León de Greiff
Encyclopedia
Francisco de Asís León Bogislao de Greiff Haeusler (July 22, 1895 – July 11, 1976), was a Colombian
poet of the 20th century he is notable for his stylistic innovations and eclectic deliberate use of obscure lexicon. Best known simply as León de Greiff, he often used different pen names of which the most popular were Leo le Gris and Gaspar de Nuit. De Greiff was one of the founders of Los Panidas, a literary and artistic group in 1915 in the city of Medellín
that became the precursor of the modernismo
movement in Colombia.
ancestry and was the grandson of Karl Sigismund Fromholt von Greiff, a Swedish engineer and geographer who moved to Colombia in 1825 and whose family had played an active role in the abdication of King Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden
. De Greiff's mother was of German
descent, as she was the daughter of Heinrich Häusler, a German mechanic and cabinetmaker who emigrated to Colombia in 1839. De Greiff was also the great-grandson of Francisco Antonio Obregón Muñoz, who had been Governor of Antioquia between 1836 and 1841. He was baptized on August 11, 1895 at the Church Parish of Veracruz by Fr. Pedro Alejandrino Zuluaga with the names Francisco de Asís, in honour of Saint Francis of Assisi, and León, in honour of Leo Tolstoy
. His godparents were his paternal aunt Rosa Emma de Greiff Obregón and her husband Luis Vásquez Barrientos. Albeit his mixed Scandinavian
-Germanic
-Spanish-Criollo
heritage, de Greiff's family had a strong Colombian identity
, and were part of standing mainstream Colombian society, which influenced many of his later works. He had four siblings, Leticia, Laura, Otto, and Olaf, and a half brother, Luis Eduardo.
On July 23, 1927 de Greiff married María Teresa Matilde Bernal Nicholls, a Colombian of English
descent whom he met through his sister Leticia, in a Roman Catholic ceremony in the Cathedral of Villanueva officiated by fr. Bernardo Jaramillo Arango a mutual friend of both families. Together they had four children: Astrid, an architect; Boris
, a renowned chess player
; Hjalmar, a cellist and editor; and Axel an architect who resettled in Sweden.
of the University of Antioquia
in Medellín and went on to study engineering
at the School of Mines of the University of Antioquia. In 1913 the administration expelled him along with other students for claims of being "subversive and disruptive" as a result of the political turmoil of the times and his leftist tendencies and associations. In 1914 he traveled to Bogotá as secretary ad hoc
to General Rafael Uribe Uribe
, a personal friend of his father. Once in Bogotá, he attended the Free University of Colombia
to study Law
, but did not finish his studies, choosing rather to drop out of school and focus on his writings and poetry. As he put it, his decision to move to Bogotá was not to become a lawyer: "It was rather to get to know Bogotá.
s that gathered in the local cafés of the city, most prominently the ones that met in the café of the bookstore El Globo. It was there that he became acquainted with the underground cultural movement of his time and began developing and experimenting the style of poetry that would define him later on.
A group of 13 young bohemian artist and writers that formed during that time became known as los Panidas, named so after the god Pan, and included future prominent figures in the Literature of Colombia
such as de Greiff and Fernando González
. The panidas were influenced by the modernist movement in literature
, which in Latin America became known as modernismo
. This movement aimed to reclaim the already established European standards of art and literature and give it a modern and local character; the panidas thus became the precursors of modernism in Colombia, transforming the foreign and strange into local and tangent. De Greiff often exposed Colombian audiences this way, for example to the mystic land of Vikings and fjords by giving it a familiar antioqueño feel, a combination of the two worlds that were part of de Greiff’s life He also became known for his eclectic use of the language often using a lexicon so unfamiliar to most Spanish speaking audiences of that time that it would sound as if it were a foreign language, and introduced references to obscure or unknown authors and works of art and literature that were not part of standard curricula. Also present in de Greiff’s and the panida’s work was the influence of symbolism
, and more significant that of parnassiastic thought, of creating poetry in its purest form to more closely resemble art. De Greiff described the purpose of the panidas in these words:
The culmination of this artistic group was the publication of a quincenal literary magazine
called Panida in February 1915. This short lived publication of only ten issues was illustrated by Ricardo Rendón first directed by de Greiff, and later by Félix Mejía Arango. De Greiff had its works published for the first time in this magazine under the nom de plume Leo le Gris, the first one being his Ballad of the Mad Owls.
No sooner had the magazine been published than the Roman Catholic Church in Colombia banned it outright for fear of corrupting the youth with its pernicious and extravagant content. The public reception was not welcoming either, the writing style of de Greiff and the other panidas was at the vanguard of its time, but too far-off from what mundane Colombian society was familiar with. It did however earn the praise and support of prominent Medellín literati such as writer Tomás Carrasquilla
and journalist Fidel Cano Gutiérrez
.
Alas the magazine went off circulation in June mostly due to the dispersion of the panidas, some included de Greiff moved to Bogotá, most went into business leaving their artistic aspirations behind, and some chose the nihilist path of suicide. In 1925, when he published his first book Tergiversaciones, de Greiff dedicated it to the memory of "The 13 Panidas".
and Germán Arciniegas
among others as regular contributors to the magazine. Los Nuevos was of political, artistic, literary and social content, and aimed to challenge the remnants of exhausted romanticist
writings, regionalist
politics, and conservative society. This movement followed the path that the panidas had begun in Medellín and that was a representation of modernismo in Colombia much like the ultraist movement
in Spain.
Influenced by Vicente Huidobro
, de Greiff followed creacionismo
s standards of poetry, reinventing himself to make each poem unique, translatable, and truly poetic. His poetry is sometimes criticized as standoffish and intricate, but it is regardless true to the art.
loosely refers to a bulky jumbled collection of writings that could be loosely interpreted as a tome
. The name was both an example of de Greiff's masterful use of language and his humbleness towards his work and himself. His eighth and last mamotreto would be Nova et Vetera, published a year before his death, and was a collection of new and old found poems of his from even before Panida.
until 1925. He later worked as a statistician
from February 16, 1926 as Manager of Bolombolo-La Pintada Railway Construction Project until June 11, 1927, when he becomes Chief Statistician for the Departmental Directorate of Roads of Antioquia until June 13, 1931, when he moved to Bogotá and becomes Chief Statistician for National Railways on June 15 until January 27, 1945.
From July 1, 1945 to February 28, 1950 he works for the Ministry of National Education
working in different posts from Deputy Director of Secondary Education
, and Chief of Scholarships, and Director of Cultural Promotion and Fine Arts. As part of an official commission of the Ministry, de Greiff travelled to Mexico City
to repatriate the ashes of the poet Porfirio Barba-Jacob
; he would again travel outside the country in 1947, when he travels to Lima
, Peru
as Delegate of the Ministry of National Education to the II Bolivarian Games
.
Although de Greiff studied poetry, he had also been influenced by music as a child, and musical qualities guided his both his poetry prose. Even though he did not follow the same musical path as his brother Otto, his knowledge and love of music drove him to seek and become Professor of Music History
at the Conservatory
of the National University of Colombia
on September 1, 1946. De Greiff had previously taught at the University from March 1940 to January 1, 1943 as Professor of Literature and Redaction at the Faculty of Engineering.
In his role as Director of Cultural Promotion and Fine Arts he co-founds in 1949 with a large group of intellectuals and artists that included Alfonso López Michelsen
, Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo
and Baldomero Sanín Cano
among others, the Colombo-Soviet Cultural Institute with the aim of improving friendship and cultural relations with the Soviet Socialist Republic. That same year on November 21 de Greiff was arrested along with Diego Montaña Cuéllar, Alejandro Vallejo, and Jorge Zalamea
for “political reasons” that were never explained. De Greiff had been victim of the political and violent turmoil that had been engulfing the country known as La Violencia
and his left-leaning tendencies and relations made him a target of the newly elected conservative Government. He was released on December 6; shortly after, he presented his letters of resignation to the Ministry, and steps down as Director of Cultural Promotion and Fine Arts and as Professor at the National University on March and May 1950 respectively.
Feeling betrayed and persecuted by the government, he chooses to best serve the nation as a check on the government, this time as a tax auditor for the independent government agency of the Office of the Comptroller General of Colombia
on June 1, 1950 until February 25, 1957. He would return to work at the Office of the Comptroller for a short time in 1959 from January 20 to May 25.
held from the 16th to the 22nd of July in 1958 in Stockholm
. De Greiff who had not been an open communist was nevertheless of leftist tendencies and fit right in with the crowd, and after the summit he traveled to, at the invitation of the respective governments, the Soviet Union
, the People’s Republic of China, East Germany, Austria
, the SFR Yugoslavia, and France
. The trip lasted a total of 115 days and it would mark him politically and personally as a friend and ally of the communists.
In 1958, upon his return to Colombia and after pressure from Juan Lozano y Lozano, President Alberto Lleras Camargo
appointed de Greiff as First Secretary to the Colombian Embassy in Sweden, a post he held from June 16, 1959 to September 30, 1963. Lozano y Lozano had originally proposed de Greiff assume the post of Colombian Ambassador to Sweden, but President Lleras Camargo resisted this, considering him to be too “bohemian
” to represent the nation in that post. This bohemian and independent quality put him at odds with the appointed ambassador while de Greiff was serving as secretary, especially for his indiscretions regarding a relationship he had with the Chinese Embassy, which he frequented in various occasions at their invitation. This was a breach of protocol as Bogotá did not maintain diplomatic relations with Beijing at that time. After the ambassador left his post, de Greiff became the Chargés d’affaires ad interim.
While in Sweden, de Greiff gained fame and popularity and even maintained a friendship with His Majesty King Gustaf VI Adolf, who in 1964 awarded him the Order of the Polar Star
in the grade of Knight
.
In 1975 in recognition of his diplomatic work de Greiff was awarded the Order of San Carlos in the grade of Grand Officer by the Government of Colombia.
In 1965 de Greiff was awarded the Order of Boyaca with the rank of Commander, one of Colombia's highest honours. In 1974 he was made member correspondiente of the Academia Colombiana de la Lengua
, and in 1974 honorary member of the Ministry of Culture
’s Instituto Caro Y Cuervo. He also received various tributes including one from the Colombo-Argentenian Cultural Institute in 1955, (es:Instituto Cultural Colombo-Argentino), one from the National College of Journalists in 1961 (es: Colegio Nacional de Periodistas) presented by Gabriel García Márquez
, an honoris causa doctorate
in literature from the University of Valle
on July 16, 1975, and in that same year another tribute from the National Association of Financial Institutions (es: Asociación Nacional de Instituciones Financieras, ANIF), presented to him by its then president Belisario Betancur
. De Greiff traveled abroad, keeping with his cultural ambitions, and was part of the over 180 guest writers from 52 nations for the International Writer's Meeting organized by a West German writer's committee headed by Anna Seghers
and Arnold Zweig
in Berlin
and Weimar
. He also took part in the 1968 Cultural Congress of La Havana, where he was a judge in the Poetry Prize competition, as well as the 1970 Iberoamerican Community of Writers summit in Caracas
, the Second Latin American Conference on Cultural Development and University Expansion in Mexico in 1972, and was part of the jury for the Quimantú (El Sol del Saber) Prize of Chile
.
In Venezuela, arquitect Carlos Celis Cepero created in his honour the León de Greiff Hispanic-American Prize of Poetry (es: Premio Hispanoamericano de Poesía León de Greiff) which was first awarded on May 5, 1956 to the Venezuelan poet Juan Manuel González.
Upon his return to private life in Colombia, he remained involved with international political work as well. In 1967 he was elected President of the Colombo-Czechoslovak
Friendship Association, and in 1971 elected President of the Colombo-Cuban Friendship Association (his son Axel would follow his father's steps by being elected President of the Swedish–Cuban Association), and was even invited to the inauguration of Mexican President Luis Echeverría Álvarez in 1970, and in 1972 was invited to Costa Rica
by its President José Figueres Ferrer
.
León de Greiff died at the age 80 in the early hours of Sunday July 11, 1976 in his home in Bogotá. Shortly after his passing, the National University renamed its Central Auditorium, now a National Monument
and home of the Bogota Philharmonic
in his name, and in 2007 when a new public library
-park
was built, the city choose to name it after de Greiff to preserve his memory and to promote culture and education in the city.
Colombian people
Colombian people are from a multiethnic Spanish speaking nation in South America called Colombia. Colombians are predominantly Roman Catholic and are a mixture of Europeans, Africans, and Amerindians.-Demography:...
poet of the 20th century he is notable for his stylistic innovations and eclectic deliberate use of obscure lexicon. Best known simply as León de Greiff, he often used different pen names of which the most popular were Leo le Gris and Gaspar de Nuit. De Greiff was one of the founders of Los Panidas, a literary and artistic group in 1915 in the city of Medellín
Medellín
Medellín , officially the Municipio de Medellín or Municipality of Medellín, is the second largest city in Colombia. It is in the Aburrá Valley, one of the more northerly of the Andes in South America. It has a population of 2.3 million...
that became the precursor of the modernismo
Modernismo
Modernismo is Spanish for modernism, however the term Modernism also indicates a more specific art movement:* Modernismo refers to a Spanish-American literary movement, best exemplified by Rubén Darío...
movement in Colombia.
Family and background
De Greiff was born on July 22, 1895 in the city of Medellín, Colombia, to Luis de Greiff Obregón and Amalia Haeusler Rincón. His father was of SwedishSwedes
Swedes are a Scandinavian nation and ethnic group native to Sweden, mostly inhabiting Sweden and the other Nordic countries, with descendants living in a number of countries.-Etymology:...
ancestry and was the grandson of Karl Sigismund Fromholt von Greiff, a Swedish engineer and geographer who moved to Colombia in 1825 and whose family had played an active role in the abdication of King Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden
Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden
Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden also Gustav Adolph was King of Sweden from 1792 until his abdication in 1809. He was the son of Gustav III of Sweden and his queen consort Sophia Magdalena, eldest daughter of Frederick V of Denmark and his first wife Louise of Great Britain. He was the last Swedish...
. De Greiff's mother was of German
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
descent, as she was the daughter of Heinrich Häusler, a German mechanic and cabinetmaker who emigrated to Colombia in 1839. De Greiff was also the great-grandson of Francisco Antonio Obregón Muñoz, who had been Governor of Antioquia between 1836 and 1841. He was baptized on August 11, 1895 at the Church Parish of Veracruz by Fr. Pedro Alejandrino Zuluaga with the names Francisco de Asís, in honour of Saint Francis of Assisi, and León, in honour of Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
. His godparents were his paternal aunt Rosa Emma de Greiff Obregón and her husband Luis Vásquez Barrientos. Albeit his mixed Scandinavian
Scandinavians
Scandinavians are a group of Germanic peoples, inhabiting Scandinavia and to a lesser extent countries associated with Scandinavia, and speaking Scandinavian languages. The group includes Danes, Norwegians and Swedes, and additionally the descendants of Scandinavian settlers such as the Icelandic...
-Germanic
Germanic peoples
The Germanic peoples are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group of Northern European origin, identified by their use of the Indo-European Germanic languages which diversified out of Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age.Originating about 1800 BCE from the Corded Ware Culture on the North...
-Spanish-Criollo
Criollo people
The Criollo class ranked below that of the Iberian Peninsulares, the high-born permanent residence colonists born in Spain. But Criollos were higher status/rank than all other castes—people of mixed descent, Amerindians, and enslaved Africans...
heritage, de Greiff's family had a strong Colombian identity
National identity
National identity is the person's identity and sense of belonging to one state or to one nation, a feeling one shares with a group of people, regardless of one's citizenship status....
, and were part of standing mainstream Colombian society, which influenced many of his later works. He had four siblings, Leticia, Laura, Otto, and Olaf, and a half brother, Luis Eduardo.
On July 23, 1927 de Greiff married María Teresa Matilde Bernal Nicholls, a Colombian of English
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
descent whom he met through his sister Leticia, in a Roman Catholic ceremony in the Cathedral of Villanueva officiated by fr. Bernardo Jaramillo Arango a mutual friend of both families. Together they had four children: Astrid, an architect; Boris
Boris de Greiff
Boris de Greiff Bernal was a Colombian chess master and writer, born in Medellín and son of the Colombian poet León de Greiff....
, a renowned chess player
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
; Hjalmar, a cellist and editor; and Axel an architect who resettled in Sweden.
Education
He was educated at the LyceumLyceum
The lyceum is a category of educational institution defined within the education system of many countries, mainly in Europe. The definition varies between countries; usually it is a type of secondary school.-History:...
of the University of Antioquia
University of Antioquia
The University of Antioquia , also called UdeA, is a public, departmental, coeducational, research university based primarily in the city of Medellín, Antioquía, Colombia. It is the largest higher education institution by student population in the northwest of the country, and the second in...
in Medellín and went on to study engineering
Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...
at the School of Mines of the University of Antioquia. In 1913 the administration expelled him along with other students for claims of being "subversive and disruptive" as a result of the political turmoil of the times and his leftist tendencies and associations. In 1914 he traveled to Bogotá as secretary ad hoc
Ad hoc
Ad hoc is a Latin phrase meaning "for this". It generally signifies a solution designed for a specific problem or task, non-generalizable, and not intended to be able to be adapted to other purposes. Compare A priori....
to General Rafael Uribe Uribe
Rafael Uribe Uribe
Rafael Uribe Uribe was a Colombian lawyer, journalist, and general in the liberal party rebel army.-Early years:...
, a personal friend of his father. Once in Bogotá, he attended the Free University of Colombia
Free University of Colombia
Universidad Libre is a university in Colombia initially founded under the name of Universidad Republicana in Bogota during the 19th Century. Since the original intention of this program was to offer the space for unbiased learning during a radical political period in the country, the proper...
to study Law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
, but did not finish his studies, choosing rather to drop out of school and focus on his writings and poetry. As he put it, his decision to move to Bogotá was not to become a lawyer: "It was rather to get to know Bogotá.
As a poet
When de Greiff returned to Medellín in 1914, he joined the tertuliaTertulia
A tertulia is a social gathering with literary or artistic overtones, especially in Iberia or Latin America. The word is originally Spanish, and has only moderate currency in English, in describing Latin cultural contexts....
s that gathered in the local cafés of the city, most prominently the ones that met in the café of the bookstore El Globo. It was there that he became acquainted with the underground cultural movement of his time and began developing and experimenting the style of poetry that would define him later on.
Musicians, rhapsodists, prosodians, poets, poets, poets, painters, cartoonists, erudites, thorough aesthetes; Romanticists or classicists and decadents, "if you will" but yes, madmen and artists the Panidas were we thirteen! |
| León de Greiff, |
A group of 13 young bohemian artist and writers that formed during that time became known as los Panidas, named so after the god Pan, and included future prominent figures in the Literature of Colombia
Literature of Colombia
Colombian literature, as an expression of the Culture of Colombia, is heterogeneous, tropical and diverse due to the struggle between the Spanish, African and Native American heritages.-Colonial literature:...
such as de Greiff and Fernando González
Fernando González (writer)
Fernando González Ochoa , was a Colombian writer and existentialist philosopher known as "el filósofo de Otraparte" . He wrote about sociology, history, art, moral, economy, epistemology and theology in a magisterial and creative way, using different genres of literature...
. The panidas were influenced by the modernist movement in literature
Modernist literature
Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms...
, which in Latin America became known as modernismo
Modernismo
Modernismo is Spanish for modernism, however the term Modernism also indicates a more specific art movement:* Modernismo refers to a Spanish-American literary movement, best exemplified by Rubén Darío...
. This movement aimed to reclaim the already established European standards of art and literature and give it a modern and local character; the panidas thus became the precursors of modernism in Colombia, transforming the foreign and strange into local and tangent. De Greiff often exposed Colombian audiences this way, for example to the mystic land of Vikings and fjords by giving it a familiar antioqueño feel, a combination of the two worlds that were part of de Greiff’s life He also became known for his eclectic use of the language often using a lexicon so unfamiliar to most Spanish speaking audiences of that time that it would sound as if it were a foreign language, and introduced references to obscure or unknown authors and works of art and literature that were not part of standard curricula. Also present in de Greiff’s and the panida’s work was the influence of symbolism
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
, and more significant that of parnassiastic thought, of creating poetry in its purest form to more closely resemble art. De Greiff described the purpose of the panidas in these words:
The culmination of this artistic group was the publication of a quincenal literary magazine
Literary magazine
A literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry and essays along with literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews and letters...
called Panida in February 1915. This short lived publication of only ten issues was illustrated by Ricardo Rendón first directed by de Greiff, and later by Félix Mejía Arango. De Greiff had its works published for the first time in this magazine under the nom de plume Leo le Gris, the first one being his Ballad of the Mad Owls.
No sooner had the magazine been published than the Roman Catholic Church in Colombia banned it outright for fear of corrupting the youth with its pernicious and extravagant content. The public reception was not welcoming either, the writing style of de Greiff and the other panidas was at the vanguard of its time, but too far-off from what mundane Colombian society was familiar with. It did however earn the praise and support of prominent Medellín literati such as writer Tomás Carrasquilla
Tomás Carrasquilla
Tomás Carrasquilla Naranjo was a Colombian writer who lived in the Antioquia region. He dedicated himself to very simple jobs: tailor, secretary of a judge, storekeeper in a mine, and worker of the Ministry of Public Works...
and journalist Fidel Cano Gutiérrez
Fidel Cano Gutiérrez
Fidel Cano Gutiérrez was a Colombian journalist, founder of El Espectador, Colombia's oldest newspaper....
.
Alas the magazine went off circulation in June mostly due to the dispersion of the panidas, some included de Greiff moved to Bogotá, most went into business leaving their artistic aspirations behind, and some chose the nihilist path of suicide. In 1925, when he published his first book Tergiversaciones, de Greiff dedicated it to the memory of "The 13 Panidas".
Los Nuevos
In 1925 now in Bogotá, de Greiff was now a regular of the tertulias that gathered in the Windsor café and part of the publication of a new vanguard magazine called Los Nuevos (es:The New Ones). Directed by Felipe and Alberto Lleras Camargo, de Greiff worked with other writers such as Jorge ZalameaJorge Zalamea
Jorge Zalamea was a Colombian writer, best known for his anti-dictatorship satirical prose works. He was also an author of poems, dramas, novels, essays...
and Germán Arciniegas
Germán Arciniegas
Germán Arciniegas was a Colombian essayist and historian. Arciniegas wrote over 50 books and many columns in the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo and also taught at Columbia University in New York.- Books :...
among others as regular contributors to the magazine. Los Nuevos was of political, artistic, literary and social content, and aimed to challenge the remnants of exhausted romanticist
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
writings, regionalist
Regionalism (politics)
Regionalism is a term used in international relations. Regionalism also constitutes one of the three constituents of the international commercial system...
politics, and conservative society. This movement followed the path that the panidas had begun in Medellín and that was a representation of modernismo in Colombia much like the ultraist movement
Ultraist movement
The Ultraist movement was a literary movement born in Spain in 1918, with the declared intention of opposing Modernismo, which had dominated Spanish poetry since the end of the 19th century....
in Spain.
Influenced by Vicente Huidobro
Vicente Huidobro
Vicente García-Huidobro Fernández was a Chilean poet born to an aristocratic family. He was an exponent of the artistic movement called Creacionismo , which held that a poet should bring life to the things he or she writes about, rather than just describe them.Huidobro was born into a wealthy...
, de Greiff followed creacionismo
Creacionismo
Creationism was a literary movement, initiated by Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro around 1912. Creationism is based on the idea of a poem as a truly new thing, created by the author for the sake of itself — that is, not to praise another thing, not to please the reader, not even to be...
s standards of poetry, reinventing himself to make each poem unique, translatable, and truly poetic. His poetry is sometimes criticized as standoffish and intricate, but it is regardless true to the art.
Mamotretos
Starting with his first book Tergiversaciones in 1925, every one of his published books of poetry that was directed by him were named in order as mamotretos, which in SpanishSpanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
loosely refers to a bulky jumbled collection of writings that could be loosely interpreted as a tome
Tome
A tome is a large book, especially one volume of a multi-volume scholarly work.It may also refer to:-Places:* Tome, Miyagi, city in Japan * Tome-Adelino, New Mexico, city in New Mexico-People:...
. The name was both an example of de Greiff's masterful use of language and his humbleness towards his work and himself. His eighth and last mamotreto would be Nova et Vetera, published a year before his death, and was a collection of new and old found poems of his from even before Panida.
Civil servant
In 1916 de Greiff received his first job as a civil servant, working as an accountant for the Bank of the RepublicBank of the Republic (Colombia)
The Bank of the Republic is the state-run central bank of the Republic of Colombia. Its main functions are detailed by the Congress according to the . One of them is the issuance of the Colombian currency, the peso.-History:...
until 1925. He later worked as a statistician
Statistician
A statistician is someone who works with theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private and public sectors. The core of that work is to measure, interpret, and describe the world and human activity patterns within it...
from February 16, 1926 as Manager of Bolombolo-La Pintada Railway Construction Project until June 11, 1927, when he becomes Chief Statistician for the Departmental Directorate of Roads of Antioquia until June 13, 1931, when he moved to Bogotá and becomes Chief Statistician for National Railways on June 15 until January 27, 1945.
From July 1, 1945 to February 28, 1950 he works for the Ministry of National Education
Ministry of National Education (Colombia)
The Ministry of National Education is the national executive ministry of the Government of Colombia responsible for overseeing the instruction and education of the Colombian people, similar to education ministries in other countries.-List of Ministers:...
working in different posts from Deputy Director of Secondary Education
Secondary education
Secondary education is the stage of education following primary education. Secondary education includes the final stage of compulsory education and in many countries it is entirely compulsory. The next stage of education is usually college or university...
, and Chief of Scholarships, and Director of Cultural Promotion and Fine Arts. As part of an official commission of the Ministry, de Greiff travelled to Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
to repatriate the ashes of the poet Porfirio Barba-Jacob
Porfirio Barba-Jacob
Miguel Ángel Osorio Benítez , better known by his pseudonym, Porfirio Barba-Jacob, was a Colombian poet and writer....
; he would again travel outside the country in 1947, when he travels to Lima
Lima
Lima is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, Rímac and Lurín rivers, in the central part of the country, on a desert coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Together with the seaport of Callao, it forms a contiguous urban area known as the Lima...
, Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
as Delegate of the Ministry of National Education to the II Bolivarian Games
1947-48 Bolivarian Games
The II Bolivarian Games were a multi-sport event held in December 1947 and January 1948 in Lima, Peru. The Games were organized by the Bolivarian Sports Organization .-Medal count:...
.
Although de Greiff studied poetry, he had also been influenced by music as a child, and musical qualities guided his both his poetry prose. Even though he did not follow the same musical path as his brother Otto, his knowledge and love of music drove him to seek and become Professor of Music History
Music history
Music history, sometimes called historical musicology, is the highly diverse subfield of the broader discipline of musicology that studies the composition, performance, reception, and criticism of music over time...
at the Conservatory
Music school
The term music school refers to an educational institution specialized in the study, training and research of music.Different terms refer to this concept such as school of music, music academy, music faculty, college of music, music department or conservatory.Music instruction can be provided...
of the National University of Colombia
National University of Colombia
The Universidad Nacional de Colombia , also called UNAL or just UN, is a public, national, coeducational, research university, located primarily in Bogotá, Medellín, Manizales and Palmira, Colombia...
on September 1, 1946. De Greiff had previously taught at the University from March 1940 to January 1, 1943 as Professor of Literature and Redaction at the Faculty of Engineering.
In his role as Director of Cultural Promotion and Fine Arts he co-founds in 1949 with a large group of intellectuals and artists that included Alfonso López Michelsen
Alfonso López Michelsen
Alfonso López Michelsen was a Colombian politician, lawyer and journalist. Lopez Michelsen was President of Colombia from 1974 to 1978. He was the son of Alfonso López Pumarejo, who was also president of Colombia from 1934 to 1938, and once again from 1942 to 1945...
, Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo
Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo
Ignacio Gomez Jaramillo was born in Antioquia. Master Gomez Jaramillo was one of Colombia's most important artists of the 20th century. He was part of the Colombian Muralist Movement along with Santiago Martinez Delgado and Pedro Nel Gómez...
and Baldomero Sanín Cano
Baldomero Sanín Cano
Baldomero Sanín Cano was a Colombian essayist, journalist, linguist, humanist and university professor....
among others, the Colombo-Soviet Cultural Institute with the aim of improving friendship and cultural relations with the Soviet Socialist Republic. That same year on November 21 de Greiff was arrested along with Diego Montaña Cuéllar, Alejandro Vallejo, and Jorge Zalamea
Jorge Zalamea
Jorge Zalamea was a Colombian writer, best known for his anti-dictatorship satirical prose works. He was also an author of poems, dramas, novels, essays...
for “political reasons” that were never explained. De Greiff had been victim of the political and violent turmoil that had been engulfing the country known as La Violencia
La Violencia
La Violencia is a period of civil conflict in the Colombian countryside between supporters of the Colombian Liberal Party and the Colombian Conservative Party, a conflict which took place roughly from 1948 to 1958 ....
and his left-leaning tendencies and relations made him a target of the newly elected conservative Government. He was released on December 6; shortly after, he presented his letters of resignation to the Ministry, and steps down as Director of Cultural Promotion and Fine Arts and as Professor at the National University on March and May 1950 respectively.
Feeling betrayed and persecuted by the government, he chooses to best serve the nation as a check on the government, this time as a tax auditor for the independent government agency of the Office of the Comptroller General of Colombia
Comptroller General of Colombia
The Office of the Comptroller General of the Republic of Colombia is a Colombian independent government institution that acts as the highest form of fiscal control in the country. As such, it has a mission to seek the proper allocation of resources and public funds and contribute to the...
on June 1, 1950 until February 25, 1957. He would return to work at the Office of the Comptroller for a short time in 1959 from January 20 to May 25.
Diplomat
By 1959, de Greiff had grown in popularity and international recognition and had the opportunity to return to the land of his ancestors for the first time when he was invited to the Congress of Nations for Disarmament and International Cooperation held by the World Peace CouncilWorld Peace Council
The World Peace Council is an international organization that advocates universal disarmament, sovereignty and independence and peaceful co-existence, and campaigns against imperialism, weapons of mass destruction and all forms of discrimination...
held from the 16th to the 22nd of July in 1958 in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
. De Greiff who had not been an open communist was nevertheless of leftist tendencies and fit right in with the crowd, and after the summit he traveled to, at the invitation of the respective governments, the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, the People’s Republic of China, East Germany, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, the SFR Yugoslavia, and France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. The trip lasted a total of 115 days and it would mark him politically and personally as a friend and ally of the communists.
In 1958, upon his return to Colombia and after pressure from Juan Lozano y Lozano, President Alberto Lleras Camargo
Alberto Lleras Camargo
Alberto Lleras Camargo was an important Colombian diplomat and political figure.He was a member of the Liberal Party of Colombia; he served as congressman , Minister of Education, Minister of the Interior and Minister of Foreign Affairs, during the governments of Alfonso López Pumarejo and Eduardo...
appointed de Greiff as First Secretary to the Colombian Embassy in Sweden, a post he held from June 16, 1959 to September 30, 1963. Lozano y Lozano had originally proposed de Greiff assume the post of Colombian Ambassador to Sweden, but President Lleras Camargo resisted this, considering him to be too “bohemian
Bohemian
A Bohemian is a resident of the former Kingdom of Bohemia, either in a narrow sense as the region of Bohemia proper or in a wider meaning as the whole country, now known as the Czech Republic. The word "Bohemian" was used to denote the Czech people as well as the Czech language before the word...
” to represent the nation in that post. This bohemian and independent quality put him at odds with the appointed ambassador while de Greiff was serving as secretary, especially for his indiscretions regarding a relationship he had with the Chinese Embassy, which he frequented in various occasions at their invitation. This was a breach of protocol as Bogotá did not maintain diplomatic relations with Beijing at that time. After the ambassador left his post, de Greiff became the Chargés d’affaires ad interim.
While in Sweden, de Greiff gained fame and popularity and even maintained a friendship with His Majesty King Gustaf VI Adolf, who in 1964 awarded him the Order of the Polar Star
Order of the Polar Star
The Order of the Polar Star is a Swedish order of chivalry created by King Frederick I of Sweden on 23 February 1748, together with the Order of the Sword and the Order of the Seraphim....
in the grade of Knight
Knight
A knight was a member of a class of lower nobility in the High Middle Ages.By the Late Middle Ages, the rank had become associated with the ideals of chivalry, a code of conduct for the perfect courtly Christian warrior....
.
In 1975 in recognition of his diplomatic work de Greiff was awarded the Order of San Carlos in the grade of Grand Officer by the Government of Colombia.
Later life and death
León de Greiff retired on October 1, 1963, and at that time he started to enjoy his modest pension after 34 years as a civil servant. No longer at the service of the government, de Greiff took an active interest in promoting literature and education in and out of the country.In 1965 de Greiff was awarded the Order of Boyaca with the rank of Commander, one of Colombia's highest honours. In 1974 he was made member correspondiente of the Academia Colombiana de la Lengua
Academia Colombiana de la Lengua
The Academia Colombiana de la Lengua is an association of academics and experts on the use of the Spanish language in Colombia...
, and in 1974 honorary member of the Ministry of Culture
Ministry of Culture (Colombia)
The Ministry of Culture is the national executive ministry of the Government of Colombia charged with preserving, promoting, and encouraging the growth, free expression and understanding of the Culture of Colombia in all its multi-ethnic forms.-Ministers:...
’s Instituto Caro Y Cuervo. He also received various tributes including one from the Colombo-Argentenian Cultural Institute in 1955, (es:Instituto Cultural Colombo-Argentino), one from the National College of Journalists in 1961 (es: Colegio Nacional de Periodistas) presented by Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America. He is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in...
, an honoris causa doctorate
Doctorate
A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder to teach in a specific field, A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder...
in literature from the University of Valle
University of Valle
The University of Valle , also called Univalle, is a public, departmental, coeducational, research university based primarily in the city of Cali, Valle del Cauca, Colombia. It is the largest higher education institution by student population in the southwest of the country, and the third in...
on July 16, 1975, and in that same year another tribute from the National Association of Financial Institutions (es: Asociación Nacional de Instituciones Financieras, ANIF), presented to him by its then president Belisario Betancur
Belisario Betancur
Belisario Betancur Cuartas is a Colombian statesman, who as a member of the Colombian Conservative Party was President of Colombia from 1982 to 1986.- Biographic data :...
. De Greiff traveled abroad, keeping with his cultural ambitions, and was part of the over 180 guest writers from 52 nations for the International Writer's Meeting organized by a West German writer's committee headed by Anna Seghers
Anna Seghers
Anna Seghers was a German writer famous for depicting the moral experience of the Second World War.- Life :...
and Arnold Zweig
Arnold Zweig
Arnold Zweig was a German writer and anti-war activist.He is best known for his World War I tetralogy.-Life and work:Zweig was born in Glogau, Silesia son of a Jewish saddler...
in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
and Weimar
Weimar
Weimar is a city in Germany famous for its cultural heritage. It is located in the federal state of Thuringia , north of the Thüringer Wald, east of Erfurt, and southwest of Halle and Leipzig. Its current population is approximately 65,000. The oldest record of the city dates from the year 899...
. He also took part in the 1968 Cultural Congress of La Havana, where he was a judge in the Poetry Prize competition, as well as the 1970 Iberoamerican Community of Writers summit in Caracas
Caracas
Caracas , officially Santiago de León de Caracas, is the capital and largest city of Venezuela; natives or residents are known as Caraquenians in English . It is located in the northern part of the country, following the contours of the narrow Caracas Valley on the Venezuelan coastal mountain range...
, the Second Latin American Conference on Cultural Development and University Expansion in Mexico in 1972, and was part of the jury for the Quimantú (El Sol del Saber) Prize of Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
.
In Venezuela, arquitect Carlos Celis Cepero created in his honour the León de Greiff Hispanic-American Prize of Poetry (es: Premio Hispanoamericano de Poesía León de Greiff) which was first awarded on May 5, 1956 to the Venezuelan poet Juan Manuel González.
Upon his return to private life in Colombia, he remained involved with international political work as well. In 1967 he was elected President of the Colombo-Czechoslovak
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
Friendship Association, and in 1971 elected President of the Colombo-Cuban Friendship Association (his son Axel would follow his father's steps by being elected President of the Swedish–Cuban Association), and was even invited to the inauguration of Mexican President Luis Echeverría Álvarez in 1970, and in 1972 was invited to Costa Rica
Costa Rica
Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....
by its President José Figueres Ferrer
José Figueres Ferrer
José María Hipólito Figueres Ferrer , served as President of Costa Rica on three occasions:1948–1949, 1953–1958, and 1970–1974....
.
León de Greiff died at the age 80 in the early hours of Sunday July 11, 1976 in his home in Bogotá. Shortly after his passing, the National University renamed its Central Auditorium, now a National Monument
Monument
A monument is a type of structure either explicitly created to commemorate a person or important event or which has become important to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, or simply as an example of historic architecture...
and home of the Bogota Philharmonic
Bogota Philharmonic
The Bogotá Philharmonic Orchestra, or Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá, is the most important Symphony Orchestra in Colombia. It is a project maintained by the city of Bogotá and its Secretary Office of Culture, Recreation and Sport. Founded in 1967, it regularly performs at the Jorge Eliécer Gaitán...
in his name, and in 2007 when a new public library
Public library
A public library is a library that is accessible by the public and is generally funded from public sources and operated by civil servants. There are five fundamental characteristics shared by public libraries...
-park
Park
A park is a protected area, in its natural or semi-natural state, or planted, and set aside for human recreation and enjoyment, or for the protection of wildlife or natural habitats. It may consist of rocks, soil, water, flora and fauna and grass areas. Many parks are legally protected by...
was built, the city choose to name it after de Greiff to preserve his memory and to promote culture and education in the city.