Luis Rosales

Luis Rosales Camacho (Granada, May 31, 1910-Madrid, October 24, 1992) was a Spanish poet and essayist of the generation of 1936. Member of the Royal Spanish Academy and of the Hispanic Society of America since 1962, he won the Cervantes Prize in 1982 for his entire literary work.

Biography

He was born in Granada in 1910, into a very conservative family. His beginnings in literary training are related to the artist environment of the magazine Gallo (although he never published in it), whose members —Enrique Gómez Arboleya, Manuel López Banús, Joaquín Amigo and Federico García Lorca, among others—, became great friends of his. In 1930, after a couple of publications in the avant-garde magazine Granada Gráfica, he gave his first poetry reading at the Centro Artístico, Literario y Científico from Granada, which was considered a success —the Granada press echoed, and from then on his interventions in this institution were numerous—; months later, he began his studies in Philosophy and Law at the University of Granada.

In 1932 he moved to Madrid to continue his studies in Philology, obtaining a doctorate. There he began his friendship with Pedro Salinas and Jorge Guillén, who introduced him to Los Cuatro Vientos, considered the last collective magazine of the group of poets from the Generation of '27. magazine, in April 1933, collaborated with the great intellectuals of the time such as Miguel de Unamuno, Benjamín Jarnés, Manuel Altolaguirre, María Zambrano, Luis Felipe Vivanco, Leopoldo Vivanco, Claudio de la Torre, Vicente Aleixandre, Antonio Marichalar, Jaime Torres Bodet and Rainer Maria Rilke; and Rosales himself published his first poems: Eclogue of Dreams and Ode of Anxiety .

He continued his literary activity at Cruz y Raya, a magazine directed by José Bergamín. He also publishes his verses in Vértice and in Caballo Verde para la Poesía , a magazine directed by Pablo Neruda that also featured poems by other writers such as Vicente Aleixandre or Miguel Hernandez. In the capital of Spain he met the Paneros (Juan and Leopoldo) and Luis Felipe Vivanco, companions of what will later be called the Generation of 36 (or War), of which Dionisio Ridruejo is also a part, and whose common axes, In addition to their affinity and camaraderie, it was their intimate Catholicism and their social conservatism.

In August 1936, just after the start of the Spanish civil war, Ramón Ruiz Alonso, who was a member of the CEDA, arrested Federico García Lorca. The poet had taken refuge in the Rosales house, thus believing that he would be safe from reprisals, since there were prominent Falangist members in that family. Luis Rosales could not prevent his arrest and subsequent execution despite the friendship he had with Lorca and his position within the Granada right. In that same fateful year, Joaquín Amigo, professor of philosophy and member of the intellectual creators of the magazine Gallo and very close to both, was also murdered. In this case, Joaquín Amigo was assassinated by the Republicans, throwing him down the Tajo de Ronda, while he was stationed in that town in Malaga as a high school professor. Those two deaths marked the life, both personal and literary, of Rosales, in whose work —both in A face in each wave and in his unfinished New York after death, and in many other writings, both poetic and essay, the influences of both friends are reflected.

In 1937 he published in the newspaper Patria of Granada, the poem «La voz de los muertos», probably one of the most important writings during the civil war, he chose all the victims of both sides, in which any expression of triumphalism or exaltation is left out. From that same year Rosales collaborates in the Falangist magazine Hierarquía.

He also collaborated in the newspaper Arriba España and in the magazine Escorial. He was editorial secretary and director of Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos . Starting in 1978, he directed Nueva Estafeta , a unique magazine in its time for including among his collaborations works written in the different languages of Spain (Castilian, Catalan, Basque or Galician). Ideologically he was evolving from the authoritarian ideas of his youth towards democratic positions in his maturity.

At the end of 1949 and beginning of 1950, he participated in the "poetic mission" with the poets Antonio Zubiaurre, Leopoldo Panero and the ambassador Agustín de Foxá, who toured different Ibero-American countries (including Honduras). prior to the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between these countries and the Franco regime.

In 1962 he entered the Hispanic Society of America and the Royal Spanish Academy, although he did not read his admission speech, Pasión y muerte del Conde de Villamediana, until 1964.

Member of the Privy Council of the Count of Barcelona, he actively bet, encouraging the left and right to unite and support the restoration of the monarchy in Spain (first with him and later with Juan Carlos de Borbón).

Although he had lived in Madrid since 1968, he spent his summers in Cercedilla, a time when he wrote his poetry books.

In 1970 he was appointed adviser to the director of the Institute of Hispanic Culture and in 1973, director of the Department of Cultural Activities of said Institute.

In 1982 he received the Cervantes Prize, the most important literary award in the Spanish language.

Between 1986 and 1992 he contributed periodically to the daily ABC, either writing in a column or publishing in the weekly supplement Blanco y Negro. The subjects of her writings in said medium were mainly music, painting and literature. Among his contributions were "The originality of the second part of Don Quixote", "A model of theater", "History of a sonnet" (this one written in different parts), "The book of sparrows", "Rafael Alberti or freedom poetics", "The temporality of Antonio Machado", "The hour of cubism", "Creative contemplation" (about Picasso) and "La herida del cante jondo", among many others.

On October 28, 1988, in the Hall of Mirrors of the Malaga City Hall, he gave the lecture And suddenly, Picasso.

He died at the age of 82 on October 24, 1992 in the old Puerta de Hierro clinic in Madrid after suffering a cerebral embolism.

Work

Abril (1935), published immediately before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, is linked to the style of poetry of the previous generation due to its aesthetic search and the importance of images, although without avant-garde pretensions. Like some poets of 1927, there is in this work of youth a taste for classical stanzas and, in general, for the poetry of the Golden Age, specifically Garcilaso and Herrera. However, his main innovation is the combination of the love-religious theme.

Her next work, The best queen of Spain. Figuration in prose and verse (1939), written in collaboration with L.F. Vivanco, is an essay with a theme very typical of the time, imbued with Falangist ideology and recalling past glories. In 1941 The Content of the Heart appeared, with a classic and loving tone.

In 1949 he published the first version of The House on Fire, considered by critics to be his best work. The book was redone and expanded until producing a new version, published in 1967. Something similar happened with his first work, Abril, which was corrected and increased with new poems and published again in 1972 with the title Segundo Abril, almost 40 years after its first edition. The house on fire is a poem-book –written in free verse without stanzas– where Rosales mixes lyricism and narration, existentialism and imagination, rationality and irrationality, beginning a new personal poetics that incorporates resources from César Vallejo and Antonio Machado.

Between 1937 and 1951 he worked on the book Rhymes (1951), where he explored with the short poem, demonstrating his great versatility and technical mastery. His essays include Cervantes and freedom (1960) and Passion and death of the Count of Villamediana (1962). His latest works, more autobiographical and disillusioned, maintain the union of the lyrical and the narrative, with surreal discoveries already present in The House on Fire .

Autobiography by Luis Rosales

In 1966 he published El sentimiento del desengaño en la poesía barroca, and three years later El contenido del corazón for which in 1970 he won the Critics' Award. In 1972 he published Theory of Freedom and Spanish Lyrics, whose essay Garcilaso, Camoens and the Spanish Lyrics of the Golden Age won the Miguel de Unamuno. In 1973 the Great Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Reader's Digest was published in eight volumes, whose group of Spanish collaborators directed and which had a second edition later in twelve volumes.

Editorial Trotta has published his Complete Works in six volumes, and Félix Grande, who was a disciple and friend of Rosales, prepared the anthology Because death does not interrupt anything, with his selection and prologue, which appeared in the Biblioteca Sibila in 2010. Grande also wrote the essay La calumnia. About how Luis Rosales, for defending Federico García Lorca, was persecuted to death (Mondadori, 1987). With the Luis García Montero Edition, the Visor Poetry Collection publishes El naufrago metódico, Anthology, Madrid, 2005.

Poetic style

The work of Luis Rosales, which covers the entire post-war historical period, evolved from classicism to his own style close to surrealist avant-garde. Two stages in his work are usually distinguished, one more concerned with aesthetic issues, close to Garcilasista classicism, and a later one of avant-garde experimentation. Both merge in La casa encienda, where aesthetics is no longer a concern, but the exercise of techniques that he already masters.

Broadly speaking, Rosales' literary style is characterized by:

• The domain of poetic technique.
• The construction of the poem under budgets of spiritual and sentimental simplicity.
• The domain and ease of use of the rhymed or free verse, as appropriate to the tone of the poem or to the topic treated.
• The absence of adjectives, highlighting the substance of things.

Regarding the content, Rosales' poetry has been referred to as the «poetry of the everyday». Love appears in all her work in a calm and calm way, as well as memory and remembrance. The postwar period is also characterized by religious sentiment.

Awards

• National Poetry Prize 1951
• Mariano Award of Cavia 1962
• 1970 Critics Award for The content of the heart
• Miguel de Unamuno Award 1972
• National Essay Award 1973
• José Lacalle Prize 1975
• International Poetry Prize for Melilla City 1981
• Premio Cátedra de Poesía Fray Luis de León-Ciudad de Salamanca 1982
• Cervantes Award 1982
• Medal of honour of the Rodríguez Acosta Foundation (1986)

Complete works

Editorial Trotta has published his Complete Works:

1. Poetry {ISBN 978-84-8164-113-4}
2. Cervantes and Freedom {ISBN 978-84-8164-131-8}
3. Baroque Studies {ISBN 978-84-8164-153-0}
4. Tests of philosophy and literature {ISBN 978-84-8164-206-3}
5. The poetic work of the Earl of Salinas {ISBN 978-84-8164-236-0}
6. The creative look. Painting, music and other themes {ISBN 978-84-8164-274-2}

Predecessor: Eighth Peace

Miguel de Cervantes Award 1982

Successor: Rafael Alberti