Renato Leduc

Renato Leduc (Tlalpan, Mexico City, November 16, 1897 - Mexico City, August 2, 1986) was a Mexican writer and poet.

Biography

His father was the Mexican writer Alberto Leduc. In his childhood and youth he had to live through some vicissitudes of the Mexican Revolution, during which he worked as a telegrapher for the Northern Division commanded by the insurgent general Francisco Villa.

He was also a journalist, but before becoming a poet, he was a traveler on foot, by train, by truck or tram, by airplane, or by riding a horse, as José Alvarado states on the flap of a kind of biography that José Ramón wrote of him. Garmabella titled Renato por Leduc and published by the publishing house Oceano in 1983. He had a reputation for being "very bad-mouthed" being able to say three curse words for every two words he uttered. Commissioned by the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit, he lived in Paris for around seven years, and returned to Mexico after living a few months in New York. In his Paris days he became involved with the group of Montparnasse Artists: Antonin Artaud, André Breton, Paul Eluard, Alice Prin (Kiki de Motparnasse). And among them were characters of the stature of Alfonso Reyes, Federico Cantú, but his world of friendships always extended from neighborhood people to politicians, film artists, bullfighters and journalists, among whom were Federico Cantú Garza, Luis Cardoza and Aragón, Carlos Bracho, Leonora Carrington.

He was married to the British surrealist painter Leonora Carrington. This marriage was intended more than anything to help her flee from Nazi persecution, to which she was subjected for having been Max Ernst's romantic partner. From then (1942) until his death (May 2011) Carrington lived in Mexico City. Leduc was also a friend of the journalist Elena Poniatowska, the Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz, The Diva of Mexican cinema María Félix, who is said to have proposed marriage to him, and the so-called musician-poet Agustín Lara. Leduc died in 1986.

He was a popular poet famous for his time sonnet, whose title is "Here we speak of the lost time that, as the saying goes, the saints mourn for it", and which he claimed to have written when someone He challenged me to make some verses related to time, knowing that this word has no other consonants (that rhyme with it) in Spanish. His literary work, however, is much broader, and it highlights The classroom, etc... (1929), which despite being his first book is perhaps the most emblematic and rounded, for the synthesis of humor and melancholy, eroticism, colloquial language, chance, bilingual and obscene rhyme, etc. A balance of his writing (not including the journalistic one, which is very vast), is found in the study that accompanies the edition of his Literary Work. The sonnet of time has even been set to music, with its famous beginning "Wise virtue of knowing time...". Much of his work has an erotic sense, when it is not frankly direct and explicit on these themes. In the journalistic field, he published various columns in the newspapers Excélsior, Últimas Noticias, Ovaciones, ESTO and Always!, among others.

Published work

Poetry

• The classroom, etc. (1929)
• Some deliberately romantic poems and a prologue in a way unnecessary (1933)
• Bright Breve of the Book of Good Love (1939)
• Poems from Paris (1942)
• XV animals, children and frights (1957)
• Fourteen bureaucratic poems and a reactionary corrido, for the comfort and spread of economically weak classes (1963)

Novel

• The banquets (1932; 1944)
  • Contents: "Prologist"; "Krishnamurti or redemption"; "Corydon or love"; "Chaplin or heroism"; "Epilot"
• The Beige Corsary (1940)

Journalism and other non-fiction texts

• Banquet (1961)
• History of the immediate (1976)
  • Contents: "John Reed"; "The April Fair"; "Anniversary"; "Miguel Othón Robledo, a forgotten poet"; "Mister O'Connor"; "Anty-Corydon"; "Tauromaquia and Religion"; "De Café y cafés"; "El canciller y las vikingas"; "Autominibiography"
• The devils of oil (1986)
• When we were less (1989)

Selects, compilations, anthologies

• Versus and poems (1940)
• Anthology (1948)
• Selected works (1977)
• Interdict poetry (1979)
  • Content: Prometheus (1934); The Odyssey (1940); Euclidiana (1968)
• Poetry and prose of Renato Leduc (1979)
  • Contents: the six poetry books and the two novels
• Renatograms (1986)
• Banquets / The Beige Corsary (1987)
• Unpublished Poems (almost) (1944) (Published by the magazine Nexos in 1987)
• Poetry anthology (1991)
  • Contents: selection of the six poetry books, published in 1987 Nexos and five unpublished poems
• Brindis to life: chosen works (1996)
• Literary work (2000)
• Some deliberately romantic poems / Bright Breve to the Good Love Book (2002)

Books about Renato Leduc

• Renato by Leduc: notes of a singular life (1984) (Conversation with José Ramón Garmabella)
• Renato Leduc and his friends (1987) (Oralba Castillo Nájera)
• That's what Renato Leduc was talking about. (1992) (Ramón Pimentel Aguilar)
• Forever Leduc (1995) (José Ramón Garmabella)
• I'm a pen man and my name is Renato. (2013) (Fred Álvarez Palafox and Pepe Alcaraz, coords.)

Prizes

In 1977 he was awarded the National Journalism Prize of Mexico, in a special way, in recognition of his career, repeating the award in 1983 for his comments published in the newspaper Excélsior.