Vicente Aleixandre(1898 — 1984)
Vicente Aleixandre
Espagne
6 min read
Vicente Aleixandre is a major Spanish poet of the 20th century, a figure of the Generation of '27. His work, marked first by surrealism and then by a poetry of human solidarity, earned him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1977.
Frequently asked questions
Key Facts
- Born on 26 April 1898 in Seville
- Publishes 'La Destrucción o el amor', awarded the National Prize for Literature in 1933
- Remains in Spain after the civil war and becomes a reference point for young poets under Francoism
- Elected to the Royal Spanish Academy in 1949
- Receives the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1977; dies on 13 December 1984 in Madrid
Works & Achievements
First collection of poems, still marked by pure poetry and formal rigor.
A fully surrealist collection, in which the free image and the unconscious take control of language.
A masterpiece crowned with the National Literature Prize: here love is total fusion with nature and the cosmos.
A major postwar work that revitalized Spanish poetry; it evokes a primitive, luminous paradise.
A turn toward a poetry of human solidarity, attentive to the passing of time and to other people.
A collection awarded the Critics' Prize, broadening his gaze to matter and to the human collective.
A great work of old age, meditating on knowledge, lost youth, and death.
Anecdotes
Starting in 1925, Vicente Aleixandre was struck by a serious kidney disease that cost him a kidney in 1932. Often bedridden, he turned his bedroom into a writing studio and composed part of his work lying down, which did not prevent him from becoming one of the greatest Spanish poets of the century.
While most of the poets of the Generation of '27 (Alberti, Cernuda, Guillén…) went into exile after the civil war, Aleixandre chose to remain in Spain under Franco's dictatorship. His Madrid home at no. 3 Velintonia Street became a literary refuge and a bridge between the prewar poets and the younger generations.
In 1977, at the age of 79, Aleixandre received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Too frail to travel to Stockholm, he was unable to attend the ceremony: a representative accepted the award on his behalf, while Spain, only just emerging from the Franco era, celebrated one of its own.
As a child, Aleixandre spent several years in Málaga, on the shores of the Mediterranean. All his life he would remember this luminous city as a lost paradise, which he celebrated in the poem “Ciudad del paraíso” from his collection *Sombra del paraíso*.
Aleixandre became friends with Federico García Lorca and other poets of his generation during the tribute to Góngora in 1927. Lorca's assassination in 1936, at the start of the civil war, would mark him deeply and would loom over his postwar poetry.
Primary Sources
La poesía es comunicación. (“Poetry is communication.”)
For a creative poetic writing which illuminates man's condition in the cosmos and in present-day society, at the same time representing the great renewal of the traditions of Spanish poetry between the wars.
The title itself sums up his vision: love is a total fusion with nature and the cosmos, inseparable from a form of self-destruction.
Key Places
City in Andalusia where Vicente Aleixandre was born in 1898. He spent his earliest years there before the family moved away.
Mediterranean city where Aleixandre spent part of his childhood. He would celebrate it as a “city of paradise,” a luminous and lost memory.
City where Aleixandre lived most of his adult life and died in 1984. His house at no. 3 Velintonia Street was a major literary gathering place.
Madrid institution charged with overseeing the Spanish language, where Aleixandre was elected an academician in 1949.
Site of the December 1927 tribute to Góngora, the founding event of the Generation of '27 to which Aleixandre belonged.
