Francisco Brines

Francisco Brines Bañó (Oliva, Valencia, January 22, 1932 - Gandía, Valencia, May 20, 2021) was a Spanish poet included in the poetic group of the 1950s. Since 2001, he was an academic of the Royal Spanish Academy. He was recognized with distinctions such as the National Prize for Spanish Literature (1999), the Reina Sofía Prize for Ibero-American Poetry (2010) or the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (2020). A large sector of critics catalogs his work in the chapter elegiac of Spanish poetry of the xx century, as a continuation of Luis Cernuda and Constantino Kavafis. His collection of poems La Ultima Costa, was chosen book of the year 1996 by the ABC Cultural supplement and won the 1998 Fastenrath Prize.

Biography

Son of Valencian agricultural landowners, he studied Law at the universities of Deusto, Valencia and Salamanca and studied Philosophy and Letters in Madrid.

With his first book, Las brasas (1960), he won the Adonais Prize the previous year. With Words in the Dark, published in 1966, she won the National Critics Award.

Included by José Batlló in the Anthology of new Spanish poetry (1968) he already appears there as one of the most personal voices of intimate poetry among the members of the second generation of the postwar, closing ranks with Barral, Caballero Bonald, Gil de Biedma, Ángel González, José Agustín Goytisolo, Félix Grande, Claudio Rodríguez, Carlos Sahagún and José Ángel Valente, although unlike most of them, he never cultivated social poetry. In his book The Holy Innocent later called Inexact Narrative Matter, there is barely a trace of it.

He was a professor of Spanish literature at the University of Cambridge and later of Spanish language at the University of Oxford. His deep admiration for classical Spanish theater allowed him, in 1988, to revise and adapt the text of The mayor of Zalameaby Calderón, a version that was premiered in November of that year by the National Classical Theater Company directed by José Luis Alonso. In 2001 he was appointed member of the Royal Spanish Academy, to occupy the seat X vacant after the death of the playwright Antonio Buero Vallejo. He took office on May 21, 2006.

In 2020 he was awarded the Cervantes Prize. His delicate state of health, and the coronavirus pandemic, prevented the poet from attending the emblematic and traditional Cervantes Prize award ceremony in Alcalá de Henares on April 23, 2021. For this reason, King Felipe VI traveled to the writer's residence, and arrived in time to hand-deliver the award to him, nine days before his death.

He died at the age of 89 on May 20, 2021 at the Gandía Hospital, where he had been admitted since May 13 and where he had undergone surgery for a hernia.

Since 2018, the Francisco Brines Foundation has had its headquarters in the Valencian municipality of Oliva. Entity created with the purpose of disseminating the figure and work of the poet, as well as the promotion, promotion and organization of activities linked to poetry.

In 2023, the Renacimiento publishing house published a personal biography of Brines written by his friend, the poet Luis Antonio de Villena, titled Brines. The secret life of verses.

Personal voice

Man is the “nothing being”.

Francisco Brines

His poetic work, which partly continues the line started by Luis Cernuda, is characterized by an intimate tone and constant reflection on the passage of time. In his writing, childhood appears as a mythical time that ignores the death, linked to the space of Elca, the childhood home in Oliva. The adult has been definitively expelled from the paradise of childhood and only in some moments (through eroticism, contemplation of nature...) does the human being recover the vital fullness experienced in childhood and youth. For all this, memory plays a fundamental role in his writing, although his poems reveal the conviction that neither poetry nor memory allows us to stop the passage of time and save the moments of plenitude of the past. In The Autumn of Roses, his most critically acclaimed book, elegiac lament and vital exaltation merge. In some chapters of his book Not Yet , he approaches a poetry with a satirical tone, which he barely cultivated later. The theme of homosexual love appears naturally in his poetry, in a ceaseless search for Purity.

His writing, which tends towards a classic balance and a melancholic tone, which tries to dominate the anguish in the face of death through a serene assumption of the inevitable, is nourished not only by the influence of Luis Cernuda but also, and especially in his first book, Las embras, of the poetry of Juan Ramón Jiménez and the more intimate Antonio Machado.

Work

Poetic work

• The panties, Madrid: Adonais, 1960; Valencia: Hontanar, 1971. (Adonais Award)
• The innocent saint, Madrid: Poetry for All, 1965.
• Words to the dark, Madrid: Ínsula, 1966; Madrid: Huerga & Fierro, 1996. (Critical Award)
• Not yet., Barcelona: Llibres de Sinera, 1971.
• Insistences in Luzbel, Madrid: Visor, 1977; Altea: Aitana, 1994.
• The autumn of roses, Seville: Renaissance, 1986 (National Literature Award)
• The last coast, Barcelona: Tusquets, 1995. (Facilities of the Royal Spanish Academy)
• Where death dies, Barcelona: Tusquets, 2021

Anthologies and reissues

• I'm practicing a farewell. Poetry 1960-1971, Barcelona: Plaza & Janés, 1974.
• Poetry. 1960-1981, Madrid: Visor, 1984.
• Selection, Madrid: Chair, 1984
• Poems excluded, Seville: Renaissance, 1985.
• The rose of nights (1986)
• Poems to D. K., Seville: The Indian Magic, 1986.
• The rumor of time, Barcelona: Anagrama, 1989
• Blind MirrorValencia, 1993
• Breve personal anthology (1997)
• Francisco Brines, poetry, Lleida: Universitat de Lleida, 1997
• Selection of poems (1997)
• Complete poetry (1960-1997) (1997)
• Poetry anthology, Valencia: Magnànim,1998.
• The Lighted Black Rose (2003)
• Dear life. (2004)
• Poetry anthology, Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 2006
• All the faces of the past, Barcelona: Circle, 2007
• The panties, Madrid: New Library, 2009
• To burn the night, Madrid: National Heritage, 2010
• I rest in the light, Madrid: Visor, 2010
• Not yet., Madrid: Bartleby, 2012
• Cloudy garden. Poetry anthology, Valencia: Pre-Textos, 2016
• For a blind law of the heart. Poetry anthology. Valencia: Magnànim, 2022

Other works

• Written on Contemporary Spanish PoetryValencia: Pre-Textos, 1994.
• Carmen Calvo, Caja de Ahorros de Asturias, 1999
• Editing Ocnos, by Luis Cernuda, Madrid: Huerga & Fierro, 2002.
• Unity and personal closeness in the poetry of Luis Cernuda. Address of admission to the Royal Spanish Academy, answered by Francisco Nieva, Seville: Renacimiento, 2006
• Elca. Artist book with Mariona Brines, Valencia: Krausse, 2010.

Some awards received

• 1960: Adonijan Prize
• 1967: Critics Award
• 1987: National Literature Award
• 1987: Premio de las Letras Valencianas
• 1998: Fastenrath Award
• 1999: Premio Nacional de las Letras Españolas
• 2004: Ricardo Marín Award for Creativity
• 2007: IV Federico García Lorca International Poetry Award
• 2010: Reina Sofia Award for Ibero-American Poetry
• 2020: Miguel de Cervantes Award

Bibliography about his work

• Andújar Almansa, José, The word and the rose. About the Poetry of Francisco Brines, Madrid: Alliance, 2003.
• Bousoño, Carlos, Post-contemporary poetry. Four studies and an introduction, Madrid: Jucar, 1985.
• Debicki, Andrew P., Poetry of knowledge. The Spanish generation of 1956-1971, translation of Alberto Cardín, Madrid: Jucar, 1987.
• Garcia Berrio, Antonio, Empathy. The sentimental poetry of Francisco Brines, Valencia, 2003.
• Gómez Toré, José Luis, The elegious look. The space and memory in the poetry of Francisco Brines, Valencia: Pre-Textos, 2002.
• Jimenez, José Olivio, The Poetry of Francisco Brines, Seville: Renacimiento, 2001.
• Martin, F.J., The broken dream of life (Francis Brines poetry essay)Altea: Aitana, 1998.
• Pujante, David, Wet beauty. The poetic writing of Francisco Brines, Seville: Renaissance, 2004.
• Romano, Marcela, An obstinate image. Poetic policies in Francisco Brines, Villa María: Eduvim, 2016.
• Villena, Luis Antonio de, Brines. The secret life of verses. Rebirth, 2023.