José María Valverde
Encyclopedia
José María Valverde Pacheco (*Valencia de Alcántara
Valencia de Alcántara
Valencia de Alcántara is a Spanish town near the Portuguese border . It is located in Cáceres province.Nuestra Señora de Rocamador is the most important church...

 (Cáceres) January 26, 1926 - †Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

, June 6, 1996) poet, essayist, literary critic, historian of ideas and translator of Spanish.

Biography

He originated in Extremadura
Extremadura
Extremadura is an autonomous community of western Spain whose capital city is Mérida. Its component provinces are Cáceres and Badajoz. It is bordered by Portugal to the west...

 but spent his childhood and teenage years in Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

, where he studied and lived most of his life in Spain. While still a student at the Instituto Ramiro de Maeztu he published his first book: Man of God: Psalms, elegies and prayers, funded by the Institute. Although Damaso Alonso
Dámaso Alonso
Dámaso Alonso y Fernández de las Redondas was a Spanish poet, philologist and literary critic. Though a member of the Generation of '27, his best-known work dates from the 1940s onwards. -Early life and education:...

 tempted him to study philology, he enrolled in Philosophy and did a doctorate with a thesis on Wilhelm von Humboldt
Wilhelm von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand Freiherr von Humboldt was a German philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of Humboldt Universität. He is especially remembered as a linguist who made important contributions to the philosophy of language and to the theory and practice...

's philosophy of language . That same year he married Pilar Gefaell, with whom he had five children. He wrote in various magazines: La Estafeta Literaria, Escorial, Works and Days, Root, Ensign and Journal of Aesthetic Ideas, sometimes signed with the pseudonym Gambrinus. His production as a columnist was collected later in the Art of the Article (1949–1993) (Barcelona, 1994). He also published in poetic magazines such as Garcilaso, Espadaña, Proel. Between 1950 and 1955, Valverde lived in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

, where he was reader of Spanish at Sapienza University of Rome and at the Spanish Institute, and met Benedetto Croce
Benedetto Croce
Benedetto Croce was an Italian idealist philosopher, and occasionally also politician. He wrote on numerous topics, including philosophy, history, methodology of history writing and aesthetics, and was a prominent liberal, although he opposed laissez-faire free trade...

. At age 29 in 1956, he obtained the chair of Aesthetics at the University of Barcelona
University of Barcelona
The University of Barcelona is a public university located in the city of Barcelona, Catalonia in Spain. It is a member of the Coimbra Group, LERU, European University Association, Mediterranean Universities Union, International Research Universities Network and Vives Network...

. This setting and his experiences as a professor inspired "The conquest of the world" (1960). He participated in the literary magazines of the time and in numerous periodicals, which published much of his thinking. He himself said he was a poet rather than a philosopher, and not vice versa. He was devoted to the study of history of ideas. Collaborating with Martí de Riquer i Morera
Martí de Riquer i Morera
Martí de Riquer i Morera , 8th Count of Casa Dávalos and Grandee of Spain, PhD, is a Spanish Catalan Romance linguist, a recognised international authority in the field...

 in an ambitious History of literature (1957, greatly expanded later) and writing a Life and death of ideas: small stories thoughts (1981), he launched his award-winning translations of classics of literature in English and German. With a clear social and political commitment, Christian and anti-Franco, he supported the popular cause in Central America (Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

, the Sandinistas: relating to exiled Nicaraguan
Nicaraguan
Nicaraguans are people inhabiting in, originating or having significant heritage from Nicaragua. Most Nicaraguans live in Nicaragua, although there is also a significant Nicaraguan diaspora, particularly in Costa Rica and the United States with smaller communities in other countries around the world...

 poets Julio Ycaza, Luis Rocha and Fernando Silva.) For political reasons (solidarity with teachers Enrique Tierno Galván, José Luis Aranguren and Agustin Garcia Calvo
Agustin Garcia Calvo
Agustín García Calvo is a Spanish philologist, philosopher, poet and playwright.- Biography :Agustín García Calvo read Classical Philology at Salamanca University, being one of the first students of the eminent Spanish philologist Antonio Tovar. He concluded his doctoral dissertation on Ancient...

 who were expelled from the University of Madrid by Franco), he resigned his professorship in 1964 and went into exile. He is credited with the now famous phrase, written on the blackboard in farewell: "Nulla sine aesthetica ethica. Ergo apaga y vámonos." He went to the United States, where he was professor of Hispanic and comparative literature (University of Virginia, McMaster) and then to Canada where he was a professor of Spanish literature at Trent University
Trent University
Trent University is a liberal arts and science-oriented institution located along the Otonabee River in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada.The enabling legislation is the Trent University Act, 1962-63. The University was founded through the efforts of a citizens' committee interested in creating a...

. This experience is part of his poem "The Tower of Babel falls on the poet":


"Mature in age and poetry

you moved to a foreign speaking country,

and it is not living. What they say here,

ia easy as breathing, easy, rich, accurate,

you're trying to mimic them with effort,

and hear your voice, ridiculous and strange,

fail as a child always right here,

end up saying something not yours.

Now I am alien to the landscape:

do not talk to you: to the bird and the tree

and the river spared you the legends

wrap their names here-in you tags.

In vain you smile to others

polite, and even friends, cheering

from the language in which they are the masters:

fails to love them: you forget:

the depths of your spirit does not beat

does not live in the language that is your history."

(Ser de palabra, 1973).


Before returning to Spain, he published in 1971 Teachings of Age (Poetry 1945-1970), a volume collecting the first six books of poems. He returned to Spain and his professorship in 1975 (according to some), in 1977 according to others. The editorial Trotta in Madrid has undertaken the publication of his Complete Works, which led to his writing four volumes: the first of Poetry (1998), the second and third of aesthetics and literary theory, and the fourth in the history of ideas. He died in Barcelona in 1996, at seventy years of a terminal illness, while devoting his energies to investigate the latest work of Kierkegaard.

Work

In his critical work is worth mentioning Studies on the poetic word (1952), Humboldt and the philosophy of language (1955), History of literature (1957), Letters to a skeptical priest in modern art (1959), Life and death of ideas: small stories thoughts (1981), Aesthetic Dictionary or monographs on Azorín (1971), Antonio Machado
Antonio Machado
Antonio Cipriano José María y Francisco de Santa Ana Machado y Ruiz, known as Antonio Machado was a Spanish poet and one of the leading figures of the Spanish literary movement known as the Generation of '98....

 (1975), James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

 (1978 and 1982), or Nietzsche.

Of importance are his German translations (Hölderlin, Rilke, Goethe, Novalis
Novalis
Novalis was the pseudonym of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg , an author and philosopher of early German Romanticism.-Biography:...

, Brecht
Brecht
Brecht is a municipality located in the Belgian province of Antwerp. The municipality comprises the towns of Brecht proper, Sint-Job-in't-Goor and Sint-Lenaarts. On January 1, 2006 Brecht had a total population of 26,464...

, Christian Morgenstern
Christian Morgenstern
Christian Otto Josef Wolfgang Morgenstern was a German author and poet from Munich. Morgenstern married Margareta Gosebruch von Liechtenstern on March 7, 1910...

, Hans Urs von Balthasar
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Hans Urs von Balthasar was a Swiss theologian and priest who was nominated to be a cardinal of the Catholic Church...

) and English (theater: complete Shakespeare prose, likewise those of Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

, T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...

, Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman
Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...

, Herman Melville
Herman Melville
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....

, Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...

, Thomas Merton
Thomas Merton
Thomas Merton, O.C.S.O. was a 20th century Anglo-American Catholic writer and mystic. A Trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani, Kentucky, he was a poet, social activist, and student of comparative religion...

, Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

, Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life...

, or Joyce's Ulysses (novel)
Ulysses (novel)
Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...

, for which he received the Translation Prize Fray Luis de León, 1977). In 1960 he received the same award for a collection of Rainer Maria Rilke
Rainer Maria Rilke
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke , better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian–Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most significant poets in the German language...

. In 1990 he was also awarded National Award for the work of a translator. Also translated some poems of Constantine Cavafy from Modern Greek, the New Testament from Ancient Greek, and Romano Guardini fron Italian.

He prepared, in addition, critical editions of Antonio Machado, one of his favorite authors (New Songs, In an apocryphal songbook and Juan de Mairena) and Azorín (Forgotten Items and Peoples), anthologies of general Spanish and Latin American poetry and specially Luis Felipe Vivanco, Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo was a Spanish essayist, novelist, poet, playwright and philosopher.-Biography:...

 and Ernesto Cardenal
Ernesto Cardenal
Reverend Father Ernesto Cardenal Martínez is a Nicaraguan Catholic priest and was one of the most famous liberation theologians of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, a party he has since left. From 1979 to 1987 he served as Nicaragua's first culture minister. He is also famous as a poet...

. The problems of contemporary art in his book resonated in Letters to a skeptical priest in modern art (1959).

He was especially concerned with a particular stream of existentialism
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...

: Christian man in what he called, with Damaso Alonso
Dámaso Alonso
Dámaso Alonso y Fernández de las Redondas was a Spanish poet, philologist and literary critic. Though a member of the Generation of '27, his best-known work dates from the 1940s onwards. -Early life and education:...

 in the prologue to a book of his, uprooted poetry. His early poems have a religious theme. Then he introduced new issues in his poetry, more human, closer to Marxist approaches. It has been said that he was a Christian Marxist, with an approach close to the thesis Liberation Theology
Liberation theology
Liberation theology is a Christian movement in political theology which interprets the teachings of Jesus Christ in terms of a liberation from unjust economic, political, or social conditions...

. His work is characterized by a marked humanism with intimate touches, making him one of the brightest figures of Spanish poetry scene.

A poet of organic books, where the whole is greater than the sum of the constituent poems, his style is characterized by simplicity and expressive language (almost conversational), always looking for openness, purity and precision, without unnecessary rhetoric, in the tradition of Antonio Machado
Antonio Machado
Antonio Cipriano José María y Francisco de Santa Ana Machado y Ruiz, known as Antonio Machado was a Spanish poet and one of the leading figures of the Spanish literary movement known as the Generation of '98....

. That desire led him to remove numerous poems from his latest compilation, making it successively smaller. Some of this can be seen in his famous poem about the hanged François Villon
François Villon
François Villon was a French poet, thief, and vagabond. He is perhaps best known for his Testaments and his Ballade des Pendus, written while in prison...

. He preferred to express himself in Arte Mayor and the alexandrine
Alexandrine
An alexandrine is a line of poetic meter comprising 12 syllables. Alexandrines are common in the German literature of the Baroque period and in French poetry of the early modern and modern periods. Drama in English often used alexandrines before Marlowe and Shakespeare, by whom it was supplanted...

.

He received inter alia, the National Poetry Award in 1949, the Critics Award in 1962 and the Ciutat de Barcelona Prize for his Collected poems 1945-1990. In poetry, his books include Hombre de Dios in 1945, La espera in 1949,
Versos del domingo in 1954, Voces y acompañamientos para San Mateo in 1959, La conquista de este mundo in 1960, Años inciertos in 1970, and Ser de palabra in 1976.

Complete Works

Editorial Trotta has published Complete Works:
  • Poesía {ISBN 978-84-8164-217-9 / ISBN 978-84-8164-251-3}
  • Interlocutores {ISBN 978-84-8164-271-1 / ISBN 978-84-8164-252-0}
  • Escenarios. Estética y teoría literaria {ISBN 978-84-8164-356-5}
  • Historia de las mentalidades {ISBN 978-84-8164-384-8}

Poetry

  • Hombre de Dios. Salmos, elegías y oraciones, 1945.
  • La espera, 1949.
  • Versos del domingo, 1954.
  • Voces y acompañamientos para San Mateo, 1959.
  • La conquista de este mundo, 1960.
  • Años inciertos, 1970.
  • Ser de palabra, 1976.
  • Enseñanzas de la edad. Poesía 1945-1970 (1971)
  • Poesías reunidas 1945-1990

Criticism

  • Estudio sobre la palabra poética (1952)
  • Vida y muerte de las ideas (1981)
  • Breve historia y antología de la estética, Barcelona: Ariel, 1987.
  • Historia de la literatura universal (tres volúmenes, en 1956; ampliada a diez en 1986), en colaboración con Martín de Riquer
  • Nietzsche, de filólogo a Anticristo (1993)
  • Diccionario de Historia, Barcelona: Planeta, 1995.
  • Cartas a un cura escéptico en materia de arte moderno, Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1959.
  • Azorín, Barcelona: Planeta, 1971.
  • Antonio Machado, Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1975.
  • Conocer Joyce y su obra, 1978.
  • Breve historia de la literatura española, Madrid: Guadarrama, 1980.
  • Joyce, Barcelona, 1982.
  • Movimientos literarios, 1981.
  • La mente del siglo XX, 1982.
  • La literatura: Qué era y qué es. Barcelona: Montesinos, 1982.
  • El arte del artículo (1949–1993). Barcelona, 1994.
  • Valverde, José María, Antonio Colinas, Rafael Argullol, Antoni Marí and Jaime Siles. Diálogos sobre poesía española. Frankfurt and Madrid: Vervuert Verlag Iberoamericana, 1994.

Translations and editing

  • Thomas Merton. Poems. Barcelona: Rialp, 1953.
  • Rainer Maria Rilke. Fifty poems. Madrid: Agora, 1954.
  • Hans Urs von Balthasar. Theology of history. Madrid: Guadarrama, 1959.
  • Charles Dickens. The Pickwick Papers. Barcelona: Planeta, 1963.
  • Doris Lessing. Singing Grass. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1964.
  • Rainer Maria Rilke. Works. Barcelona: Plaza & Janes, 1967.
  • John Updike. Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1967.
  • William Shakespeare. Full Theatre. Barcelona: Planeta, 1967-1968. 2 vol. (Multiple editions of single works.)
  • Saul Bellow. Carpe diem: Take the flower of the day. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1968.
  • Raymond Cartier. The Second World War. Paris / Barcelona: Larousse / Planeta, 1968. 2. Nd ed.
  • Herman Melville. Works. Barcelona: Planeta, 1968.
  • Antonio Machado. New songs. In an apocryphal songbook. Madrid: Castalia, 1971.
  • Antonio Machado. Juan de Mairena: sentences, jokes, sketches and apocryphal memories of a teacher. Madrid: Castalia, 1972.
  • Azorín. Articles forgotten José Martínez Ruiz: 1894-1904. Barcelona: Narcea, 1972.
  • Alexandr Alexandrovich Fadéiev and Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov. Soviet Narrative. Barcelona: Planeta, 1973. (In collaboration with Augusto Vidal.)
  • Christian Morgenstern. Songs from the gallows. Madrid: Visor, 1976.
  • James Joyce. Ulysses. Barcelona: Lumen, 1976.
  • Azorín. Peoples, and other tragic Andalucía (1904–1905). Madrid: Castalia, 1978.
  • Henry James. The Aspern Papers and Other Stories. Barcelona: Planeta, 1978.
  • Jane Austen. Emma. Barcelona: Lumen, 1978.
  • Thomas Stearns Eliot. Collected poems, 1909-1962. Madrid: Alianza, 1978.
  • James Joyce. Stephen Hero. Barcelona: Lumen, 1978.
  • Herman Melville. Moby Dick. Barcelona: Bruguera, 1979.
  • Gabriel Ferrater. Women and days. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1979. (In collaboration with Pere Gimferrer and José Agustín Goytisolo)
  • Arthur Conan Doyle. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Barcelona: Bruguera, 1980. (In collaboration with Maria Campuzano.)
  • Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Splendor. Barcelona: Planeta, 1980.
  • Rainer Maria Rilke. Duino Elegies. Barcelona: Lumen, 1980.
  • William Faulkner. The course, the people, the wilderness. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1980.
  • William Faulkner. In this earth and beyond. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1981.
  • Johann Wolfgang Goethe. The sufferings of Young Werther. Barcelona: Planeta, 1981.
  • Pedro Calderon de la Barca. Life is a Dream: drama and morality play. Barcelona: Planeta, 1981.
  • Alain Fournier. Le Grand Meaulnes. Barcelona: Bruguera, 1983. (In collaboration with Maria Campuzano.)
  • Friedrich Hölderlin. Poems. Barcelona: Icaria, 1983.
  • Rainer Maria Rilke. Letters to a Young Poet. Madrid: Alianza, 1984.
  • Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Elective Affinities. Barcelona: Icaria, 1984.
  • Novalis. Hymns to the night. Barcelona: Icaria, 1985.
  • Hans Urs von Balthasar. The Christian and anxiety. Barcelona: Caparros, 1988.
  • Azorín. Anarchist Articles. Barcelona: Lumen, 1992.
  • William Faulkner. These thirteen. Pamplona: Hierbaola, 1994.
  • Romano Guardini. Works. Madrid: Christianity, s.f.

External links

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