Product Description
Spain, ed Lewis Hyde (various tr) bilingual ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

In the darker places of loneliness...
Vicente Aleixander was part of that great Generation of '27 - famous for such members as Lorca, Cernuda, Alberti and Salinas. He was the least political and this perhaps explains how he survived during the years of the Civil War. Lorca was executed by Franco's troops and the peasant-turned poet, Miguel Hernandez, who fought for the Communists, died in prison in 1942. Many of the Generation of '27 fled the country. Alberti didn't return until well after Franco's death, having lived abroad in Italy and the United States, often a visiting professor. Salinas, too, taught abroad. Aleixandre opted to stay in his native land.

Aleixandre's poetry is darker than his peers. Where Alberti and Salinas celebrate music, beauty, love, and painting (especially Alberti), Aleixandre's is a celebration of loneliness, of isolation. His early poems are quite deep and almost unreadable at times, so fraught with esoteric meaning (like Hernandez's early poems) that it might turn the reader offwhen first presented with this book. But the further one travels into this great collection, the greater the beauty and more universal the themes of love, loss and sadness. One feels the ocean, the waves, the sand but also a woman's body, the world destroyed but renewed. There is an organic quality to his poetry, it is human but also detached and poignant.

I prefer Aleixandre's work to many of his contemporaries. He reminds me to some degree of Georg Trakl in Germany - the darkness, the silence of the world, the pulse of life in nature surrounding humanity.

This selection features translations by Lewis Hyde (also editor of the book), Roberty Bly, W.S. Merwin, Willis Barnstone and many others...

Time stops
No matter where I open this book, time stops.Gentle as an uncle I once knew, his words carry forward, linger on, and I find myself nodding affirmatively in of all places, this world

Once read or heard, never forgotten
"Her hand given over" is the sweetest, saddest, truest poem I'veread about a woman from a man's point of view.I'm so glad to know aboutAleixandre.

The best Spanish poetry
"Destruction of Love" and "A Longing for the Light"are the best poetry in Spanish I have ever read. Perfect language, perfectidea... The best. ... Read more

Product Description
Begun in 1939 barely four months after the close of the Spanish Civil War, these poems by the Nobel Laureate poet Vicente Aleixandre were written during a period of hardship and despair. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Things Unsaid
While reading Stephen Kessler's bilingual translation of Cernuda's last two books, named after the last book, Desolation of the Chimera (1962), I discovered that Vincente Aleixandre was also a member of the Generation of '27 (along with Cernuda, Guillen and Garcia Lorca). As it happened, I had a bilingual copy of Aleixandre's Shadow of Paradise (1944), given to me by my friend, the translator Hugh Harter. The book has the excitement of a transitional, mannerist work--in many senses. Primarily, the author seemed to be moving from a vivid, youthful surrealism to something different, more plain spoken, but still ecstatically wrapped in the imagery of surrealism. There's also the issue of timing with three gay members of '27: Garcia Lorca was killed in the early days of the Civil War. Cernuda went into exile and spent the rest of his life in the US and Mexico. Aleixandre stayed in Spain. I imagine certain adjustments in style had to be made for a gay man to live in Franco's Spain and, to me, that becomes the ever-present thing unsaid in Aleixandre's Shadow of Paradise. My only quibble with my friend's translations is that they depend so heavily on Latin cognates. Spanish comes by its Latin vocabulary quite naturally; but a preponderance of Latin in English poetry is endemic to 19th century Romanticism, perhaps giving the wrong signal. Leaning more toward Anglo-Saxon vocabulary would restore the hard-edged freshness to this volatile and vital poetry. ... Read more