Juan Ramon Jimenez: biography, briefly about life and work. Brief biography of Jimenez Essay on literature on the topic: Brief biography of Jimenez

Despite poor health, the boy was sent to Cadiz in 1891, to a Jesuit college, after which H. studied law at the University of Seville. However, H. is not so much involved in jurisprudence as in drawing, reading and writing poetry, and is especially interested in French and German romantic poetry, as well as Spanish poetry at the Lyceum of Rosalia de Castro and Gustavo Becker. His early poems, published in the Madrid review Vida nueva when he was 17 years old, attracted the attention of several famous Spanish-language poets of the time, including the Nicaraguan Ruben Dario, who lived at the time in Spain, and compatriot J. Francisco Villaspes, who advised the aspiring poet to move to Madrid. Heeding their advice, H. gave up his irregular studies in law, moved to Madrid and actively participated in the creation of two influential modernist magazines - Helios (Helios, 1902) and Renaissance (Renacimiento, 1906). The earliest of H.'s poetry collections are “Souls of Violets” (“Almas de violeta”) and “Water Lilies” (“Ninfeas”).

appeared in 1900. Imitative, sentimental, imbued with teenage melancholy, these poems nevertheless testify to a certain stylistic sophistication of the poet, to the sensuality and tender lyricism of his early poetry. The images of nature with which H.'s early poems are saturated will be characteristic of all his poetry.

The sudden death of his father plunged the poet, who had just returned to Mogher, into a state of deep depression. H. goes to be treated for neurasthenia at a sanatorium in Bordeaux, where he soon recovers, but turns into a semi-hermit, obsessed with thoughts of death. These thoughts will haunt him all his life. While in the sanatorium, Kh. writes little, prefers to read, mainly French symbolists - Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarmé.

Returning to Madrid in 1902, H. wrote his first mature poems, included in the collections “Rhymes” (“Rimas”, 1902), “Sad Tunes” (“Arias tristes”, 1903), “Far Gardens” (“Jardines”) lejanos”, 1904), “Pastorales” (“Pastorales”, 1905) and characterized by moods of hopelessness characteristic of fin-de-siecle modernist poetry. But in these poems one can hear an original poetic voice, elegant, musical, with a touch of mystery.

From 1905 to 1911, H. again lived in Moger, where he wrote poems included in the collections “Pure Elegies” (“Elejias puras”, 1908), “Spring Ballads” (“Valadas de primavera”, 1910) and “Gulkoe loneliness” (“La soledad sonora”, 1911). With their bizarre images and complex meters (Alexandrine verse, for example), these poems make us recall the Baroque style.

In 1912, H. moved to the Madrid student residence, a center of humanitarian culture, where he met the American Zenobia Camprubi. Together they translate the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore. At the same time, H. published the collection “Labyrinth” (“Laberinto”, 1913) - poems dedicated to his seven lovers, as well as the well-known cycle of blank verses “Platero and I” (“Platero y uo”, 1914). The subtext of this kind of lyrical story, which tells about a poet and his donkey, lies, as the American literary critic Michael Predmore wrote in 1970, the idea of ​​“death and rebirth as a process of eternal transformation.”

In 1915, “Summer” (“Estio”), a book of romantic love poems dedicated to Zenobia Camprubi, was published. The following year, H. came to visit her in New York, and they got married. The journey across the ocean became an important milestone in the work of X. His next collection, “Diary of a Newlywed Poet” (“Diario de un poeta recien casado”, 1917), reflected this journey; The “Diary” is notable for its use of free verse - for the first time in Spanish poetry. And although the love theme plays a significant role in this book, it is entirely permeated with the theme of the sea, whose constant variability and non-stop movement symbolize H.’s intolerance of established poetic structures, but at the same time the sea awakens in the poet a longing for constancy.

Over the next 20 years, H. worked as a critic and editor in Spanish literary magazines, and in his work he tries to express what he called “the greed of eternity.” In the book “Eternity” (“Eternidades” 1918), he renounces his past poems and strives for la poesia desnuda - for “naked,” “pure” poetry. The poems in the collection “Eternity” are strict and epigrammatic, alien to the sophistication and colorfulness that were characteristic of the poet’s early work.

Best of the day

In subsequent poetry collections - “Stone and Sky” (“Piedra y cielo”. 1919) and “Beauty” (“Belleza”, 1923) - H. reflects on the connection between beauty and death, creativity and the salvation of the soul. In an aesthetic and ethical treatise of those years, the poet states that there is a connection between morality and beauty. From 1923 to 1936, H. worked on the anthology “All year round songs of the new world” (“La estacion total con las canciones de la nueva luz”), published only in 1946 and imbued with a keen sense of the harmony reigning in nature. “The name of the anthology is symbolic,” American literary critic K. Cobb wrote in 1976 in his book “Modern Spanish Poetry (1898...1963).” – “All Year Round” is the poet’s desire to connect together all the seasons, all beginnings and endings, birth and death.

The civil war in Spain that began in 1936 disrupted the poet’s creative plans. The Republican government sent him as an honorary cultural attaché to the United States, and although the poet went there of his own free will, he perceived his separation from Spain as a voluntary exile. During these years, H. - for the first time in his life - gave lectures at universities in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the USA. When in 1939 Franco became the sovereign ruler of Spain, H. and his wife decided to stay abroad.

And although in these years H. writes little, he continues his intense search for poetic truth, achieving almost religious strength in his spiritual testament “The Beast from the Deep of the Soul” (“Animal de fondo”, 1949), a collection of poetry inspired by another sea voyage, this time to Argentina. In 1964, American researcher Howard Young called this book “H.’s spiritual autobiography, a synthesis of his poetic ideals.”

In 1951, H. and his wife moved to Puerto Rico, where the poet was engaged in teaching and also worked on the poetic cycle “God is Desired and Desiring” (“Dios deseado y deseante”), the intended continuation of “The Beast from the Deep.” This collection was not completed, but the poet included fragments from it in the “Third Poetic Anthology” (“Tercera antolojia poetica”, 1957).

In 1956, the year of his wife’s death, H. received the Nobel Prize in Literature “for lyric poetry, an example of high spirit and artistic purity in Spanish poetry.” In his speech at the award ceremony, Hjalmar Gullberg, a member of the Swedish Academy, stated: “By paying tribute to Juan Ramon H., the Swedish Academy thereby pays tribute to an entire era of great Spanish literature.” In a short response letter from H., read in Stockholm by the rector of the University of Puerto Rico, it was said: “The Nobel Prize rightfully belongs to my wife Zenobin. If it were not for her help, not for her inspiring participation, I would not have been able to work for forty years. Now without her I am alone and helpless.” H. was never able to recover from the death of his wife and died two years later in Puerto Rico at the age of 76.

The reputation of Kh., a poet sacredly devoted to his art, continues to remain high. "X. occupies a completely unique place in Spanish literature because of the desire for nakedness, universality and infinity of poetry,” wrote K. Cobb, who believes that in this respect H. can only be compared with Yeats and Rilke. Like them, notes Howard Young, H. professes “a religion in which poetry is the only rite, and creativity is the only form of worship.”

Do not forget me,
unexpected joy!

What was once believed has broken,
what was long-awaited was forgotten,
but you, unfaithful, unexpected joy,
do not forget me!
Won't you forget?

H.R. Jimenez

“He was born to whom it was given to express, nobly and restrainedly,
that secret melancholy that you carry in your heart, Andalusia"
R. Dario

Dear friends!

Biography of Juan Ramon Jimenez

Juan Ramon Jimenez was born in the small Spanish town of Andalusia, located on the banks of the Tinto River, Moguera.

Despite the fact that the history of this city (or rather, one of its monasteries) is closely connected with Christopher Columbus, the whole world learned about this city only at the beginning of the 20th century, thanks to the poems of the hero of my today’s post. On Catholic night in 1881, one of the most famous people in Spain, Juan Ramon Jimenez, was born here. The poet sang his hometown and beloved Andalusia in many of his works and, in particular, in the lyrical sketches “Platero and I.” The hero of this series is a small gray donkey, to whom the author confides his secrets and doubts. One of the town squares is named after the hero of this book - the best friend of the writer and all the children of Spain.

The boy came into the wealthy family of a banker; in 1891, his parents sent him to a Jesuit college, then the future poet entered the Faculty of Law at the University of Seville. He did not like studying, the young man spent all his free time drawing, became interested in romantic German, French, and Spanish poetry and began writing poetry himself.

The beginning of the creative path of Juan Ramon Jimenez

His poems were first published in Spanish magazines when Juan was not even 16 years old. And at the age of 19 he was already holding his books in his hands - “The Souls of Violets” and “Water Lilies”.

Withered violets... Oh the smell from afar!
Where did it come from, already otherworldly?
From a forgotten youth, gone without reproach?
Is it from a woman’s heart, or from a woman’s palms?

Or maybe he got pregnant on a random whim
scattered wind that died down behind the meadow?
Or in the land of oblivion, green and sad,
does it echo hopes and separations?..

But it smells like a girl on spring nights
and old poems and first tears -
silver April, darkened by sadness,
...cloudless sadness laughing at us...

By this time, Jimenez had dropped out of university and moved to Madrid. Here he participates in the creation of influential modernist magazines. Modernists worshiped beauty. Beauty in their works was always written with a capital B. “My creativity in my youth was a journey towards Beauty,” said the poet. His lines were refined and graceful. “At Dawn” is one of his earliest poems.

Night
tired
spin...
Flock of lilac angels
extinguished the green stars.

Under the violet canopy
field distance
appeared
emerging from the darkness.

And the flowers sighed and opened their eyes,
and the meadow dew smelled.

And on the pink meadowsweet -
oh, the whiteness of those embraces! —
half asleep merged, freezing,
like pearl souls,
our two youths
upon returning from the eternal land.

Translation by A. Geleskul

At the beginning of the last century, the Nicaraguan poet was generally recognized as a famous modernist author. Be sure to check out this post about it. This poet became a discovery for me. Jimenez met R. Dario in 1900. This meeting became an important milestone in the life of J. Jimenez, and Ruben Dario became one of his most beloved teachers, whom he diligently imitated at first. Ruben Dario immediately drew attention to the talented young man and noticed that despite his young years, he was already a mature poet.
When you read Jimenez, you are amazed at his erudition. He juggles lines from Goethe, Byron, Verlaine, Hugo, Dante, Ronsard and many, many other poets.

The first serious shock for the young man was the death of his father, and he began to experience deep depression. Jimenez ended up in the hospital.

Parting

How warmly I kiss
your palm is alive!

(The gate is locked.
The heart is lonely
and unsociable in the field.)

With what longing I reach out
behind the dreaming hand!
Translation by B. Dubin

The time has begun to search for oneself, to search for the meaning of life. For the first time, he had thoughts about and about death, painful thoughts about which did not leave the poet all his life, and all his poems are a conversation about life and death, about the value of every moment. By the way, when I was preparing this post, I came across the book “Eternal Moments”, compiled by the translator, Leningrad Spanish scholar Viktor Andreev. It is impossible to write better about the work of Jimenez than V. Andreev! Therefore, I simply quote and agree with every word))

“Poems from Jimenez’s first collections amaze the reader with the splendor and freshness of their colors, exquisite musicality, and the richness and elegance of their images. His poetry inextricably combines words, music, and painting. Jimenez fully felt the wonderful, magical power of his native language and eagerly listened to the sound of the word. He knew how to appreciate words - voluminous, multi-colored, full-sounding, and was fluent in the art of alliteration. In his youth, the poet was fond of painting, painted pictures, and this, apparently, helped him masterfully convey in words all his sensations of color. In addition, we should not forget: in Spanish poetry there is color symbolism. So, for example, white symbolizes sadness, red passion, black - death. Jimenez did not banish black from his palette (as the impressionist painters did), but he can certainly be called an impressionist of Spanish verse. Jimenez's landscapes are colorful, sounding, and visible. And most importantly: his landscape is always animated. The poet was not even a pantheist, but a pagan - the unity of man and nature is so fully felt in his poems. In his “early” collection “Spring Ballads,” Jimenez writes: “These ballads are somewhat superficial - they have more lip music than soul music. “But without learning the “music of the lips,” the poet would not be able to capture the “music of the soul”"

The love of Juan Ramon Jimenez's life

In 1912, Jimenez met an American woman, Zenobia Camprubi. Zenobia Camprubi was a translator (I highly recommend following the link!), Jimenez became imbued with the music of the lines of this Indian poet, at the same time he begins to get carried away. In terms of expressiveness, tanka and haiku become close to him. The requirements for poetic lines have changed.
Three years later, a book of romantic love poems dedicated to Zenobia Camprubi was published. In 1916, Jimenez came to her in the United States and they got married. Zenobia Camprubi became his beloved wife and reliable assistant.

Fate has taken my heart
and I put you in my chest...

Soon the next period of his creativity begins - the period of brevity and capacity of words. If “in the early poems he was abundantly generous, now he is extremely stingy. Everything is “external” there. Here everything is “inside” the verse” (V. Andreev) Poetry becomes “pure” and stingy with emotions.
For the next 20 years, Jiménez worked as an editor for Spanish literary magazines. But the civil war in Spain forces the poet to leave for Puerto Rico. And although he leaves the country as an honorary cultural attache to the United States, deep down he understands that he is most likely parting with his homeland forever. This is what happens when Franco becomes the ruler of Spain, he and his wife still decide not to return, even though he takes the separation from his homeland hard. He teaches abroad and lectures at universities in the USA, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Argentina.

Joaquín Sorolla Retrato de Juan Ramón Jiménez

The last years of Ramon Jimenez's life

On October 25, 1956, Ramon Jimenez was awarded the Nobel Prize.
And 2 days later his wife died.

The woman next to you -
music, flame, flower -

everything embraces peace.
If she's not with you,

go crazy without her
music, flame and light.

The 75-year-old poet was left alone... He bitterly experienced the loss of his beloved woman and his dearest person.

...I know that you have become light,
but I don’t know where you are,
and I don’t know where the light is.

Juan Ramon Jimenez died in the capital of Puerto Rico on May 29, 1958, in the same hospital in which his wife died of a heart attack.

The final path

...And I'll leave. And the bird will sing,
as she sang,
and there will be a garden, and a tree in the garden,
and my well is white.

At the end of the day, transparent and calm,
the sunset will die and they will remember me
the bells of the surrounding bell towers.

Over the years the street will be different;
those I loved will no longer exist,
and into my garden behind the whitewashed wall,
sad, only my shadow will peek...

And I'll leave; alone - without anyone,
no evenings, no morning drop
and my white well...

And the birds will sing and sing as they sang.

I bring to your attention a few more of my favorite poems by the poet.

Juan Ramon Jimenez - best poems

Give me your hand, hope, let's go beyond the invisible ridge,
to where the stars shine in my soul, as in the sky.
Close my eyes with your other hand and otherworldly
Lead the path, blind from the snow of your palm.

But we will see such distances in the light of sadness:
under the full moon the heart of love has a blue mouth.
Bury me in me from the heat of the worldly desert
and pave the way into the depths, where the depths are blue, like the sky.

Translation by S. Goncharenko

Le vent de l'autre nuit
a jete has l’Amour…
P. Verlalne

In the evening the autumn wind
plucked the golden leaves.
How sad the trees are at night,
how long this night lasts!
Lifeless yellow moon
floats into black branches;
no crying, no kiss
in its deadened light.
I gently whisper to the trees:
do not cry for yellow leaves;
greenery will bloom in spring
on branches burned to ashes.
But the trees are sadly silent,
mourning my loss...
Don't cry for yellow leaves:
and the new ones will turn yellow!

The poignant twilight of late summer
and the house smells like mimosa in autumn...
and the memory buries without revealing the secret,
an unknown echo, already voiceless...

Along the white fences, like sunset spots,
the last roses are fading to purple,
and crying is heard - far and indistinct
...forgotten shadows are calling from the past...

And we imagine someone approaching,
and my heart suddenly shrinks involuntarily,
and the reflection looks at us in the mirror
eyes of strangers and full of pain...
* * *

Sunday evening in January
when there is not a soul in the house!
...Green-yellow sun
on the windows and on the pediment,
and in the room
and on roses...
And drops of light drip
into the air permeated with sadness...
Prolonged time in a clot
frozen
in an open volume...
Walks quietly on tiptoe
soul in an empty house,
fallen crumb of bread
looking at the palms.

Spanish poet Juan Ramon Jimenez Mantecon was born in Moguer, a small town in Andalusia, the son of banker Victor Jimenez and his wife Purificación Mantecon y Lopez Pareyo. In addition to Juan, the family had two more children, as well as the daughter of Victor Jimenez from his first marriage. Despite poor health, the boy was sent to Cadiz in 1891, to a Jesuit college, after which H. studied law at the University of Seville. However, H. is not so much involved in jurisprudence as in drawing, reading and writing poetry, and is especially interested in French and German romantic poetry, as well as Spanish poetry at the Lyceum of Rosalia de Castro and Gustavo Becker. His early poems, published in the Madrid review Vida nueva when he was 17 years old, attracted the attention of several famous Spanish-language poets of the time, including the Nicaraguan Ruben Dario, who lived at the time in Spain, and compatriot J. Francisco Villaspes, who advised the aspiring poet to move to Madrid. Heeding their advice, H. quit his irregular studies in law, moved to Madrid and actively participated in the creation of two influential modernist magazines - “Helios” (“Helios”, 1902) and “Renacimiento” (“Renacimiento”, 1906). The earliest of H.'s poetry collections, “The Souls of Violets” (“Almas de violeta”) and “Water Lilies” (“Ninfeas”), appeared in 1900. Imitative, sentimental, imbued with teenage melancholy, these poems nevertheless indicate a certain the stylistic sophistication of the poet, about the sensuality and tender lyricism of his early poetry. The images of nature with which H.'s early poems are saturated will be characteristic of all his poetry.

The sudden death of his father plunged the poet, who had just returned to Mogher, into a state of deep depression. H. goes to be treated for neurasthenia at a sanatorium in Bordeaux, where he soon recovers, but turns into a semi-hermit, obsessed with thoughts of death. These thoughts will haunt him all his life. While in the sanatorium, Kh. writes little, prefers to read, mainly French symbolists - Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarmé.

Returning to Madrid in 1902, H. wrote his first mature poems, included in the collections “Rhymes” (“Rimas”, 1902), “Sad Tunes” (“Arias tristes”, 1903), “Far Gardens” (“Jardines”) lejanos”, 1904), “Pastorales” (“Pastorales”, 1905) and characterized by moods of hopelessness characteristic of fin-de-siecle modernist poetry. But in these poems one can hear an original poetic voice, elegant, musical, with a touch of mystery.

From 1905 to 1911, H. again lived in Moger, where he wrote poems included in the collections “Pure Elegies” (“Elejias puras”, 1908), “Spring Ballads” (“Valadas de primavera”, 1910) and “Gulkoe loneliness” (“La soledad sonora”, 1911). With their bizarre images and complex meters (Alexandrine verse, for example), these poems make us recall the Baroque style.

In 1912, H. moved to the Madrid student residence, a center of humanitarian culture, where he met the American Zenobia Camprubi. Together they translate the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore. At the same time, H. published the collection “Labyrinth” (“Laberinto”, 1913) - poems dedicated to his seven lovers, as well as the well-known cycle of blank verses “Platero and I” (“Platero y uo”, 1914). The subtext of this kind of lyrical story, which tells about a poet and his donkey, lies, as the American literary critic Michael Predmore wrote in 1970, the idea of ​​“death and rebirth as a process of eternal transformation.”

In 1915, “Summer” (“Estio”), a book of romantic love poems dedicated to Zenobia Camprubi, was published. The following year, H. came to visit her in New York, and they got married. The journey across the ocean became an important milestone in the work of X. His next collection, “Diary of a Newlywed Poet” (“Diario de un poeta recien casado”, 1917), reflected this journey; The “Diary” is notable for its use of free verse - for the first time in Spanish poetry. And although the love theme plays a significant role in this book, it is entirely permeated with the theme of the sea, whose constant variability and non-stop movement symbolize H.’s intolerance of established poetic structures, but at the same time the sea awakens in the poet a longing for constancy.

Over the next 20 years, H. worked as a critic and editor in Spanish literary magazines, and in his work he tries to express what he called “the greed of eternity.” In the book “Eternity” (“Eternidades” 1918), he renounces his past poems and strives for la poesia desnuda - for “naked,” “pure” poetry. The poems in the collection “Eternity” are strict and epigrammatic, alien to the sophistication and colorfulness that were characteristic of the poet’s early work.

In subsequent poetry collections - “Stone and Sky” (“Piedra y cielo”. 1919) and “Beauty” (“Belleza”, 1923) - H. reflects on the connection between beauty and death, creativity and the salvation of the soul. In an aesthetic and ethical treatise of those years, the poet states that there is a connection between morality and beauty. From 1923 to 1936, H. worked on the anthology “All year round songs of the new world” (“La estacion total con las canciones de la nueva luz”), published only in 1946 and imbued with a keen sense of the harmony reigning in nature. “The name of the anthology is symbolic,” American literary critic K. Cobb wrote in 1976 in his book “Modern Spanish Poetry (1898...1963).” – “All Year Round” is the poet’s desire to connect together all the seasons, all beginnings and endings, birth and death.

The civil war in Spain that began in 1936 disrupted the poet’s creative plans. The Republican government sent him as an honorary cultural attaché to the United States, and although the poet went there of his own free will, he perceived his separation from Spain as a voluntary exile. During these years, H. - for the first time in his life - gave lectures at universities in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the USA. When in 1939 Franco became the sovereign ruler of Spain, H. and his wife decided to stay abroad.

And although in these years H. writes little, he continues his intense search for poetic truth, achieving almost religious strength in his spiritual testament “The Beast from the Deep of the Soul” (“Animal de fondo”, 1949), a collection of poetry inspired by another sea voyage, this time to Argentina. In 1964, American researcher Howard Young called this book “H.’s spiritual autobiography, a synthesis of his poetic ideals.”

In 1951, H. and his wife moved to Puerto Rico, where the poet was engaged in teaching and also worked on the poetic cycle “God is Desired and Desiring” (“Dios deseado y deseante”), the intended continuation of “The Beast from the Deep.” This collection was not completed, but the poet included fragments from it in the “Third Poetic Anthology” (“Tercera antolojia poetica”, 1957).

In 1956, the year of his wife’s death, H. received the Nobel Prize in Literature “for lyric poetry, an example of high spirit and artistic purity in Spanish poetry.” In his speech at the award ceremony, Hjalmar Gullberg, a member of the Swedish Academy, stated: “By paying tribute to Juan Ramon H., the Swedish Academy thereby pays tribute to an entire era of great Spanish literature.” In a short response letter from H., read in Stockholm by the rector of the University of Puerto Rico, it was said: “The Nobel Prize rightfully belongs to my wife Zenobin. If it were not for her help, not for her inspiring participation, I would not have been able to work for forty years. Now without her I am alone and helpless.” H. was never able to recover from the death of his wife and died two years later in Puerto Rico at the age of 76.

The reputation of Kh., a poet sacredly devoted to his art, continues to remain high. "X. occupies a completely unique place in Spanish literature because of the desire for nakedness, universality and infinity of poetry,” wrote K. Cobb, who believes that in this respect H. can only be compared with Yeats and Rilke. Like them, notes Howard Young, H. professes “a religion in which poetry is the only rite, and creativity is the only form of worship.”

Do not forget me,
unexpected joy!

What was once believed has broken,
what was long-awaited was forgotten,
but you, unfaithful, unexpected joy,
do not forget me!
Won't you forget?

H.R. Jimenez

“He was born to whom it was given to express, nobly and restrainedly,

That secret melancholy that you carry in your heart, Andalusia"

Despite the fact that the history of this city (or rather, one of its monasteries) is closely connected with Christopher Columbus, the whole world learned about this city only at the beginning of the 20th century, thanks to the poems of the hero of my today’s post. On the night of Catholic Christmas in 1881, one of the most famous people in Spain, Juan Ramon Jimenez, was born here. The poet sang his hometown and beloved Andalusia in many of his works and, in particular, in the lyrical sketches “Platero and I.” The hero of this cycle is a small gray donkey, to whom the author confides his secrets and doubts. One of the town squares is named after the hero of this book - the best friend of the writer and all the children of Spain.

The boy came into the wealthy family of a banker; in 1891, his parents sent him to a Jesuit college, then the future poet entered the Faculty of Law at the University of Seville. He did not like studying, the young man spent all his free time drawing, became interested in romantic German, French, and Spanish poetry and began writing poetry himself. His poems were first published in Spanish magazines when Juan was not even 16 years old. And at the age of 19 he was already holding his books in his hands - “The Souls of Violets” and “Water Lilies”.

Withered violets... Oh the smell from afar!
Where did it come from, already otherworldly?
From a forgotten youth, gone without reproach?
Is it from a woman’s heart, or from a woman’s palms?

Or maybe he got pregnant on a random whim
scattered wind that died down behind the meadow?
Or in the land of oblivion, green and sad,
does it echo hopes and separations?..

But it smells like a girl on spring nights
and old poems and first tears -
silver April, darkened by sadness,
...cloudless sadness laughing at us...

By this time, Jimenez had dropped out of university and moved to Madrid. Here he participates in the creation of influential modernist magazines. Modernists worshiped beauty. Beauty in their works was always written with a capital B. “My creativity in my youth was a journey towards Beauty,” said the poet. His lines were refined and graceful. “At Dawn” is one of his earliest poems.

Night
tired
spin...
Flock of lilac angels
extinguished the green stars.

Under the violet canopy
field distance
appeared
emerging from the darkness.

And the flowers sighed and opened their eyes,
and the meadow dew smelled.

And on the pink meadowsweet -
oh, the whiteness of those embraces! -
half asleep merged, freezing,
like pearl souls,
our two youths
upon returning from the eternal land.

Translation by A. Geleskul

At the beginning of the last century, the Nicaraguan poet Ruben Dario was generally recognized as a famous modernist author. Be sure to check out this post about it. This poet became a discovery for me. Jimenez met R. Dario in 1900. This meeting became an important milestone in the life of J. Jimenez, and Ruben Dario became one of his most beloved teachers, whom he diligently imitated at first. Ruben Dario immediately drew attention to the talented young man and noticed that despite his young years, he was already a mature poet.
When you read Jimenez, you are amazed at his erudition. He juggles lines from Goethe, Byron, Verlaine, Hugo, Dante, Shakespeare, Ronsard and many, many other poets.

The first serious shock for the young man was the death of his father, and he began to experience deep depression. Jimenez ended up in the hospital.

Parting

How warmly I kiss
your palm is alive!

(The gate is locked.
The heart is lonely
and unsociable in the field.)

With what longing I reach out
behind the dreaming hand!
Translation by B. Dubin

The time has begun to search for oneself, to search for the meaning of life. For the first time, he had thoughts about old age and death, painful thoughts about which did not leave the poet all his life, and all his poems are a conversation about life and death, about the value of every moment. By the way, when I was preparing this post, I came across the book “Eternal Moments”, compiled by the translator, Leningrad Spanish scholar Viktor Andreev. It is impossible to write better about the work of Jimenez than V. Andreev! Therefore, I simply quote and agree with every word))

“Poems from Jimenez’s first collections amaze the reader with the splendor and freshness of their colors, exquisite musicality, and the richness and elegance of their images. His poetry inextricably combines words, music, and painting. Jimenez fully felt the wonderful, magical power of his native language and eagerly listened to the sound of the word. He knew how to appreciate words - voluminous, multi-colored, full-sounding, and was fluent in the art of alliteration. In his youth, the poet was fond of painting, painted pictures, and this, apparently, helped him masterfully convey in words all his sensations of color. In addition, we should not forget: in Spanish poetry there is color symbolism. So, for example, white symbolizes sadness, red passion, black - death. Jimenez did not banish black from his palette (as the impressionist painters did), but he can certainly be called an impressionist of Spanish verse. Jimenez's landscapes are colorful, sounding, visible. And most importantly: his landscape is always animated. The poet was not even a pantheist, but a pagan - the unity of man and nature is so fully felt in his poems. In his “early” collection “Spring Ballads” Jimenez writes: “These ballads are somewhat superficial - they contain more music of the lips than music of the soul. “But without learning the “music of the lips,” the poet would not be able to capture the “music of the soul.”

In 1912, Jimenez met an American woman, Zenobia Camprubi. Zenobia Camprubi was a translator of Rabindranath Tagore (I highly recommend following the link!), Jimenez became imbued with the music of the lines of this Indian poet, at the same time he began to become interested in Japanese poetry. In terms of expressiveness, tanka and haiku become close to him. The requirements for poetic lines have changed.
Three years later, a book of romantic love poems dedicated to Zenobia Camprubi was published. In 1916, Jimenez came to her in the United States and they got married. Zenobia Camprubi became his beloved wife and reliable assistant.

Fate has taken my heart
and I put you in my chest...

Soon the next period of his creativity begins - the period of brevity and capacity of words. If “in the early poems he was abundantly generous, now he is extremely stingy. Everything is “external” there. Here - everything is “inside” the verse” (V. Andreev) Poetry becomes “pure” and stingy with emotions.
For the next 20 years, Jiménez worked as an editor for Spanish literary magazines. But the civil war in Spain forces the poet to leave for Puerto Rico. And although he leaves the country as an honorary cultural attache to the United States, deep down he understands that he is most likely parting with his homeland forever. This is what happens when Franco becomes the ruler of Spain, he and his wife still decide not to return, even though he takes the separation from his homeland hard. He teaches abroad and lectures at universities in the USA, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Argentina.

Joaquín Sorolla Retrato de Juan Ramón Jiménez

On October 25, 1956, Ramon Jimenez was awarded the Nobel Prize. And 2 days later his wife died.

The woman next to you -
music, flame, flower -

everything embraces peace.
If she's not with you,

go crazy without her
music, flame and light.

The 75-year-old poet was left alone... He bitterly experienced the loss of his beloved woman and his dearest person.

...I know that you have become light,
but I don’t know where you are,
and I don’t know where the light is.

Juan Ramon Jimenez died in the capital of Puerto Rico on May 29, 1958, in the same hospital in which his wife died of a heart attack.

The final path

...And I'll leave. And the bird will sing,
as she sang,
and there will be a garden, and a tree in the garden,
and my well is white.

At the end of the day, transparent and calm,
the sunset will die and they will remember me
the bells of the surrounding bell towers.

Over the years the street will be different;
those I loved will no longer exist,
and into my garden behind the whitewashed wall,
sad, only my shadow will peek...

And I'll leave; alone - without anyone,
no evenings, no morning drop
and my white well...

And the birds will sing and sing as they sang.

I bring to your attention a few more of my favorite poems.

Give me your hand, hope, let's go beyond the invisible ridge,
to where the stars shine in my soul, as in the sky.
Close my eyes with your other hand and otherworldly
Lead the path, blind from the snow of your palm.

But we will see such distances in the light of sadness:
under the full moon the heart of love has a blue mouth.
Bury me in me from the heat of the worldly desert
and pave the way into the depths, where the depths are blue, like the sky.

Translation by S. Goncharenko

Le vent de l'autre nuit
a jete has l’Amour…
P. Verlalne

In the evening the autumn wind
plucked the golden leaves.
How sad the trees are at night,
how long this night lasts!
Lifeless yellow moon
floats into black branches;
no crying, no kiss
in its deadened light.
I gently whisper to the trees:
do not cry for yellow leaves;
greenery will bloom in spring
on branches burned to ashes.
But the trees are sadly silent,
mourning my loss...
Don't cry for yellow leaves:
and the new ones will turn yellow!

The poignant twilight of late summer
and the house smells like mimosa in autumn...
and the memory buries without revealing the secret,
an unknown echo, already voiceless...

Along the white fences, like sunset spots,
the last roses are fading to purple,
and crying is heard - far and indistinct
...forgotten shadows are calling from the past...

And we imagine someone approaching,
and my heart suddenly shrinks involuntarily,
and the reflection looks at us in the mirror
eyes of strangers and full of pain...
* * *

Sunday evening in January
when there is not a soul in the house!
...Green-yellow sun
on the windows and on the pediment,
and in the room
and on roses...
And drops of light drip
into the air permeated with sadness...
Prolonged time in a clot
frozen
in an open volume...
Walks quietly on tiptoe
soul in an empty house,
fallen crumb of bread
looking at the palms.

Autumn song

By the sunset gold of the sky
the cranes are flying away... Where?
And the golden river carries away
gilded leaves... Where?
I'm leaving along the golden stubble,
I’m leaving and don’t know where to go?
Golden autumn, where to?
...Where, golden water?

Your hope, like
shiny decoration
from the heart, like from a case,
I carefully take it out;
and I walk with her in the garden,
and I nurse her like a daughter,
and caress me like a bride
... and again I leave one.

* * *
Marina

We sleep, and our body -
this is an anchor
soul abandoned
into the underwater twilight of life.

If only I craved roses!..
Only stars - and nothing more!..
But in every small phenomenon
I see what is visible through it.

A wonderful song based on the verses of J. Jimenez, performed by S. Surganova

Biography

Juan Ramon Jimenez (December 24, 1881, Moguer, Spain - May 29, 1958) is one of the best Spanish lyricists and poet. Winner of the 1956 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Juan Jimenez was born into a wealthy family and graduated from a Jesuit college. He studied at the University of Seville at the Faculty of Law, but did not graduate. I turned to poetry after being impressed by the work of Ruben Dario. In 1900, two books of poems by Juan Jimenez were published. In 1901 he attended lectures at the Free Pedagogical Institute.

After the death of his father, he was treated for a long time for severe depression in a French clinic, then continued treatment in Madrid. While traveling around the USA and France, Juan met the writer and translator Zenobia Camprubi, who later became his faithful assistant and wife.

At the very beginning of the Civil War, Juan and his wife emigrated to Cuba, then lived in the United States and in 1946 moved to Puerto Rico. The poet did not want to return to Spain because of his political convictions. The poet again had to undergo treatment for depression. Jimenez worked as a university teacher. In 1956, his wife died of cancer. Jimenez could not recover from the loss of his beloved wife, who died in 1956 from cancer, and two years later he died in the same clinic as his wife.

The creative heritage of Juan Ramon Jimenez includes about forty prose and poetry collections. The first translations of his poems into Russian were published in 1957 on the pages of the magazine “Foreign Literature”.

Essay on literature on the topic: Brief biography of Jimenez

Other writings:

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