Angel Gonzalez

Ángel González Muñiz (Oviedo, September 6, 1925 - Madrid, January 12, 2008), was a Spanish poet from the Generation of '50. Prince of Asturias Award for Literature in 1985 and academic and Reina Sofía Prize for Ibero-American Poetry in 1996, he published his first book of poems in 1956.

Biography

He was born in Oviedo on September 6, 1925. His childhood was strongly marked by the death of his father, who died when he was barely eighteen months old. The disruption of the family bosom continued during the Spanish Civil War, when her brother Manolo died at the hands of the national side in 1936. Later, her brother Pedro went into exile for his republican activities and her sister Maruja was unable to practice as a teacher for the same reason. reason. In 1943 he fell ill with tuberculosis, for which he began a slow recovery process in Páramo del Sil, where he became fond of reading poetry and began to write it himself. Three years later he was finally recovered, although he would always drag a respiratory failure that would eventually cause his death.

He decided to study law at the University of Oviedo and also teaching; in 1950 he moved to Madrid to study at the Official School of Journalism. The poet Luis García Montero published in 2008 Tomorrow will not be what God wants , where he transcribes the memories of Ángel González. Four years later, in 1954, González applied for the Civil Administration Technician of the Ministry of Public Works and entered the Technical Corps; They assigned him to Seville, but in 1955 he took a leave of absence and went to Barcelona during a period in which he worked as a style corrector for some publishers, making friends with the circle of Barcelona poets, made up of Carlos Barral, Jaime Gil de Biedma and Jose Agustin Goytisolo; in 1956 he published his first book of poems, Aspero mundo , the fruit of his experience as a son of war; with it he obtained a second prize for the Adonais Prize. He returned to Madrid to work again in the Public Administration and met the Madrid group of writers of his generation, Juan García Hortelano, Gabriel Celaya, Caballero Bonald and some other poets (later known as the Generation of the 50s or the half century).. In 1959 he participated in the acts of the 20th anniversary of the death of Antonio Machado in the French town of Collioure.

Several of his poems were selected in the 1960 anthology Twenty years of Spanish poetry (1939-1959) prepared by Josep María Castellet for the Seix Barral publishing house. After his second book, Without hope, with conviction (1961), Ángel González became a member of the group of poets known as Generación del 50 or Generación half a century . In 1962 he was awarded in Collioure with the Antonio Machado Award from the Ruedo Ibérico publishing house in Paris for his book Elementary Grade .

In 1970 he was invited to give lectures at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and then they extended his invitation to teach for a semester; He established his residence in the United States and in 1973 he passed through the Universities of Utah, Maryland and Texas under the same status as visiting professor, returning in 1974 to the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque as a professor of Contemporary Spanish Literature, a position from which he retired. in 1993. In 1979 he traveled to Cuba to be part of the jury for the Casa de las Américas Poetry Prize. That same year he met Susana Rivera, whom he married in 1993. After his retirement, he continued to reside in New Mexico, although as of 2006 his visits to Spain were more and more repeated.

In 1985 he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature and in 1991 the Salerno International Poetry Award. In January 1996 he was elected a member of the Royal Spanish Academy in the chair & # 34;P & # 34; replacing the writer Julio Caro Baroja. He was nominated by the academics Gregorio Salvador, Miguel Delibes and Emilio Alarcos.In the same year, he also obtained the Reina Sofía Award for Ibero-American Poetry . In 2001 he was awarded the Julián Besteiro Award for Arts and Letters . In 2004 he became the first recipient of the Federico García Lorca International Poetry Prize.

His work is a mixture of intimism and social poetry, with a particular and characteristic ironic touch, and deals with everyday issues with a colloquial and urban language, nothing neopopularist or parochial. The passage of time and the love and civic theme are the three obsessions that are repeated throughout her poems, with a melancholic but optimistic aftertaste. Guillermo Díaz-Plaja defines his poetry thus:

It sings the pain or despair, the gray decay of frustration or the irremediable sadness of the failure of dreams.

Her language is always pure, accessible and transparent; an ethical background of dignified and human fraternity is distilled in him, which oscillates between solidarity and freedom, like that of other generational colleagues such as José Ángel Valente, Jaime Gil de Biedma, Carlos Barral, José Agustín Goytisolo and José Manuel Caballero Bonald.

Professor Enrique Baena Peña from the University of Malaga in Metaphors of commitment. Configurations of Current Poetics and the Creation of Ángel González delves into the literary aesthetic called critical or ethical realism of the fifties in Spain, of which Ángel González is one of the most significant representatives.

González collaborated with singer-songwriter Pedro Guerra on the book-disc La palabra en el aire (2003) and also with tenor Joaquín Pixán, pianist Alejandro Zabala and accordionist Salvador Parada on the album Voice that solitude sounds (2004). The singer-songwriter Joaquín Sabina would pay tribute to him with his song & # 34; Menos dos alas & # 34;.

In the early morning of January 12, 2008, the poet died, at the age of 82, in Madrid, due to chronic respiratory failure.

Works

Lyrical

• Awesome worldM. Col. Adonais, 1956. 2a ed. Vitruvio Editions, 2012.
• Without hope, with convictionB., Colliure, 1961.
• Elementary gradeParis, Iberian Wheel, 1962 (Anthony Machado Award).
• Word on word, M., Poetry for all, 1965, 1972 and 1977.
• Urbanism TreatyB, Col. The Bardo, 1967.
• Short collections for a biography, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Provisional Inventories, 1971.
• Narrative procedures, Santander, The island of mice, 1972.
• Sample... some narrative procedures and sentimental attitudes that usually behaveM., Turner, 1976.
• It shows, corrected and increased, some narrative procedures and sentimental attitudes that habitually behaveM., Turner, 1977.
• Prosema or lessM., Hyperion,1985.
• Deixis in ghostM., Hyperion, 1992.
• Otoños and other lights, B., Tusquets, 2001.
• Nothing serious., Madrid: Visor, 2008, posthumous.

Anthologies

• Poems. Madrid. Chair. 1980 (selection of the author; reissued in 2003).
• To all love1988.
• Angel González. Gijón. Jucar. 1989 (introduction by Peter Andrew Debicki).
• Light, or fire, or life, Salamanca, Editions Universidad de Salamanca, 1996.
• Lessons of things and other poems1998.
• 101 + 19 = 120 poems, Madrid, Visor, 2000.
• The music and I. Madrid. Visor. 2002.
• Poetry anthology. Madrid. Alliance. 2003 (introduction by Luis Izquierdo).
• Reality almost cloud, Madrid, Aguilar, 2005.
• Word on word, Barcelona, Seix Barral, 2005 (Full poetry).
• Anthology of poetry for young people. Madrid. Alphaguara. 2008 (includes an interview with Benjamin Prado)..
• Spring advances, Madrid, Visor, 2009. (Prologist Susana Rivera)

Essay

• Juan Ramón Jiménez (1973)
• The Poetic Group of 1927 (1976)
• Gabriel Celaya (1977)
• Antonio Machado (1979)
• The teacher (1955)

Epistolary

• Dear Antonio, here, as always. Letters to Antonio Navas Jiménez [1967-2004] (2022).

Works about Ángel González

• Álvarez Labra, Ricardo, Angel González in contemporary Spanish poetry. Thesis doctoral directed by Araceli Iravedra, and defended at the University of Oviedo, on July 6, 2018.
• Baena Peña, Enrique. Commitment metaphors. Settings of the current poetics and creation of Angel González. Madrid: Chair, 2007.

Predecessor: Pablo García Baena	Prince of Asturias Award for Letters 1985	Successor: Mario Vargas Llosa and Rafael Lapesa
Predecessor: Julio Caro Baroja	Academician of the Royal Spanish Academy P 1996 - 2008	Successor: Inés Fernández-Ordóñez