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Vincente Aleixandre, winner of
the 1977 Nobel Prize for Literature, is
one of the last living poets of Spain's
Generation of 1927. These poets held a
special esteem for the baroque craftsman
of language, Luis de Gongora. The color,
extravagant metaphors, and elaborate
rhetorical devices of many of
Aleixandre's poems reflect this esteem.
Aleixandre has said that all his
poetry is "a longing for the light." His
poems present this longing in
surrealistic images of grief and
foreboding, then of a re-invigorated
life force, then of the complexities of
love and life.
His later books are among
Aleixandre's most important. In
selections from Poems of the
Consummation, published in 1968,
when he was 70 years old, Aleixandre
reviews the stages of human growth in
terse, simple lines. His later poetry
succinctly expresses a view of the
inevitability and pervasiveness of human
suffering that runs throughout his work.
Yet while Aleixandre makes us aware of
pain, he also conveys the possibility of
nobility.
This translation includes poems from
all Aleixandre's poetry collections--Surroudings,
Swords Like Lips, Destruction or Love,
The World By Itself, The Shadow of
Paradise, Final Birth, The Story of the
Heart, Various Poems, andPoems of
the Consummation.
Translated from the Spanish by Willis
Barnstone and David Garrison.
International Poetry Series, Byblos
Editions Volume VI. |
