1930)
From the first days he begins to take the pulse of daily life, which is not always easy in diplomatic representation before receiving his credentials as ambassador. He initiates visits with Argentine officials, Minister Gallardo and Mr. Labougle. He receives a telegram from the President of Mexico, Calles, and the Secretary of Foreign Relations, Genaro Estrada, who asks him to "send a minimum budget, put in personal order, wait for credentials". He searches for and finds a location for the embassy, write to Relations and the Treasury (in which Luis Montes de Oca is). On July 4, he received the first copies of his book Cuestiones gongorinas, published by Espasa Calpe in Madrid. On August 8, 1927, he presented his ambassadorial credentials to the President of Argentina Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear y Pacheco and in the White Room of the Casa Rosada with the protocol ceremonial.
On August 14, the Grupo Renovación that ran the magazine Valoraciones (1923-1928) took him to La Plata. Henríquez Ureña, Borges published in this magazine and Reyes himself would later publish some articles. Ten days later the editorial staff of Revista Nosotros gave him a banquet that Borges described as "superb" with 100 covers, the dean of writers, Ricardo Rojas, participates in this event; Aníbal Sánchez Reulet from Valoraciones magazine; one of the editors of the Buenos Aires magazine Nosotros (founded in 1907), Emilio Suárez Calimano; Fernández Moreno recites some verses and the Minister of Education Antonio Sargana.
On September 12, preparations begin for the first diplomatic gala to be held on the 16th, attended by 800 people, including President Alvear. On the 15th of that month there were parties in the schools and conservatories that bore the name of "Mexico" and to which Reyes had the obligation to attend. On October 17, he meets Victoria Ocampo, the future director of Sur magazine, and Nieves Gonnet de Rinaldini, with whom Reyes will have a personal and epistolary relationship. In December, according to the Diario, Reyes writes the prologue for the Argentine edition of the novel Pero Galín by Genaro Estrada that would be published by Tor (never published). Also during this month he writes for the Argentine magazine Caras y Caretas, in others, the article on the arrival of the aviator pilot Charles Lindbergh. this last month of the year, write down the list of clubs to which you belong and must attend: Jockey Club, Gymnastics and Fencing Club, Argentine Tennis Club, Military Circle, Belgrano Club, Women's National Library of Congress, Progress Club, Friends of Art, Argentine Chess Club, without counting the clubs to which it is affiliated in Paris (Comité France Amerique, Cercle interallié, Paris Amerique Latine and the Bonne Etape, of which he is a founder). This list shows the intense social activity of the writer and ambassador and among these associations Friends of Art stands out, the society that revolutionized Argentine life and in which Reyes had an intense participation. Reyes a portrait in one of his diplomatic reports. He spent the end-of-year vacations in the small town of Tandil, where he had rented a small property for himself and his wife: "La Pascuala", a place in the one who would write some texts that would later form part of the Literary Experience. Also here he wrote "La caída. Exegesis in Ivory", a kind of prose poem on an elaborate watermark entitled "The Fall of the Rebel Angels" in the National Archaeological Museum (in Madrid).
1928
On January 12, 1928, he signed the Treaty of Scientific and Artistic Literary Property between Mexico and Argentina. On March 10, Reyes notes in his diary that his old friend, Alfonso Cravioto, is on his way to Chile, who is on his way to take over as the first ambassador of Mexico in Santiago. On March 12, Cravioto and Reyes update themselves on the various news from Mexico, particularly those coming from the southeast and smuggling ["contlapachar"] in that border region between Chiapas, Campeche, Quintana Roo and Belize. That same day, in Buenos Aires, he meets the Spanish writer Ramiro de Maeztu with whom he shared a disenchanted vision of modernity and some of the ideas that are in Reyes's text "Problems of a young novelist" Maeztu's subsequent attitude in relation to the Republic will distance him from Reyes and he will be shot by the Republicans on October 29, 1936.
At the same time that he published in Argentina in magazines such as Proa ("Estética, estática") or the Revista Índice de Bahía Blanca (where he published the almost sonnet "Brindis"), he does not stop keeping Mexico in mind and collaborates with the Revista del ejército y la marina with the "Theory of the Saber", a short review of Theory for the handling of the saber on horseback by Mariano Arista, a work he inherited from his father. These pages will later form part of the Memorias, Crónica de Monterrey project.
On April 20, 1928, Reyes received the French translation of Visión de Anáhuac (1519) [Vision de l'Anahuac] version of Jeanne Guérandel and introduction by Valery Larbaud, who would be in charge of disseminating the works of Alfonso Reyes in France and would maintain an interesting correspondence with him. This would be his first book in French. A day later, on April 21, he is invited to discover an artistic bronze plaque of Elena Guarnacchia on Mexico Street, between Ríos, and give a speech on this street in Buenos Aires.
On May 27, 1928, he boarded the ship to spend a few days in Montevideo, where Juana de Ibarbourou, whose son was very ill and with whom Reyes had a friendship and literary admiration, would visit. In Uruguay, he dictated a conference entitled "Last crisis of Mexican thought".
On June 14, in Buenos Aires, he gave his lecture "Sabor de Góngora" within the framework of the activities organized by the Friends of Art Society. Text that would later be published in its entirety a day later in La Nación of Buenos Aires and that is collected in "Tres scopes to Góngora" in Volume VII of the Complete Works.
On July 17, 1928, a telegram arrives at 2:30 p.m. announcing that Obregón was assassinated at a banquet by an alleged cartoonist. A month earlier, on June 27, Reyes gave a lecture "Man and nature in the world of Segismundo" at the University, this text is compiled in the Complete Works Volume VI.
On August 25, 1928, the philosopher José Ortega y Gasset arrived in Buenos Aires, with whom he had maintained an intense friendship during his years in Madrid. The life and work of Ortega and Reyes trace parallel figures and both hold meetings and disagreements throughout their days. A figure they have in common is that of the German poet and writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, about whom both will write two books. On August 30, he offers Ortega a dinner attended by Ocampo, the United States ambassador and Elena (Baby) Sansinena de Elizalde (responsible for Friends of Art).
On October 12, Irigoyen became president of the Argentine Republic and Alvear left. On October 16, Reyes notes the arrival of Juana de Ibarbourou two days before and records the dinner they had together. On the 18th of this month, he is invited to have tea with Victoria Ocampo and Reyes makes "charges" against him. because of her surly behavior and that day their friendship is sealed.
On November 21, he presented his resignation by telegraph due to the change of government that took place in Mexico, following the death of Obregón, and leaving the executive free. On December 4 of this year, he agreed with Evar Méndez to make the edition of the Cuadernos del plata, a series of small plaquettes in which only five titles will finally be published: Cuaderno San Martín de Borges, The Fish and the Apple by Ricardo E. Molinari, Six Stories by Ricardo Güiraldes, Newcomer Papers by Macedonio Fernández and Line by the Mexican Gilberto Owen. This initiative was inspired by the Series of Literary Reading Notebooks of the Índice Magazine founded by Juan Ramón Jiménez and in which Reyes collaborated, he was excited about this idea of "making beautiful and elegant brochures, for those things little things that one does". On December 17, Henríquez Ureña gave him the original of his "brief pieces On the shore" for this collection. However, this book of micro-essays will not be published until 87 years later in the collection Las semanas del jardín of the Bonilla y Artigas publishing house.
On December 19, he participated as Mexico's plenipotentiary representative in the meeting in which the Scientific and Literary Property Treaty between Mexico and Argentina was signed. On December 21, he played his first round of golf at the San Isidro club, a sport that he practiced to lose weight but which would also inspire "Palabras del golf", in which Reyes suggests some voices in passing to translate the terminology of the accessories and movements of this sport.
1929
In January he continues to practice golf and practices on the roof of the Harrod's department store in Buenos Aires. That same month, the text "Motivos de la conducta" in numbers 7 and 8 of the magazine Literary Life. On January 10 he had the idea of going out to Montevideo to greet Juana de Ibarbourou, on that trip he saw the spectacle of "el Mexican who exhibits a notable talking head at the fair: the Aztec Flower". This episode is the origin of the way in which Ocampo addressed Reyes in his letters.
On the 16th he conceived the idea of publishing Fuga de Navidad with drawings by Norah Borges de Torre which had been composed on Christmas 23rd (six years before), on March 23rd he will deliver the drawings and the publication will take place in June of that same year.
On January 20, Reyes records that María Rosa Oliver writes a silhouette about him in Argentine Literature, with this activist Reyes took Greek classes and had an intense correspondence.
On January 21, Ricardo E. Molinari visits him and updates him on the differences and "charges" of young Argentine literature against new Mexican literature, "subject of my letter 17 of this date to Genaro Estrada". This visit will be an announcement of the inhospitable climate that Reyes will discover in the Argentine literary city.
On January 25, Reyes thanks Cuban poet Mariano Brull for his waning poems and asks him for his "Jitanjáforas" and the "Salamesita" de Arenales that Salvadoran cartoonist Toño Salazar knows by heart. This would be the beginning of the essay "Las Jitanjáforas" first published in the first issue of the Revista Libra in the winter of that year (1929) and later collected in Volume XIV (The literary experience) of the Complete Works. Later, in 2011, Adolfo Castañón will publish The book of the Jitanjáforas by Alfonso Reyes, a collection of essays, poems, letters and documents on this topic.
On January 26, he writes to Borges asking for a book by Matthew Arnold. He sends it to him, but at the same time sends him another one, which Reyes had thought of but had not asked for, from Alexander Fraser Tytler in whose theory of translation Reyes was interested and whom he quotes in his essay "De the translation". About this, Reyes talks about a "case of telepathy with Borges". The next day in a meeting with Borges they talk about the verses of the Flower a rule in the game of cards called a "trick". Reyes notes that Borges had the plan to compile this type of verse, together with "anthology pages of old milongas" and he notes as an example the following:
By the river Paraná
I was sailing a piojo,
with an axe in the eye
and a flower in the eye.
On January 31, he dedicates a few lines to the news of the publication of "Einstein's new thesis, the result of 10 years of work on the 'Uniform Field Theory'" and a phrase stands out: & # 34; each body creates its space & # 34;. Reyes quotes this physicist on numerous occasions throughout his complete works.
On February 1 at half past one in the afternoon, Reyes successfully carried out the first telegraphic test between Chapultepec in Mexico City and Transradio in Buenos Aires, which spontaneously decided to continue with the communication so as not to lose contact.
On March 3rd "disturbing telegrams of military uprisings in Mexico begin [to arrive]" and during the following days Reyes will be forced to dispatch articles to rectify the Argentine press, whose reception of the Mexican news seems exaggerated and must be combated.
On March 11, Reyes states: "poem made in an instant, with conversations with the lady of Mayor Muñoz: 'Yerbas del Tarahumara'", whose translation was made by Valery Larbaud and It would be published for the first time in his magazine: Commerce, in the summer of that same year (number XX).
On April 11 he begins writing the operetta Landrú, based on the story of the French serial killer of the same name. He would finish it many years later, in 1953 and it would be published in April 1964 in the Magazine of the University of Mexico This work shows the sense of humor that is not lacking in the work of Reyes. That same day he received from Borges the poem & # 34; Cuaderno San Martín & # 34; to be published in Cuadernos de Plata.
On the 16th of that same month, he received from his "brother Rodolfo, from Madrid, De mi vida (political memoirs) which lasted until the death of my father and form Volume I, this will do him good morally because it is the beginning of his catharsis, and historically without a doubt. As the volume is more closely linked to my father and his politics, let me clear the way for my Crónica de Monterrey, in which I will give my father a human silhouette". Shortly after, Reyes would write the Prayer of February 9 that would remain unpublished until 1969 and whose writing is not recorded in the newspaper.
In Buenos Aires, Reyes periodically visits the poet Leopoldo Lugones with whom he befriends. On May 7, he wrote to Juana de Ibarbouru to organize the commemoration of the tenth anniversary of Nervo's death in Montevideo. On May 19 he publishes in La Nación & # 34; Amado Nervo's Love Trip & # 34;.
On June 5, at Victoria Ocampo's house, she meets the German philosopher, the Count of Keyserling who "believes that Mexico is stronger than the United States". Reyes would later write " Keyserling in Buenos Aires" and mentions it more than fifteen times in his work.
On June 15, he notes that he is working on the book, The seven about Deva that will be published in 1942 by the Tezontle publishing house.
On June 21, after the term of Plutarco Elías Calles had ended, an agreement was reached between the interim Emilio Portes Gil and the church to put an end to its armed support of the Cristeros.
On July 23, he publishes the poem "Norah Playing Stars," a friendly payment for the drawings he did for his book.
The following day the process of breaking with the editor of Cuadernos del Plata, Evar Méndez, begins. Reyes is disillusioned with the Argentine literary milieu. In a letter to José Ortega y Gasset dated January 10, 1930, Reyes expressed how the "great enthusiasm became a conflictive and sterile company". Despite everything, some Notes were published. del Plata that could be considered part of the editorial biography of Reyes.
On August 7, he gave a public reading of his story "The testimony of Juan Peña", in which he talks about the atmosphere that prevailed in Mexico at the end of the Porfirian regime. The subject of the story has to to do with the dispute over land ownership in Mexico as well as with the issue related to the education of lawyers in charge of litigating around that issue.
On August 10, she is in Montevideo attending the homage to Juana de Ibarbourou whose husband is sick at home, lethargic by the morphine she gives him so he can cope with his pain. He returns to Buenos Aires and visits Juana again for two weeks, this time she gives him the manuscript of The Wind Rose and a mysterious confession.
The first and last issue of Libra comes out on August 23. On August 29, he reads the conference "Words about the Argentine nation" which was later published in the complete works. In this conference he makes a parallel between Argentina and Mexico as two representative poles of the ethical possibilities of the continent.
On September 11, he is going to read the text "A time of Mexican literature, the immediate past," an autobiographical essay that he will only publish 15 years later and in which he refers to the time of the Ateneo de la Juventud and his friendship with José Vasconcelos, Antonio Caso, Pedro Henríquez Ureña, among others.
On September 13, he states that his jitanjáforas were successful and that same day his conference "Presagio de América" in the Bulletin of the Board of History and Numismatics of Argentina. On the 22nd of that same month, the Hispanicist and American writer Waldo Frank arrived in Buenos Aires, about whom Reyes wrote several texts and whose presence in American culture would be decisive, as shown the fact of his friendship with Victoria Ocampo, who left a testimony about him. He gives Reyes the first copy of his book The rediscovery of America, which was published in two editions; the first in Babel, 1929, the second a few months later with the stamp of Revista de Occidente. Frank corresponded with writers such as Reyes himself, Victoria Ocampo and Octavio Peace, among others; which are still unpublished.
On September 28, Reyes gives a lecture at the opening of the Mexican painting exhibition in La Plata, whose catalog was presented by Pedro Henríquez Ureña, which was mounted on October 5, the date on which it closed. Henríquez Ureña with a conference on poetry. The day after his successful conference, the magazine Contemporáneos” began to be distributed in Buenos Aires. For Reyes, distributing and sponsoring other people's publications is synonymous with fulfillment: " full activity and full ubiquity. This is joy".
On October 13, the evening "Tarde Mallarmé" with recitations by Victoria Ocampo and songs by Mahler, Debussy, Ravel and Milhaud, in which Reyes reads "El gabinete de humo" (First published in Revista Sur in number 26, November 1936) This prose is an evocation of the room in which Mallarmé received his guests, and where he smoked.
On the 23rd of that same month, the first collaborators of the Cuadernos del Plata (Victoria and Silvina Ocampo, Jorge Luis and Norah Borges, among others) met at the Golf Club Argentino in Palermo. despite the aforementioned disagreements with the publisher.
On November 17 there are presidential elections in Mexico. The winner: Pascual Ortiz Rubio; the loser, José Vasconcelos; the red balance: 50 wounded and 16 dead. With this triumph, what is historically known as Maximato is consolidated. Vasconcelos does not accept having lost the elections and goes abroad.
Reyes is overwhelmed by official duties, "everything is forgotten and lost. Pedro Henríquez Ureña tells me: 'you who have always been so reluctant to let the individual monster devour you, you must not let the State monster devour you' and yet this monster is devouring me. I do nothing but serve my official position [...] carrying on my back the bottom of an immense melancholy". However, on December 1st, he notes in his diary that he continues to write verses of whose value he doubts, but save.
1930
On January 8, he settles his negative impressions on the Argentine literary environment "where nobody cares about literature but literary politicking [...] reality is replaced by a ghost of gossip. Very strange everything, stay alone and fix yourselves. For my part, I have decided to practically move away and live with my mind elsewhere. And it's not a complaint against 'people': it would be ungrateful'. Two days later he wrote to José Ortega y Gasset, venting his adventures with the Argentine literary world and that same day, he noted in his diary: "I no longer want to post here".
In the early morning of January 13, Reyes sent a telegram to Mexico informing that at 12:00 on Sunday the 12th, some 20 communists with some women, stoned the embassy [of Mexico in Argentina] and shouting and throwing away papers that say: "Down with the fascist Mexican government, servant of Yankee imperialism, murderer and massacreer of communist comrades." The police apprehend the protesters and visit Reyes, who receives them in his pajamas before telegraphing Mexico for instructions. On the 25th of that same month, Reyes sent his official resignation due to the change of government.
On February 5, President Ortiz Rubio takes office. In the afternoon of that same day there is an attack against him, from which he emerges unharmed. The attack was carried out by a supporter of Vasconcelos. On the 9th of that same month, Reyes signed the "Prayer of February 9".
On March 1st, Reyes' confidence in the diplomatic service was renewed; However, a day later, they wrote to him from Foreign Affairs to inform him that the president wants him to replace them as ambassador in Brazil. Reyes hesitates for a moment but he reconsiders and on March 3 he accepts the appointment and on the 18th of that month he is informed of the approval of the Brazilian government.
On March 6, he writes in his diary the project he has to do the magazine Monterrey. Literary Mail of which a total of 14 issues will be published between June 1930 and July 37. in The literary experience as "Of biography".
On March 24, the move begins "an outrageous amount of boxes of books and papers". From March 26 the events begin, lunches, dinners, farewells, like those of March 31 or April 1st "huge occurrence at my farewell meeting" or the visits to the children of the Republic of Mexico school: "the farewell is tumultuous and moving in the midst of sweltering heat".
The Kings take the boat to Montevideo. The last entry in the newspaper corresponding to the Argentine period was made on board the ship on April 4, 1930.
Embassy in Brazil (April 5, 1930 - 1936)
1930
Reyes arrives in Rio de Janeiro on April 6, 1930 and says "the embassy house is deplorable, useless, and it will be difficult to explain why this was what President Ortiz Rubio chose when he was ambassador here&# 34;. He exposes the situation to Estrada and they agree that the most advisable thing will be to "fix decoration, furniture, hygiene, light..." to prudently manage expenses. The first days in Rio are marked by tension and nostalgia and only until April 25 will he be able to unpack his books to get to work from that moment on. He begins to mature the Monterrey magazine project. On April 26 he receives his credentials as ambassador and on April 28 he is received by the secretary of foreign relations Otavio Mangabeira (1918-1960) that same day he requests an audience with the president, who will receive him on May 6. Also that day he writes his first text in Rio, the page about his nurse & # 34; Paula Jaramillo & # 34; which will form part of the Crónica de Monterrey, Albores. Second book of memories [1959].
On May 2, he sent to Contemporáneos a first article on Brazil entitled "Mythology of the cobras" which will later be included in História natural das Laranjeiras (1930-1936) in Volume IX of the Complete Works where Reyes collects various sections in prose and various notes on his experience in Brazil. These pages include also samples of Alfonso Reyes as a draftsman and author of sketches that help the reader to visualize the Brazilian settings of Reyes.
The environment in the embassy is not very conducive, but despite everything, it manages to fulfill its mission to get favorable messages to Mexico through the Brazilian press.
He continues to maintain relations with Argentina and is named an honorary member of the Pen Club of Argentina through Manuel Gálvez.
The day to day of Reyes during this season takes place between official visits to diplomats, officials and journalists.
His first public appearance in a literary act is given in the Tribute to the writer Graça Aranha, who was one of the animators of the Brazilian artistic avant-garde, the writer will die a year later.
On May 17, he turns 41 and that day he writes a letter to Martín Luis Guzmán about his "apoliticalism," the fine arts".
Little by little he began to settle down, he wrote the poem "Disparate de Niza" included in Las vespersa de España and began to come into contact with the Brazilian artistic world, particularly with the painter Vicente do Rego Monteiro and the journalist and critic Geo Charles, with whom he shared memories of the magazine Montparnasse. His correspondence was regularized and he began to receive numerous letters from his friends in Argentina, Spain and Mexico.
On June 3, he finished copying and preparing the first issue of Monterrey, whose 300 copies will appear on the 22nd of that same month, and he will begin to distribute immediately with the help of his wife and son. On those days, he will receive invitations and visits from the ambassadors and ministers of the United States, Italy, France, Chile, Norway and Peru.
On June 25, he receives Waldo Frank's book Message to Hispanic America which is dedicated to Kings.
On July 8, his friend, the Uruguayan poet Jules Supervielle, visits him with whom he has multiple emotional ties.
Her boss, Genaro Estrada, celebrates the arrival of Monterrey magazine in Mexico, sent from Rio. In this same publication, Reyes will vent some controversial words signed in August 1930 regarding the cultural self-awareness of the enlightened minorities in America and the difference between the aristocratic culture and the plebeian culture of Ortega y Reyes. This text was in the form of a letter "A R. D. en Buenos Aires", initials corresponding to the Franco-Argentine writer Ramón Doll.
On September 11, Rafael Fuentes Boetiger, who will be his secretary, arrives in Rio by boat, accompanied by his wife Bertha Macías Rivas and a 2-year-old boy: Carlos Fuentes, the novelist and writer.
On September 16, Reyes offers a reception on the occasion of Mexico's national holiday for 500 people, diplomatic corps and society.
On September 22, he held a first session to organize the Brazilian Pen Club with Afrânio Peixoto and Tristão Leitão da Cunha.
On October 21, the third issue of your magazine Monterrey arrives.
As of October 6, Reyes notes that since the 3rd "there is a revolution in Brazil"; on Tuesday, October 14, he points out "at night: Mario Magalhaes takes refuge as secretary of Bruno Lobo and editor of Folha Académica"; on the 24th "the revolution broke out here" and begins to receive refugees, a total of twenty people, at the embassy under a white flag; on the 27th he notes "I am resisting by instructions from Mexico to receive more refugees " and requests support from the diplomatic corps; the 31 slogan "the great men of the revolution have been arriving in Rio, today Getulio Vargas arrives" with whom he will soon develop friendly ties. On November 25, he embarks the last two refugees and the embassy is released.
Getulio Vargas will be mentioned both in the complete works of Reyes and in the various reports that Reyes sends to Mexico from Brazil and which make up a detailed chronicle of the period of this dictator who will transform Brazil until his suicide in 1954.
On December 26, the palatial house of the embassy at Rua das Laranjeiras 397 fills up. His son, Alfonso Reyes Mota, arrives; Pedro Henríquez Ureña to Rio to meet with his wife Isabel, as well as Isabel's brother, Vicente Lombardo Toledano and his wife, who will only be there a few days. The next day, December 27, the story "Testimony of Juan Peña" with three drawings by Manuel Rodríguez Lozano printed in Rio de Janeiro.
1931
On January 12, the aforementioned guests embark to Buenos Aires. Follow the comings and goings of characters such as the Catholic writer Leopoldo Marechal (January 22), the travel writer Jorge Max Rhode (February 3), the avant-garde poet Olivierio Girondo (February 11), the writer and diplomat from Puebla Rafael Cabrera (March 5), the prolific and charismatic Gómez de la Serna (June 4), the Argentine editor and writer Victoria Ocampo and the painter Delia del Carril (August 13), and the traveler, novelist and chronicler Paul Morand (August 26). On January 27, Graça Aranha died, whom she had gone to visit a few weeks earlier. On February 11, a telegram from the United Press (UP) was published in Mexico) in which the suicide of the writer and businesswoman Antonieta Rivas Mercado is announced in Notre Dame before the image of Christ with a shot. The news was dismayed by Reyes, since the legendary Antonieta had been one of the entertainers of the Ulises Theater together with Salvador Novo and Xavier Villaurrutia, Antonieta had also had a passionate relationship with José Vasconcelos and had joined the Vasconcelos movement, Reyes exchanged with her some letters because Rivas wanted to put the dramatic poem of Reyes as part of the programming of the first season of the Teatro Ulises
and his cruel Ifigenia is imposed. Work of the least Mexican of the Mexicans, so old and so modern, strong, palpitative and wonderfully plastic. I have wanted to ask you to authorize me to do it, and at the same time, to move away and present a little... Letter dated 13 November 1927
On April 14, the King of Spain Alfonso XIII resigns from the throne for his entire dynasty and transfers power to his prime minister who in turn will transfer it to the republican leaders: "the Republic has been proclaimed in Barcelona, it is said that the first republican decrees were already being drafted in Madrid". Ureña who reprimanded him for his dispersion and haste.
Reyes works intensively on different texts about Mallarmé. Many of them will be collected years later in Volume XXV of the Complete Works with the title "Cult to Mallarmé" and the presence of the French poet will be constant throughout his work.
In May, "Discurso por Virgilio" according to a telegram from Genaro Estrada. You will receive copies of this overshot published by Contemporáneos
On September 10, she is going to see the clairvoyant Terfren Laila Karman. And she recounts in detail what she predicted: among other things, the trips she will have to make and the death "of a woman in my family"; (refers to Aurelia Ochoa, her mother, who will die in 1934).
On September 14, he is appointed substitute delegate of Mexico to the League of Nations. The delegation was made up of Genaro Estrada, Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Emilio Portes Gil, among others.That same day he will have lunch with Afrânio Peixoto; the historian of comparative literature Fernand Baldensperger (author with whose works and person he had long been familiar with); Henri Roger, Georges Dumas and Anna Amélia Carneiro de Mendonça.
On September 24, he finished writing his "Study on the problem of Atlantis", to enrich his thesis on The Omen of America (p. 44 diary; complete works volume XI, last tule pp 27-29). This chapter mentions the works of Plato, Saint Thomas, Petrarch, Saint Augustine, among others regarding Atlantis.
On October 3, Reyes scores "my Monterrey 6 came out".
On November 14, he says goodbye to Rafael Fuentes who leaves for the Montevideo delegation on instructions from Foreign Affairs. On the 21st of that same month, Pedro Henríquez Ureña passes through Rio and Reyes goes to say goodbye to him, who is on his way to Santo Domingo.
On December 27, Victoria Ocampo, who comes from Europe, passes through Rio aboard the Conte Verde to Buenos Aires. She brings to Reyes memories of Gasset, García Lorca, Rosa Chacel, Monier, Valery, Huxley, among others.
1932
At the beginning of this year, the painter Tsuguharu Foujita arrived in Brazil, drawing "Manolita y Alfonsito". On January 28 of that month, one year after the death of Graça Aranha, he accompanies the friends of the homonymous Foundation to the grave of the writer. The next day, Reyes notes that Genaro Estrada is the Ambassador of Spain, replacing Alberto J. Pani, "I lose both Genaro in Relations and the possibility of transfer to Spain".
On February 17, the writer, poet and childhood friend of Reyes, Moisés Sáenz, arrives in Rio to give some lectures. On February 24, he notes that he receives a request from Victoria Ocampo to write something about Goethe for Sur with great urgency. Although the request was untimely, Reyes had been working for several months in Rio on this author whose figure was a "life guide" for him. On June 27, issue 5 of Sur Magazine arrived, with his essay "Towards Goethe".
On March 2, Nora Borges and Guillermo de Torres (her husband) leave for Madrid and that same day Reyes delivers the first part of the aforementioned essay, the second part of which will be delivered on March 7.
On May 4, he made a summary for the newspapers of the "Political Athena" and that same day she dictated it in Itamaraty, headquarters of the Foreign Relations office in Brazil. Which would be first published on August 17 at the Fernandes & Irmãos and later in Chile at Editorial Pax in 1933 preceded by a letter to the editor Carlos Cesarman.
On May 14, Reyes sends Guillermo Jiménez, close to the National Magazine, to send him "Brazilian indigenous poetry" that is published in the magazine El libro y el pueblo and that it will come out in January 33. That same day "[at] midnight, bomb: telegram ordering me to communicate our missions in South America about the incident with the withdrawal of Mexican diplomatic personnel from Lima and Peruvians from Mexico&# 39;'. This matter has to do with the controversy unleashed from the letter that Haya De la Torre addressed to César L. Mendoza in which "immediate action" which was interpreted as a declaration of military action against President Augusto Leguía. Since this letter arrived by "diplomatic bag from Mexico in charge of the Mexican Legation in Lima", the incident became a delicate matter in diplomatic terms. The incident would formally conclude a year later when ' "Through the mediation of Spain," Reyes reported on May 23, 1933, "diplomatic relations between Peru and Mexico have been resumed. Strictly speaking, we have resumed them here, directly, the Minister of Peru Ventura García Calderón and I, who are old friends for something; but, due to Mexico's previous moral commitment to the Spanish Minister of State Zulueta, we agreed to give him the public victory.'
On May 28, Reyes receives an announcement from Emilio Abreu Gómez about "the literary cuisine of the moment" of the youth of Mexico. Two days later in the newspaper El Nacional, there is an "interpellation" by Héctor Pérez Martínez addressed to Reyes, who feels compelled to answer at length in the brochure By return mail that he will deliver to the printer on June 3 and will circulate among his readers. There he exposes his idea of why a Mexican writer can be interested in the poetry of Góngora and Valery, as Reyes did in Monterrey, without neglecting national issues. Reyes' response will be echoed by writers such as Xavier Villaurutia, Antonio Escobedo Acevedo and Guillermo Jiménez who on June 3 wrote to Reyes "about the campaign of rabble against young literature". This polemic has been studied by Guillermo Sheridan in Mexico in 1932: the nationalist polemic
The day before, June 2nd -which had been declared a national holiday by the Brazilian State to be associated with "the Italian fiftieth anniversary celebrations"- Reyes attended the party in honor of Giuseppe Garibaldi and Anita "Brazilian". He will record the significance of this commemoration in "Garibaldi y América", published on July 3 in El Nacional and later compiled in Volume IX of the Complete Works.
It is nonetheless significant that in the context of the controversy unleashed by Héctor Pérez Martínez, A. R. woke up at dawn on June 18 to write for Monterrey "The National Interrogation&# 34;, a text that reflects on the meaning of Mexico and Mexican culture. This text will be published for the first time in July in number 9 of the aforementioned magazine, and will appear later in Visión de México, volume II.
On July 10, a military uprising took place whose objective was the search for a new Constitution (see Paulista War). Reyes gives an account of this revolutionary movement, as well as the entire Brazilian process, in the pages of Misión Diplomática. On July 23, number 9 of Monterrey. The next day he receives from Guayaquil a note from the poet and Mexican consul Gilberto Owen that says: "Peruvian representatives in exile ask me to transmit Haya De la Torre court martial, try to shoot him under the pretext of the Trujillo revolution, despite being in prison since May. Let's ask him to try to manage the government of Brazil to save him".
On August 7, write down "all the material from my book Tren de ondas" is already fixed, which I will immediately release to the press and you will receive copies on December 7 of that same year. On the 27th of that same month, he is visited by "the great philologist Karl Vossler from Münich", who is on his way to Buenos Aires where he was invited by Amado Alonso. Vossler is quoted multiple times by Reyes and was the sender of multiple correspondences.
The next few weeks will be full of administrative turmoil. On September 6, Reyes was officially informed of the appointment of President Abelardo L. Rodríguez. He sends his ''usual resignation' and four days later, he received a telegram from Foreign Affairs in which he was confirmed in his position. Suddenly, on November 19, he was asked to return to Mexico in the framework of a reorganization of the diplomatic representations for economic reasons of the government. Reyes proceeds to pack books and dismantle the installation of his house and give notice of his withdrawal. However, five days later: "Suddenly, an unexpected message telling me: 'Cancel the trip. I confidently hope we will be able to obtain assignment from that embassy for next year''. This ups and downs will lead Reyes to make a note about his editorial and bibliographic debts that allow him to reconstruct his way of working.
On December 27, he received 300 copies of Tren de ondas that was published in Rio a few months after he arrived there and that already includes materials where landscapes from that city and Brazil appear, such as &# 34;Deed of the botanist" (p. 418), "The Greens" (p. 375-376) or a "Drama for cinema" (383-387).
Reyes will spend the end of the year unpacking books and following up on his Romances del Río de Enero (whose corrected proofs he had sent to Maastricht, to the publisher Stols) whose copies he will receive the following year, on the 8th March. He spends Christmas 1932 in Petrópolis, the city that, together with Teresópolis, were the resting places chosen by the Portuguese Emperor Pedro II and his wife Teresa and where the members of the diplomatic corps went to rest at the foot of the mountains surrounded of rivers. There he would write in 1931 & # 34; Descanso dominical (En los pinares del Teresópolis) & # 34;, a vignette that evokes the mundane environment and the generations, uses and customs of the guests of those pleasant places where politicians, athletes and Movie stars.
1933
On January 6, the Argentine poet Ricardo Molinari passes through Rio with whom he would collaborate on several projects; For example, Cuadernos del Plata and the Libra y Reyes Magazine quote him several times in his work.Molinari was one of his most faithful friends and readers. His correspondence is published in 20 River Plate Epistolaries (1928-1958).
On January 19, he wrote in Petrópolis "Voto por la Universidad del Norte", a text written after analyzing "exhibitions and plans caused by the Nuevo León University project". It is striking that Reyes wrote this text spontaneously and without being commissioned by anyone and that a few weeks later, on May 16, Aarón Sáenz formally proposed that he be a candidate for the rectory of said university. On June 24, 1933, his sister advised him not to go to Monterrey.
On January 24th the introduction to the book by the Spanish author of the XVII century ends. Fuente de la Peña: If man can artificially fly. These pages will appear in a limited edition brochure in Rio de Janeiro in 1933 with 71 pages and illustrations by the Romanian painter and wife of the Romanian business manager. That same day she records in her diary the writing of her text & # 34; The epitaph of Graça Aranha & # 34; and on the 27th it is published with the title "On the grave of Graça Aranha".
On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany.
As I had announced in a letter dated January 9, Enrique Díez-Canedo is passing through Rio on February 12 on his way to Montevideo. In the letter he told her: & # 34; I will see you soon. I don't know if he knows that I am a minister to Uruguay. The first thing I thought when they proposed to me was that I would see you".
On April 10, the magazine Monterrey celebrates its tenth issue. where the idea of creating 'minimal libraries' for each country. The idea was successful and was discussed.
On June 1, Ramón Gomez de la Serna passes through Río with his wife Luisa Sofovich. He was linked to Ramón by a legendary past related to the gathering at Café Pombo, the center and axis of avant-garde literature at the beginning of the XX century in Madrid, which were recorded in the books La Sagrada crypta de Pombo and Pombo (both published by Trieste in Madrid in 1986). For this reason, although his visit was brief, he brought to mind the times shared around this café, where literature was practiced as a versatile, plural and "tumultaneous" game. The sympathy was reciprocal, as shown by the various mentions of Ramón to Reyes in Pombo's books mentioned above, and those of Reyes to Ramón in his works.
On June 19, the magazine Books abroad includes a review of Horas de Burgos, an evocative and historical book about that Spanish city that Reyes had published barely a year earlier in Río and which is found in Volume II of the Complete Works in Víspers of Spain.
On June 30, he corrects proofs of his essay "Aduana Lingüística" which will be published in the magazine Literatura directed by the Brazilian modernist poet Augusto Federico Schmidt and which will later appear in The literary experience (Complete Works, Volume XIV). This mischievous and ingenious essay laughs at those who believe that it is easy to carelessly cross the linguistic borders of Spanish and Portuguese. That same day he notes that Arturo Marasso wrote to him inviting him to collaborate in the Bulletin of the Academy of Letters.
On July 12, Reyes begins the report that Mexico Relations has asked him about Brazil. That same month, on the 21st, Reyes sits down with President Getúlio Vargas to offer him Romances del Rio de Enero and ask him for suggestions on Mexico-Brazil for the report that Reyes will send to Relations. Eight days later, on July 29, he received a message from Relations asking him to go to Chile to participate in a high-level diplomatic meeting. Reyes will be on this mission, to which he went as a "spy"; and not ambassador, from August 17 to September 23 in that important meeting. During those days prior to the trip, he will suffer various conditions that make him "desperate for fear that his health will prevent the trip", and this state will persist until the eve of the trip.
He leaves on August 7 for Santiago in the company of his wife Manuela and will return to Rio on October 5. He will leave career diplomat Adolfo de la Lama as charge d'affaires ad interim On August 11, he will meet again in Montevideo with Enrique Díez Canedo and Rafael Cabrera. He maintained an important correspondence with both. That same day he arrived in Buenos Aires and found his son, Baldomero Fernández Moreno, and the Spanish philologist and literary critic, naturalized Argentine, Amado Alonso, disciple and protector of Pedro Henríquez Ureña, with with whom Reyes had a great friendship and corresponded. Four days later, he will meet with the politician, Argentine minister Carlos Saavedra Lamas, a character present in the complete works of Reyes and in Diplomatic Mission.
Trip to Santiago (August 17 - September 28)
They leave Buenos Aires on August 15 and spend a night and a day aboard a fast train. Through the window they see: "tame ostriches, the monotonous field, the ducks that make regattas, flights of red flamingos". They arrive in Santiago, on August 16, at 11 pm in Mapocho and there a delegation of writer friends awaits them. The next day he meets the Venezuelan Mariano Picón Salas with whom he also had important correspondence and with the Chilean writer Pedro Prado, whom he cites in his complete works. On August 18 he meets Huidobro, and "Manuelita Portales, his ex".
On August 19, Reyes notes in his diary that Rafael Cabrera sent him a report from the newspaper Crítica from Buenos Aires "where they say that apparently I am bringing a mission over El Chaco to Argentina and Chile". days later, on August 24, another article by Reyes in the newspaper states that Vicente Huidobro managed to withdraw an article from the left-wing opposition newspaper, Opinión, where he touched on the point that Reyes brought a secret mission to organize a Latin bloc against the United States at the upcoming Montevideo conference. These newsrooms confirm that word had already spread that Reyes' mission in Santiago went beyond a social visit.
On August 21, he has a meeting with Neruda, Huidobro and other writers. With the latter he maintained a correspondence that has been published and covers from 1914 to 1928.
On August 23, Reyes notes that Roberto Meza Fuentes has lent him a copy of his Athena Política whose proofs he will correct on September 11 for a publication edited by Carlos Cesarman for the Pax publishing house in Santiago from Chile. This version will have an addition that was not contained in the first edition (from Rio de Janeiro in 1932). This addition consists of a letter to Cesarman, which is also included in the Complete Works volume XI. The publication of this essay first in Brazil and later in Chile illustrates the exercise of "andante americanería" of Kings.
On August 27, Reyes records a clash between Nazis and communists, a prelude to World War II. That same day he received a message from the Ministry of Relations in which his status as commissioner for special contacts with the Chilean government in preparation for the Montevideo Conference was made official. This designation rhymes in light of the note of August 31, in which Reyes writes that "the newspapers publish Uruguay's invitation to Chile for the Montevideo conference" and the acceptance of the latter, whose official appointment he will receive on October 14 along with 3,000 USD.
On September 1, 1933, in the company of Raúl Silva Castro, a scholar of Rubén Darío, he took a 'walk through churches' of the city in Santiago, that same day, he visits the Chilean president Alessandri. The next day he sent a letter to Puig Casauranc with his "first report on the Chilean-Argentine Trade Treaty and the Chaco affair". He is visited by the & # 39; & # 39; payador & # 39; Antonio Acevedo Hernández, precursor of the Chilean social theater author of ''Los cantares populares chilenos" that he quotes in his essay & # 39; Las jitanjáforas & # 39;.
On September 3, he received a letter from José Manuel Puig Casauranc, Relations Secretary appointed by Abelardo L. Rodríguez, congratulating him on his efforts and asking Reyes to thank Minister Cruchaga for the 'Great Chilean Merit Cross' received by the president and by himself. Ten days later, President Alessandri and his minister Cruchaga were awarded the "Águila Azteca" On the eve of the important meeting in Montevideo, Reyes stressed that this announcement is very timely given the immediate diplomatic circumstances and that Puig should be informed of this.
On September 4, he offers a reading of Romances del Río de Enero at Club de Señoras.
On the 5th, Reyes receives a message from Puig in which the latter comments that General Calles is "very satisfied" with the attitude, sponsored by Reyes, of Cruchaga who was rumored to be the head of the Chilean delegation at the Montevideo meeting. This communiqué makes it clear that the acts of President Abelardo L. Rodríguez did not escape those of former President Plutarco Elías Calles. That same day he will have dinner with the literary critic 'Alone'-Hernán Díaz Arrieta, with whom he will take a walk on the 10th, and whom he mentions in his work. A few weeks later, on October 19, Alone will publish a 'moving' about Kings in La Nación.
On September 6, he received news of the seriousness of Fernando's health, married to one of the sisters of Manuela Mota (1886-1965) and immediately sent one hundred dollars to his mother-in-law, Laura Elena Rosa Gómez, which they will serve more for funeral expenses, since the brother-in-law will die the next day. On September 8, he writes "I have to confess [to Manuela] the death of Fernandito"; because she was not aware. That same day, he meets with Guillermo Feliú Cruz, the historian disciple of Medina and curator of the American Library bequeathed by him and visits the National Library, which according to Reyes is not as valuable; however, he points out that "the Medina Room [...] is worth a lot". He is so impressed by the visit that he immediately sends a telegram to Mexico ''suggesting they make a donation of 500 dollars to the [National Autonomous University of Mexico] to publish Medinas unpublished work: ' Bibliography of Cortés'. Five days later, on September 13, he received a message from Relations authorizing the 500 dls for the publication and the Bibliography of Cortés de Medina. However, it would only be published 19 years later, in 1952.
In the same vein, days later, on September 18, Medina's widow commissioned him to express to the Mexican government his deep gratitude for the Bibliography of Cortés 'is already in print for publication'&# 34;. The work of the Chilean historian José Toribio Medina, a scholar of Hernán Cortés, was not alien to Reyes, since his teacher and friend Pedro Henríquez Ureña frequently cited him, and although to a lesser degree, also in the Alfonsine work as well. is present, although the figure of the Spanish conquistador is even more frequent.
On September 10, he takes a morning excursion to Peñalolén with Díaz Arrieta and other friends, to spend a day in the countryside.
On Monday, September 11, Reyes points out that the Chilean ministry has no objection to including new topics suggested by Mexico at the Montevideo meeting. He writes in the guest book, or album, of Aurora Diez Paúl, the only verses that she will write on the trip to Santiago de Chile:
Alondras sing, and already
A yearning for dawn
Take the night and give
Gold and silver and rosicler
Answer me: Who Will Be?
Aurora: Who's to be?
These 'social verses' Reyes will pick them up in his book Courtesy (1909-1947) that Reyes considered "parlor game"; and that ranged from the verses with which he thanked book shipments or celebrated birthdays of his friends' daughters, for example & # 34; Tenths in acrostic for a Peruvian girl & # 34; to Margarita Ulloa Elías to the "epitaph of Bobby the dog" (1926), the small play of the red bird (1928) or the poem "Para un bite" (1934):
And we already know that little by little goes
Even the mark of fire of infidelidá.
And the story is over — that was the bite
That looked in the anca my dear.
On September 12, Reyes receives the ''definitive wording of Chapter IV that Mexico proposes for the Agenda of the Montevideo Conference," in which adherence to the anti-war treaty is at stake and the ennoblement of the Monroe Doctrine. That same day, he wrote reports for Puig where it is clear that Minister Cruchaga's desire is to attend the Montevideo meeting if other foreign ministers attend. Reyes takes time to work on ''the Chilean documents on the Napoleonic invasion in Mexico". Thanks to the services of the Peruvian poet, diplomat and journalist José Santos Chocano, whom Reyes quoted a few times Throughout his work, Reyes publishes in La Nación an article on 'The voice of Mexico and the Montevideo conference', 'trompeteando ' the declarations of President Rodríguez. The publication of this article shows that the 'rumors' about the fact that Alfonso Reyes' trip supposedly made for social and recreational purposes was more than mere speculation.
Write letters back and forth to Puig in Relations and to Cabrera in Argentina about issues associated with the Montevideo meeting.
On Thursday, September 14, he received a message from Puig defining his travel route from Mexico to Valparaíso passing through NY and heading to Chile and Argentina, before the Conference in Montevideo. And that afternoon, having tea in the house of the deputy, architect and vice president of the Pen Club of Chile: Ismael Edwards Matte, he read fragments of the & # 39; Speech for Virgilio & # 39;.
On Friday, September 15 at dawn, Reyes prepares two messages to Relaciones about the Montevideo conference and the Chaco question. That same day he makes a "moving" song. he visits Mercedes Ibáñez Rondizzoni, widow of José Toribio Medina, who allows him a tour of the historian's workshop, printing press, house and manuscripts, and presents him with his works: The Inquisition in America and Printing in Mexico. Those same books and others by the eminent Chilean historian, according to the book-catalogue 'Capilla Alfonsina', are found in this Monterrey compound. That same day, at night, he gave a lecture on Radio about Mexico with Minister Cruchaga, about the Mexican tradition of September 15 and the figure of Hidalgo.
On Saturday, September 16, he received a telegram from Mexico, sent many others to Brazil, and wrote to Relaciones about the relations between Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil, revealing Reyes' fine handling of the South American cosmopolitan skein. And That same day concludes the official reception on the occasion of the Mexican national holiday. He does all this despite not being in good health, a situation that will make him work from bed on Monday the 18th, since the health problems that he brings from Buenos Aires make him have different relapses during his stay in Chile.
On Tuesday, September 19, he receives instructions from Mexico to leave Chile on the 28th, which keeps him busy with the arrangements for the trip on the Trasandino train.
On September 22, he visits the Spanish translator Ricardo Baeza, who in 1932 had published the book En compañía de Tolstoy with the Madrid Renaissance label. Reyes already knew Baeza, at least since 1918, because in that year he published in the Revista de Filología Española a review of a book by André Suarès, Don Quixote in France, translated by Baeza.
The following day in the afternoon he gave a 'conference on "Fuentedelapeña: the Spanish precursor of aviation" in which he presented the treatise of this Capuchin friar, who in his work ´El ente elucidado´, he asks himself in Doubt VI: "If man can artificially fly". This conference will be the subject of a special edition of 300 copies that Reyes will publish in Río de Janeiro with a 1933 imprint and four engravings by her friend Marguerite Barcianu. With the latter he will exchange correspondence, which was published in the Monterrey literary mail (numbers IX, 1934 and VIII, 1935).
On September 26, Reyes published in El Mercurio the article "Mexico and economic guidance at the Montevideo Conference'', that same day he offered a farewell reception to official and diplomatic authorities, writers and the press and describes it as a complete success: "very réussi".
On September 27, the newspapers covered the news of a cyclone that hit the port of Tampico in Mexico the day before, among them, El Mercurio with "very kind allusion" mentions Reyes in the context of this tragic note. He received a message from Relations asking him to thank Cruchaga for having been receptive to Mexico's suggestions for the Montevideo meeting and on September 28 he took the Trasandino railway, thus concluding the successful visit to Santiago de Chile.
Trip to Montevideo (passing Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro)
On September 5, he arrives in Rio, after an absence of almost two months (he left on August 7). Multiple tasks and pending issues await him in the Brazilian city, the main one: preparations for the signing of the Anti-War Pact and Mexico's decline to "support the new wording of Chapter IV in the Montevideo Program."
On September 29 and 30, on his way to Rio de Janeiro, in Buenos Aires, he learned of the resignation of Alberto J. Pani from the Ministry of Finance. On Saturday, September 30, before boarding the ship to Rio, she meets Pedro Henríquez Ureña.
On October 1, at sea bound for Rio, he convinced the Argentine writer, born in Russia, Alberto Gerchunoff ''to do an article in La Nación [where was a journalist] about Mexican politics in Montevideo".
On October 7, Moreno disembarks on the battleship to visit Argentine President Agustín Justo, who remains in São Paulo until the afternoon of the 13th, when he will travel on the same ship to Montevideo and Buenos Aires.
On October 9, he is named an honorary member of the Mexican Institute of Linguistic Research directed by Mariano Silva y Aceves. On October 10, the ''solemn act of signing several pacts between Brazil and Argentina and the "Anti-War Treaty of Non-Aggression and Conciliation" signed by Mexico, Uruguay, Chile and Paraguay, in the presence of the presidents Getúlio Vargas of Brazil and Agustín Pedro Justo of Argentina. Other signed treaties were trade and navigation; smuggling; extradition; review of history and geography textbooks; intellectual, artistic exchange, publications, tourism and the sale of national products from the different parties. That same day he arrives on the boat & # 34; Ponte Grande & # 34; García Lorca together with the Catalan architect Joseph Francesc Fontanals.
On October 15, he finally conceived the edition of 'Minuta', a book of small poems that can be read as a gastronomic odyssey, with 'images' of the Romanian cartoonist and poet Margarita Barcianu. The book will be published by A.M Stols in Maastricht (Holland), with four engravings by Barcianu, on March 20, 1935. This collection of verses could be considered as a presentiment or general rehearsal of Memoirs of kitchen and cellar that he will publish later in 1953.
On the 19th he records having read a moving article by Alone in La Nación. The next day they announce to Reyes that on September 8 they sent him "letters asking him to sign the extradition treaty with Brazil that he himself proposed in June."
On October 21, he meets the Colombian poet, translator and politician (several times candidate for the presidency) Guillermo Valencia, who will have an important place in the Montevideo conference.
On October 25, the Leticia Conference begins in Itamaraty. This was inaugurated under the presidency of the Minister of Relations Afranio Mello Franco 'in which the issues of the Upper Amazon are to be aired between Peruvian delegates and Colombian delegates''. This is the meeting to seek peace between Colombia and Peru, which was mediated by Brazil. The notes that Reyes makes about this 'Leticia Conference' suggest the extent to which he understood and mastered issues relating to Spanish American political history.
Reyes records in his notes of Diplomatic Mission on this date what is related to the 'Customs War between France and Brazil' from a decree ''the most decisive act of Vargas in matters of an international nature [...] which, virtually, prohibits the entry of French articles into Brazil". Reyes made a detailed history of this episode in his diplomatic reports.
On November 6, a Monday, he notes: "Today I wrote a few brief testamentary provisions." This note should be seen against the light of the various notes that Reyes has made about the instability of his health since before his trip to Chile.
On Tuesday, November 14, he receives the Portuguese edition of his 'Political Athena' from Sylvio Júlio de Albuquerque Lima, philologist, poet, professor at the National University of Brazil and Brazilian historian, to whom Reyes gives the Discourse for Virgil.
On November 15, the constituent assembly supposedly forged to put a political end to the Getúlio Vargas dictatorship is inaugurated.
On November 18, Saturday, he embarks for Montevideo for Buenos Aires where he will stay for five days and then returns to Montevideo where he will stay until December 20 for the Conference that he has been preparing from Santiago. In Montevideo she has a first conference with Puig and gives some interviews to the newspapers La Nación and La Prensa .
The next day, Sunday, he has multiple meetings with Juana de Ibarbouru and other people such as Enrique Díez-Canedo with his son and Nieves Gonnet de Rinaldini.
On November 20, upon arriving in Buenos Aires, he learned of the death of the influential Cuban philosopher, essayist and educator Enrique José Varona, who appears several times mentioned in the work of Reyes and who was an author whom Pedro Henríquez Ureña and others they had great devotion.
On Wednesday, November 22, attend some memorable performances of Blood Wedding by Federico García Lorca and the next day, dinner at Victoria Ocampo's house that concludes with a 'delicious session folkloric music by García Lorca''.
On Friday, November 24, he attended a rehearsal of Lorca's The Wonderful Shoemaker and that same day he met José Vasconcelos, who had been invited to Buenos Aires by the magazine Crítica.
On Sunday, November 26, he embarks for Montevideo. There he will meet Daniel Cosío Villegas, Manuel Sierra, Salvador Novo and "los Canedo".
On November 27, Reyes is named responsible for two chapters in the program of the Montevideo conference: "Organization of peace" and "Intellectual Exchange".
On November 30, Reyes notes that the idea conceived by him and Manuel Sierra to open "a truce from God in the Chaco while the conference [is given], is beginning to spread. On December 2, Reyes works on the "Code of Peace".
The conference opens on December 3rd. On December 19, Reyes notes that the Chaco armistice "was achieved." This truce was endorsed by "the declaration of non-intervention" that "was unanimously soberly imposed on the United States, which with all its might, appeared before the accused with deferential attention. A true transcendental example for Europe and the world". It can be thought that the Conference in Montevideo was a diplomatic and personal success for Alfonso Reyes. He therefore embarks to Rio and arrives on the 23rd. On December 27 he offers Puig a reception at the embassy. The year will end on December 28 with the signing of various treaties that Reyes had proposed months before.
1934
On Monday, January 8, 1934, he received ''communication from the University of Nuevo León'' dated December 6, 1933 that he has been named honorary doctor causa thereof, which will be the first of others.
On January 10, Reyes notes that "Cecilia Meireles brings her great plan for the Biblioteca Infantil Castellana" The project that the poet proposes to her is so important that on March 23 she will offer a lunch at the Mexican embassy to the heads of Ibero-American missions to expose them and ask for their support for the project of the Ibero-American Children's Library.... destined to teach Spanish in Rio to primary school children'. Cecilia Meireles was one of Reyes's key friends in Rio, as can be seen from their correspondence that began in March 1931, sheltered in the Alfonsina Chapel From Mexico City. Cecilia Meireles was a notable poet, as her book Romanceiro da Inconfidencia (1953) shows. She had been appointed by the Minister of Education Anisio Texeira to develop this project that would eventually be closed for political reasons, accusing the library of inducing the reading of works such as Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, according to reports Fred P. Ellison in the chapter "The Mexican Connection: Bandeira, Meireles, Lacerda" from her book Alfonso Reyes and Brazil.
On Monday, January 15, 1934, he received the first proof copy of Antonio de Fuente La Peña If man can artificially fly (1676) with four engravings by Marguerithe Barcianu published in Rio de Janeiro in Alfonso Reyes edition (1933) of 71 pages and index. The same artist will be commissioned to make the drawings for Minuta. that she will publish with the Stols imprint in Maastricht.A month later (February 15) she will receive the first copies of the book. The publication produced a series of letters with the Colombian Baldomero Sanín Cano that Reyes will publish in his Correo literario Monterrey, in numbers IX of 1934 and that he will later collect in Los trabajos y los días. Sanin will be mentioned at various times in the Complete Works of Kings.
On Saturday, January 27, he participates in the third anniversary of the death of the Brazilian Graça Aranha by reading pages of the Calendar. To understand this fact in context, it should be said that Reyes was the only foreign member of the Graça Aranha Foundation, as they informed him through Renato Almeida on Tuesday, March 13.
On Tuesday, January 30, the Ministry of Relations, on behalf of the family, notifies him of "the death of my poor brother León, the half-brother, the eldest of all, the most unfortunate of the family" passed away on January 27.
On February 23, he notes that he has been a victim for 'five or six days' with 'a second attack of itching and inflammation', less intense than the one he suffered 'in July of last year, before embarking for Chile'.
On March 8, his friend, the American writer Waldo Frank, headed for New York aboard the Southern Prince. To the emotional 'encounter between suitcases' Renato Almeida, Cícero Dias, Ronald de Carvalho and Carlos Lacerda join. Moments like this, of greeting and farewell on board ships in Rio de Janeiro, will be repeated with other friends such as Pedro Henríquez Ureña and Federico García Lorca, among many others.
On March 21, he works on the preparation of Monterrey 11 and the printing of the poem To the memory of Guiraldes (of which he will receive the complete edition of 300 copies on April 2) and La Minuta. The next day, Thursday March 22, he visits the Oswaldo Cruz Institute where his son --who studied medicine and later specialized as a pathologist-- will have a & #39;stay of several months in the Chagas laboratory, named in memory of Carlos Chagas, discoverer of the trypanozoma cruzi parasite that causes the disease known as Chagas disease, which affects the heart.
On Friday, March 23, it provides a lunch for American diplomatic representatives to support the Ibero-American Children's Library project sponsored by the Minister of Public Education Anisio Texeira and the poet Cecilia Meireles. with whom he will meet again on Tuesday, March 27. That same day he corrects the proofs of a bibliographical pamphlet that is a kind of editorial self-portrait of which there is no record of publication.
On April 6, Pedro Henríquez Ureña's brother, Max, passes through Rio, whom Reyes has not seen in twelve years, and is now the Dominican Republic's minister in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. With this writer and diplomat whose friendship goes back to the days of the Athenaeum, in the meetings in which he gave various lectures-concerts. Reyes had a long friendship as evidenced by the correspondence they had from 1930 to 1959, also Max Henríquez Ureña is mentioned several times by Reyes in his complete works. Despite their good intentions to see each other again, they will only meet again briefly when Max leaves Buenos Aires for London on June 27, 1935.
On April 20, the Mexican actor Ramón Novarro, with his sister Carmen, passes to Buenos Aires. Reyes boards the boat to greet him "intimately and alone", and they meet again on his return on 21 June and on June 26 Ramón Novarro premieres a work, "the public applauds it wildly: the public in Rio is content with anything", Reyes writes in his diary.
On April 24, Reyes prepared the "books received" for the number 11 and 12 of Monterrey. That same day he copies and retouches his book on Mallarmé among us, he works at La Minuta (for the Dutch printer, Stols) and sends, through Ricardo Molinari, for be printed in Francisco A. Colombo the works: Yerbas del Tarahumara (to be finished printing on July 19, 1934), Gulf of Mexico (published that same year) and Sad Man (of which there was no edition). Regarding the sending of the books, the letter to Ricardo Molinari of that date can be seen in 20 Río de la Plata letters. From this letter it is clear the high appreciation in which he had this young Argentine writer who was an enthusiastic reader of '&# 39;Monterrey'' and the confidence that he placed in his literary judgment because he confides in him that he was not sure of the publication of "Sad Man". For the rest, this letter also shows that Reyes was very clear about his editorial idea in terms of "size, the system of the folder and the paper with a bearded edge similar to the edition of The Fall". It is not strange then that on January 31 of that year Reyes dedicated "A Ricardo E. Molinari" Some verses written "by his poem" A rose for Stefan George with a drawing by Federico García Lorca ". Both Reyes and Molinari, García Lorca and George, who had just died in December 1933, were emblems of high lyrical culture in the years before World War II.
On Thursday, May 10, heading to Barcelona, Pablo Neruda passes through Rio, whom Reyes mentions several times in his work.
Between Friday, May 18, and Thursday, May 24, he participated in the "Signing of the Leticia Protocols," which had the objective of ending the war between Peru and Colombia and definitively concluding their conflict bordering. This agreement was expected to last a long time, even a year; however, thanks to Reyes' skills, their reconciliation was shortened.
Between Wednesday June 6th and July 11th, when "the damned annual report July 33 - May 34 finally ends" Reyes states that he is overwhelmed by overwork due to fatigue and tobacco intoxication. These phrases make us see that Alfonso Reyes could be a relatively compulsive smoker, hence the presence of tobacco in his work, already in translation from a poem by Mallarmé, already in the verses that are part of La Minuta: "Minuta No. XXXIV" and "Poles of excess XXXV" or in the poem "Death to tobacco!" dated July 10, 1942 in Mexico when it could be conjectured that Reyes quit smoking. Regarding chronic fatigue, it should be noted that the reports that Reyes sent from June 1933 to June 1934 cover more than 250 pages (from page 120 to 360) of Volume II of the Diplomatic Mission, and that in the midst of that he has to attend visits and receive people ranging from the Mexican actor Ramón Novarro to the apostolic nuncio in Brazil, not to mention his own literary and editorial work..
On Tuesday, July 10, he passes through Rio Torres Bodet on his way to Buenos Aires where he works as business manager that year and the following, that day they meet and to have a notion of the relationship between the two, you can review the correspondence edited by Fernando Curiel, although the letters only go back to 1930 or else the mentions of Reyes to Torres Bodet in his work.
On Monday, July 16, he receives proof from Maastricht of his book Minuta and that same day at ten minutes to six o'clock the new constitution of Brazil is solemnly promulgated". The following day, the assembly elects Getúlio Vargas as president of the Republic for four years (1934-1938), who will take office on July 20. That same July 17, his friend, poet, and Puerto Rican admirer Concha Meléndez, who was 39 years old at the time and who that same year would write the book Alfonso Reyes: flejador de ondas (Havana, 1935) in which he rigorously deals with the poetry of Reyes and which won the friendship of the royal writer. She would later publish another work entitled Moradas de poesía en Alfonso Reyes (San Juan de Puerto Rico, 1973). The poet taught at the University of Puerto Rico and a little later she would ask Reyes for a photo of her for her students.
On Saturday, July 21, the Díez-Canedos passed through Rio en route to Spain, as Enrique 'resigned as minister in Montevideo' for political reasons, since the Republic is in crisis, as he had announced to Reyes in his letter no. to Rio on 21'. The news of his resignation had been given by Enrique to Reyes in letter no.77 dated in Montevideo from June 10, 1934, but the Spanish authorities asked him not to leave immediately and to remain at his post awaiting instructions.. The movement was due to the fact that the government "was removing everyone who had a relationship with [Manuel] Azaña".
On Thursday, July 26, he sent for publication in Italy in the magazine Lírica directed by Aldo Capasso his poems 'Teoría prosaica', 'Consecration'. 'Sun of Monterrey' and 'Los Angeles' (dedicated to Jean Cocteau) that she would later collect in her complete works The critic and editor Aldo Capasso had invited Gabriela Mistral to be part of the editorial board of that magazine.
On Saturday, July 28, Getulio Vargas, already as president, ''receives the diplomatic corps and government for the first time' and introduces his cabinet.'' That same day Reyes will enthusiastically receive 'the first five copies' from Gulf of Mexico and Yerbas del Tarahumara, printed by F. Colombo in Buenos Aires. As he writes to Ricardo Molinari: & # 39; & # 39; The first five copies of my two little poems have arrived! That beauty! What purity!''.
On Wednesday, August 1, the 'Boletín del Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes' of Buenos Aires corresponding to the month of June where his notes on the 'Tables of González', previously published in Contemporáneos in Mexico, in March 1931 with the ' photographs of twenty-two tables inlaid with mother-of-pearl about the Conquest of Mexico' and in Monterrey in 1932 that includes a letter from the researcher Eduardo Schiaffino. The works to which the essay refers were made at the end of the s. XVII and beginning of the 18th century by the Spanish painter Miguel González and are conserved in the museum of Madrid (although there is another series in the Museum of Buenos Aires). Later these notes would be integrated into his title A pencil (1946), which brings together texts published between 1923 and 1946, and which would be included in Volume VIII of his Complete Works.
On Sunday, August 24, Reyes received a telegram from Mexico: "Mrs. Reyes has aggravated a chronic illness she suffers from, doctors fearing a fatal outcome for two months. If you wish to come, the Secretary would be willing to call you officially. Relations'. Reyes immediately accepts and will leave Rio on Thursday, September 20, afflicted by various ailments, including kidney congestion. They spend 14 days traveling by sea until October 4, when he arrives in New York at two in the morning. Consul Nieto informs her that hers & # 39; Iphigenia & # 39; It has been performed five times at the SEP theater in Mexico. On Sunday the 7th and Monday the 8th they are in Washington and visit the Library of Congress. On Wednesday, October 10 and Thursday, October 11, he traveled by train, passing through St. Louis Missouri and arriving on Friday the 12th in Monterrey where a part of his family and close friends awaited him. Only one newspaper reported his passage, El Porvenir, "so that the students would not come en masse." This comment has to do with the riots due to the closure of the University "due to the mess of socialist education". !'' city that she had visited for the last time in April 1927 before leaving for Buenos Aires. One of the first things he does is go to visit his "mamacita", running out, but with the whole spirit and the perfect head. It is worth remembering here the dedication that years later Reyes would inscribe in her Parentelia. First Book of Memories (1957):
a la memoria de mi madre Doña Aurelia Ochoa de Reyes. Many times you asked me for a book of memories; many times I tried to start it, but the emotion stopped me. We had to wait for the work of time. You won't read these pages anymore. Nor those friends of the fervent youth who have fallen one after another. I am distressed to think that my confessions are given to the unknown multitudes. I write for you.
On October 13, he went to the Relations Secretariat: visit the Secretary and the section heads; he visits his mother-in-law, Mrs. Elena Mota, and incidentally confirms that her books are well protected.
Works
Publishes, among others, Chapters of Spanish literature (1939-1945), Discourse by Virgilio (1931). Of his poetic work, which reveals a profound knowledge of formal resources, the most noteworthy are Iphigenia cruel (1924), 5 casi sonnetos (1931), a title invented by Alfonso Reyes himself to to call those poems of his, which was edited by Manuel Altolaguirre, Otra voz (1936) and Cantata en la tumba de Federico García Lorca (1937).
He also left valuable work as a translator (Laurence Sterne, G. K. Chesterton, Antón Chéjov) and as an editor (Ruiz de Alarcón, Poema del Cid, Lope de Vega, Gracián, Arcipreste de Hita, Quevedo).
Once the winds of the Revolution had calmed, Reyes's fame in Europe reached Mexico and the Mexican State incorporated him into the diplomatic service.
From 1920 to 1939 he held various positions within the Mexican diplomatic service. First, in June 1920, he was appointed second secretary of the Mexican Legation in Spain. Later, charge d'affaires in Spain (from 1922 to 1924), minister in France (from 1924 to 1927), ambassador to Argentina (from 1927 to 1930 and from 1936 to 1937), and ambassador to Brazil (from 1930 to 1935 and for last in 1938).
During his stay in Buenos Aires, Reyes receives a letter and helps a fellow diplomat and poet, Pablo Neruda, who is trapped and dying of boredom in a lost and unknown commercial office in Asia.
Influence and recognition
During his time as ambassador to Argentina, Reyes interacts with the brilliant literary generation of this South American country. The friendship of Victoria Ocampo and the Dominican Pedro Henríquez Ureña brings him together with Xul Solar, with Leopoldo Lugones, with a young Jorge Luis Borges and an even younger Adolfo Bioy Casares, as well as the celebrated Paul Groussac. "Groussac taught me to write," he said humbly and often. For his part, Jorge Luis Borges "was captivated above all by the refined and seductive literary style of the Mexican writer"; such was Borges's admiration for him (Reyes was ten years older), that he came to consider him "the best prose writer of Spanish language at any time", and in his memory he wrote the poem "In memoriam". The books of Mexican writers go from the Anahuac to the Río de la Plata, and in the opposite direction the texts of Argentine authors go.
Creation of El Colegio de México
In April 1939, he presided over the House of Spain in Mexico, an institution founded by him and by Daniel Cosío Villegas and by Spanish intellectuals who were refugees from the Spanish Civil War (whom he, along with Cosío Villegas, helped to asylum) that would later become the prestigious El Colegio de México. As has been said, Alfonso Reyes was president of La Casa de España and Daniel Cosío Villegas served as secretary of the institution. Cosío Villegas recalls in his Memoirs that Alfonso Reyes “proposed the ideal formula for dual government from La Casa: he would be in charge of saying yes, and I would say no”. Starting in October 1940, with La Casa de España as a precedent, El Colegio de México, Alfonso Reyes, was established for almost 17 years, Until his death, he presided over the institution, with the decisive support of Daniel Cosío Villegas who during the first years continued as secretary of the institution, who, on the death of Alfonso Reyes (1959), from January 1960 to January 1963 was the second president of El Colegio de México.
The Alfonsina Chapel
In the spring of 1938, construction began on a house with a library in Mexico City that would later be known as the Alfonsina Chapel and would be an obligatory meeting point for students, new writers, and officials.
Member of the Mexican Language Academy
On April 19, 1940, he was named a member of the Mexican Academy of Language, corresponding counterpart of the Royal Spanish Academy; he occupied the XVII chair and was director between 1957 and 1959.
At the National College
He was a professor and founder of El Colegio Nacional.
National Award for Sciences and Arts
In 1945, he was awarded the National Prize for Sciences and Arts in Literature and Linguistics, for his book Criticism of the Athenian Age.
Literary criticism
From 1924 to 1939, he became an essential figure of the Hispanic continent of letters, as Jorge Luis Borges himself attested. He was the main promoter of literary research in Mexico, and one of the best critics and essayists in the Spanish language.
Nobel Prize Nomination
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In 1949 Gabriela Mistral nominated Alfonso Reyes to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, in what would be the first of five nominations proposed in the years 1949, 1953, 1956, 1958 and 1959. At the initiative of In 1949, for example, the National Autonomous University of Mexico joined, among others, and, following the latter's invitation, the University of Cuenca, Ecuador, and the University of Brazil. However, the very strong Mexican nationalist movement at that time, he hindered the candidacy because, for his liking, Reyes wrote too much about the Greeks and too little about the Aztecs and the problems of his country.
Honorary doctorates
He was named an honorary doctor of letters by Princeton University in 1950. In 1946, the University of Havana awarded him an honorary doctorate. On November 14, 1958, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Paris.
That same year, he traveled by car from Mexico City to the United States, to receive an honorary doctorate degree from the University of California at Berkeley. The miniskirts she saw in a fast-food establishment in California enchanted her: "Here the girls serve food wearing roller skates and with their thighs bare, like in Minoan Crete," she wrote in her diary.[citation required]
Alfonso Reyes Medal
In 2011, a group of university students took up the inspiration of the cultural work of Alfonso Reyes and refounded the legendary Ateneo de la Juventud of 1909, under the cultural association that bears the name Ateneo Nacional de la Juventud. This cultural group awards the Alfonso Reyes medal every year to "recognize the intellectual figures who have elevated the name of Mexico through letters, arts, humanities or diplomacy."
Death
On December 27, 1959, he died in Mexico City, the victim of a heart condition. He was buried in the Rotunda of Illustrious Persons.
Complete Works
The Fondo de Cultura Económica published the 26 volumes of his Complete Works, which he himself edited until before his death.
His themes and concerns were always the great themes of classical Greek culture. He was considered by Borges "the best prose writer in the Spanish language of any era", according to the essay "La poesía", from the compilation of his lectures Seven nights, published by the Fondo de Cultura Económica, and in other works.
Published work
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