Jaime Gil de Biedma

Jaime Gil de Biedma y Alba (Barcelona, November 13, 1929-ibid., January 8, 1990) was a Spanish writer, considered one of the most important poets of the second half of the 20th century and the Generation of 50.

Biography

Born into a family of the Castilian high bourgeoisie: son of Luis Gil de Biedma y Becerril (brother of politician José Gil de Biedma), who died on October 14, 1970, and María Luisa Alba (1897-1989). His father moved to Barcelona to work at the Compañía de Tabacos de Filipinas. What was his office can be visited today at the Hotel 1898 on La Rambla in Barcelona.

Gil de Biedma studied Law in Barcelona and at the University of Salamanca, the latter institution where he obtained his degree in the subject. His poetry evolves from the first intimate poems, such as Las afueras, to social commitment of Travel companions. At the same time, it is a poetry that constantly avoids surrealism and seeks contemporaneity and rationality at all costs through colloquial language, although stripped of all unnecessary references. A true exponent of what is usually called a double life, Biedma develops business activities (his father introduced him to the family tobacco business) and at the same time intellectually flirts with Marxism and his inner life is completely marked by homosexuality, a circumstance that, within his deep pessimism, will lead him to live to the limit a whole series of self-destructive intimate experiences.

Although until then he had been a great reader of French poetry, in particular Charles Baudelaire, in 1953 he moved to live in Oxford to improve his English and to be able to present himself to the competitive examinations as a diplomat, but in Oxford he ran into the Anglo-Saxon poetry of the time, a fact that would exert the most decisive influence on his later work. From 1955 he works in the tobacco company in the Philippines, where his father already worked. He agreed to work there because he was not able to pass the exams for diplomat and he was not able to teach as a university professor either, since it was known that he was homosexual. In the Tobacco Company he became general secretary and Manila became his second city. His life and work in the Philippines are reflected in his poems and in his diary, as he worked in Tabacos all his life. In 1959 he published Travel Companions, which together with Moralidades (1966) integrates the most social part of his poetry, with pieces full of political denunciation in which he evokes bourgeois hypocrisy, the misery that presided over the capitalist system, the oppression of the people by Franco's Spain and the discrimination of women.

In 1965, he applied to join the PSUC but was denied entry due to his homosexuality. Even so, he continued his relationship with circles close to the communist movements. That same year he published In Favor of Venus , a collection of love poems imbued with eroticism, and in 1968, finally, he published Posthumous Poems . From then on, Biedma will publish various poems in literary magazines. In 1968 he was included in the Anthology of the new Spanish poetry.

In 1974, Biedma suffered a crisis that led him to leave literary life and seclude himself in an iron nihilism. The determinism of a society incapable of changing its history and the conformism and disenchantment that permeates the intellectual world of the left after the transition to democracy led him to despair. His efforts to survive the apathy of bourgeois conformism from which he could not escape failed, he himself wrote that he was "gentleman by birth"; and that he regretted "the beatings that had not been given to him", and he noticed that his will as a writer had disappeared: "It does not happen to me anymore that of betting myself entirely on each poem that I put myself to write." That same year, in 1974, Diary of a seriously ill artist, a memoir; and a year later, in 1975, The people of the verb , his complete poetic work, with these works his fame began to take off. In 1980 a work titled El pie de la letra was also published, a work that collects his essays and reflects his intellectual breadth.

In 1985 he was diagnosed with AIDS, a disease that caused his death in January 1990. He died next to his partner, the actor Josep Madern; His friends and sisters were taking care of him until his last days. His remains were cremated and buried in the family vault in Nava de la Asunción (Segovia), a town where he had lived for long periods of time (including the entire Civil War), and where he had written part of his diaries and some of his poems, among which After the death of Jaime Gil de Biedma. Initiation poem with which he invents a new narrative mask, which is nothing more than the mask of the dead.

Poetry

Influence

A prominent member of the so-called Barcelona School, he related to its components: Joan Ferraté, Gabriel Ferrater, Jaime Salinas Bonmatí, Carlos Barral, José Agustín Goytisolo and the novelist Juan Marsé. Together with Ángel González, Claudio Rodríguez and José Ángel Valente, all these authors formed the so-called «Generation of 50». Gil de Biedma said on several occasions that the literary groups were nothing more than editorial promotions. In his work he resorted to colloquialism (with himself and with his readers) and irony to highlight social and existential issues and, even though it is not very extensive (he always preferred quality to quantity), it has been considered one of the most interesting and influential of his generation. Reading Eliot Weinberger, Stephen Spender, W. H. Auden and, in general, English-language poets was decisive for Gil de Biedma. He admired this poetic school that, with the use of the dramatic monologue, found the artistic vein that laid the foundations of the poetry of the XX century. In this way, he renounced French symbolism, which was where most of the poetry of the Generation of '27 was based. In addition, he also wrote some literary essays where he proved to be the owner of a very precise prose and literary knowledge superior to the criticism of so; These essays are collected in El pie de la letra. Jaime stopped writing poetry because according to what he said "the normal thing is not to write, the normal thing is to read", in this way he became what we could call a bartleby (after Melville's character) who preferred to stop writing. However, others maintain that his poetic world was over and that rather than repeat himself, he abandoned it.

One of the least studied facets of the poet is conversation, he always defended that it should be done with an aesthetic purpose. In the book prefaced and edited by Professor Javier Pérez Escohotado (El Aleph, 2002) and republished in Austral (2015) under the title Gil de Biedma. Conversations some of these conversations are collected in which the poet's conversational capacity can be appreciated, the sharpness of his ideas and the precise use that he made of the Spanish language. Readers can also go to his diaries to get closer to the figure of the poet and his way of thinking on various issues, especially philosophy.

Gil de Biedma wrote many letters throughout his life, either handwritten by him or dictated to his secretary. Reading his correspondence shows his literary development and his worldview. They are letters addressed in most cases to his poet friends, such as Carlos Barral, Joan Ferraté, Gabriel Ferrater, Ángel González, Gustavo Durán, Jaime Salinas, Juan Gil Albert, Luis Cernuda and others. The chronological selection of these was carried out by the editor Andreu Jaume in the book The argument of the work , published by Lumen in 2010.

Legacy

Since 1991 in Segovia and since 2003 in Nava de la Asunción, poetry prizes dedicated to his memory have been awarded (Jaime Gil de Biedma Poetry Awards).

In 2003 Pep Munné's show A night with Gil de Biedma (The paper roses) premiered in Barcelona with texts by Gil de Biedma. The show was performed in 2004 in Madrid.

Family

Three of her nieces (daughters of her cousins) have risen to prominence in the world of art and politics. On the one hand the photographer Ouka Leele (Bárbara Allende and Gil de Biedma) and her sister Patricia Allende, also a photographer, and on the other Esperanza Aguirre and Gil de Biedma, who has been president of the Community of Madrid, president of the Senate and minister of Education.

Works

• Versos a Carlos Barral (author's edition, Orense, 1952)
• According to the time sentence (1953).
• Travel partners (Barcelona: Joaquín Horta, 1959)
• In favor of Venus (1965)
• Moralities (1966)
• Poems Pustumos (1968)
• Special Collection (Seix Barral, 1969)
• Journal of the seriously ill artist (1974), book of memories
• People of the verb (Seix Barral, 1975; 2.o edition: 1982)
• The foot of the letter: Essays 1955-1979 (Critique, Barcelona, 1980)
• Poetry anthology (Alianza, 1981)
• Jaime Gil de Biedma. Conversations (Aleph, 2002). Editing and prologue by Javier Pérez Escohotado
• The argument of the work. Correspondence (Lumen, 2010)
• Journals 1956-1985 (Lumen, 2015)
• Jaime Gil de Biedma. Conversations (Austral, 2015). Javier Pérez Escohotado Reedición y prorólogo

About Jaime Gil de Biedma

Biographies

• Jaime Gil de Biedma, Miguel Dalmau Soler, Circe Editions, Barcelona, 510 p., 2004, ISBN 10: 8477652279, ISBN 13: 9788477652274

Movies

• The biography of the poet written by Miguel Dalmau Soler was adapted to the cinema by director Sigfrid Monleón in 2009 in the Spanish film The Consul of Sodoma. In it Jordi Mollà interprets Gil de Biedma.

• In 2015 the documentary entitled Twenty-five years after the death of Jaime Gil de Biedma to commemorate the anniversary of his death. It is directed by Luis Ordóñez and produced by Yolanda Ochando and focuses not on his biography but on his poetic universe. To this end, the testimonies of friends, poets and theorists such as Félix de Azúa, Manuel Cruz, Miguel Albero, Vicente Molina Foix, Luis Antonio de Villena, Àlex Susanna, Álvaro García, Pep Munné, Carmen Balcells, Luis García Montero, Benjamín Prado, Andreu Jaume, Malcolm Otero Barral, Luis Alberto de Cuenca and Pablo Sycet are used.