The spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez Mantecón He was born in Moguer, Andalusia, on December 24, 1881. After his initial training in a Jesuit school, he was sent to study Law in Seville; However, he chose to study literature, especially the romantic poets.
In 1900 Jimenez he moved to Madrid, carrying a wide collection of his first poems, finally published under the delicate titles Nymphaeas Y Souls of Violet. At this time the author suffered a nervous breakdown, spending several months in clinics in France and Madrid. Despite his condition, Jimenez helped found and direct the literary magazine Helios and continued writing poetry. His expressive titles accurately indicate the type of poetry he wrote: Sad arias (1903), Distant gardens (1905), Pastoral (1905).
In 1905 Jimenez He returned to Moguer and spent 6 quiet years writing the same type of poetry: Elejlas, Spring ballads, The sonorous loneliness. Essentially this poetry is impressionistic, with a stylized backdrop in a pastel-colored nature (pink, white, mauve). The tone is generally of a languid melancholy; the form is elegant, aristocratic, and musical. Even at this stage, however, the images of Jimenez they focused on the sublimation of human emotions. In his early maturity, this tendency towards sublimation becomes more pronounced, especially in the book Spiritual Sonnets (1915).
In 1916 he traveled to the United States and married Zenobia Camprubí. On this trip, the poet composed his important book Diary of a newly married poet, in the symbolist way.
Back in Madrid, in the following years, Jimenez he gradually withdrew from the real world to focus on his poetry. He gave life to four main books: Eternities (1917), Stone and Sky (1918), Poetry (1923) and Beauty (1923). At that time he was writing pure poetry with an intellectual tone, reduced to essential symbols and stripped of all anecdotes or verbal music.
With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Jimenez (He was never interested in politics) He returned to the United States and began a belated career in teaching and teaching for short periods. Although his poetic creation slowed down somewhat in the 1930s, in the 1940s he enjoyed a final burst of inspiration.
As a result of a boat trip to Argentina, Jiménez, again moved by the symbolism of the sea, wrote what he considered his final major work, Desiring and desiring God (1949). This book projects the resolution of the issues that Jimenez he had been chasing his entire career. His first period was aesthetic, his second intellectual; in his final, more religious period, he expressed his neo-mystical union with his God both “desired and desiring“In all these periods the poet sought the perfection of his soul, what he called”.a just and universal unique awareness of beauty. “
Jimenez he also wrote significant prose in his long career. In 1917 he published Platero and me, a poetic and melancholic book, which has become a classic, especially among children. He also wrote Spaniards of Three WorldsShort and sometimes scathing portraits of his contemporaries.
In 1956, just as his beloved Zenobia was dying, Jimenez received the Nobel Prize in Literature for his lyrical poetry.
He died in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on May 29, 1958.