Skip to main content

Emilio Adolfo Westphalen Biography

Emilio Adolfo Westphalen

(Lima, 1911-2001) Peruvian poet whose work, balanced between the avant-garde and classicism, is one of the fundamental manifestations of Latin American lyricism of the last century.Trained at the German School (where he befriended another future poet, Martín Adán) and at the University of San Marcos de Lima, from which he graduated in letters, during the thirties he was part, along with César Moro and Xavier Abril, of a surrealist poetic group that exerted an important renovating work in the national lyric.

Emilio Westphalen

Westphalen directed the surrealist publication The use of the word (1939) and the cultural magazines Las moradas (1947-1949), Revista Nacional de Cultura (1964-1966) and Amaru (1967-1971).Between 1949 and 1956 he was a translator at the UN headquarters in New York; the same job he later carried out at FAO headquarters in Rome (1957-1963).Returning to Peru, he taught at the University of San Marcos and held diplomatic positions in Portugal and Mexico.

Although Emilio Adolfo Westphalen's production is chronologically framed in the context of the avant-garde, it should be noted in her a deep vocation for heterodoxy and for stylistic singularity, which led her from a first revolutionary stage, heir to symbolism and companion on the road of the surrealist generation, to a second where those influences are sublimated in an amazing recovery of Petrarchism and the Spanish gold.

In this way, Westphalen managed to depart from the mere psychic automatism trumpeted by some of his contemporaries and establish a path that began with Strange Islands (1933) and Abolition of la muerte (1935), two collections of poems with a solid structure and brilliant images that make up his stage closest to surrealism, but which also show the mark of authors such as Rainer Maria Rilke, TS Eliot or Ezra Pound.

The publication of these two books was followed by a long silence of almost forty years, which was finally broken to allow a return of equal aesthetic dimensions but which showed a subtle and disenchanted creator, who had marked distances in front of to the supposed magic of poetry and language.This was confirmed by the important titles of this second and final stage, such as Beauty of a sword stuck in the tongue (1980), What is laughter (1989) or False rituals and other hoaxes (1992).In The goddess Ambarina is back (1988) he paid homage to his compatriot José María Eguren.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hosea Biography

Hosea Old Testament prophet, the first of the group of the so-called Twelve Minor Prophets.Born around 800 BC.and died around 725 BC, he developed his ministry in the northern kingdom (Israel), where he came from.Hosea preached at the end of the reign of Jeroboam II (782-743 BC) and in the time of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah; therefore, its prophetic mission must be between 750 and 725 BC. The prophet Hosea He is credited with the authorship of the so-called Book of Hosea , in which the prophet denounces the people's infidelity towards Yahweh and it reveals the tender love of God, comparable to that of the husband who forgives his unfaithful wife or the father who loves his rebellious son.The book comprises fourteen chapters, and is divided into two parts.The first (chapters 1-3) symbolically exposes Israel's infidelity and announces her punishment and salvation in a presaged return to national unity.The second (chapters 4-14) directly challenges the people with r...
Post a Comment
Read more

John jervis Biography

John Jervis (Meaford, 1735-Rochetts, 1823) British military.Commander of the English fleet in the West Indies (1793-1795) and in the Mediterranean (1795-1801).Forced to cross the Atlantic, he won a victory over the Spanish squad at Cape San Vicente (1797).First Lord of the Admiralty (1801-1804), where he put an end to corruption and indiscipline.
Post a Comment
Read more

Arthur Adamov Biography

Arthur Adamov (Kislovodsk, 1908-Paris, 1970) French-language playwright, founder of the theater of the absurd.He left Russia when he was only four years old.He studied in Switzerland, first, and then in Germany.In 1924 he moved to Paris, where he began to frequent surrealist environments.In this period he published some poetry, but immediately stopped writing, until 1946, when he published a heartbreaking and provocative little book, L'aveu , a ruthless analysis of his psychological and spiritual crisis.A year later, under the influence of Strindberg, he wrote his first theatrical text, La parodie . From 1946 to 1955 he developed the themes of what critics called New theater of isolation or Theater of the absurd , and he became an exponent of avant-garde drama, expressing in his texts the discomfort of the individual in the face of the structures imposed by society.Through his characters, lacking a precise psychological individuality, he configured impersonal dramas cross...
Post a Comment
Read more

Gian Domenico Cassini Biography

Gian Domenico Cassini (Perinaldo, present-day Italy, 1625-Paris, 1712) Italian-French astronomer.He was a professor of astronomy at the University of Bologna, where he studied and tabulated the positions of the satellites of Jupiter.In 1669 he assumed the direction of the Paris Observatory, at the express request of King Louis XIV, and in 1673 he was granted French citizenship.Continuing the studies begun in Italy, Cassini discovered the satellites of Saturn: Iapetus (1671), Rhea (1672), Tethys (1684) and Dione (1684).In 1675 he detected the dark space that separates the A and B rings of Saturn and that bears his name, the Cassini division.He was the first to consider zodiacal light as a phenomenon of cosmic and not meteorological origin (The elements of astronomy verified, 1693).Cassini rejected Johannes Kepler's theory of elliptical planetary orbits and proposed trajectories through oval curves, the so-called Cassini ovals.
Post a Comment
Read more

John M. Coetzee Biography

John M.Coetzee (Cape Town, 1940) South African writer in the English language.John Maxwell Coetzee was born in Cape Town on February 9, 1940.When he was eight years old, his family moved to Worcester, in the Karoo province, an almost desert area.There he spent his childhood. His ethnic identity was never too clear to him: English was spoken in his immediate family, but with other relatives the Afrikaner side weighed more, from whose culture, however, Coetzee felt very remote.His religious affiliation was not clearer, as his family was not practicing, and the child's confusion was added to the fact that he grew up with fellow Protestants, Catholics and Jews. His father was a lawyer and, at home, a figure whose authority was not always welcomed.With his mother, a school teacher, something very different happened: the boy Coetzee developed in front of her a strong feeling of solidarity, of mutual support, but also of repulsion and guilt."He wishes he would behave with her ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Joseph H. Maclagan Wedderburn Biography

Joseph H.Maclagan Wedderburn (Forfar, 1882-Princeton, 1948) British mathematician.Professor at Princeton University, he was editor of the Proceedings of the Edinburgh mathematical society (1905-1909) and the Annals of mathematics (1912-1928).He stated a theorem ( Wedderburn's theorem ) according to which every finite field is commutative.
Post a Comment
Read more

Jose Maria Samper Biography

José María Samper (Honda, 1831-Anapoima, 1888) Colombian writer and politician.He collaborated in the newspapers La noche and El Comercio de Lima , as well as in others with a liberal tendency.He participated in the liberal revolution and held various public positions.He is the author of books of poems ( Withered flowers , 1849; Ecos de los Andes , 1860), comedies ( The September conspiracy , 1857; A son of the people , 1857), novels ( Martín Flores , 1866; The soldier poet , 1881; Story of a soul , 1881), essays ( Apuntamientos para la historia politico y social de Nueva Granada , 1853; The political parties in Colombia: historical political study , 1869) and studies biographical ( National Gallery of Illustrious Men , 1879).
Post a Comment
Read more

Federico Sopeña Biography

Federico Sopeña (Valladolid, 1917-Madrid, 1991) Spanish musicologist and music critic.Doctor of theology from the Gregorian University, he was professor of aesthetics and musicology at the Madrid Conservatory, where he also held the position of director (1951-1956).In 1958 he entered the Royal Spanish Academy and subsequently held the position of General Commissioner of Music (1971-1972) and director of the Prado Museum (1981-1983).His abundant production includes Contemporary European Music (1952), Stravinski (1956), Atlántida: Introduction to Manuel de Falla (1962) , Music and literature (1974), History of contemporary Spanish music (1976) and Written at night (1985).
Post a Comment
Read more

Gordian I Biography

Gordian I (Rome, c .157-Carthage, 238) Roman Emperor (238).Procurator in Africa, the army opposed his appointment as emperor, the work of the great proprietors.His son defeated and killed by Capeliano, Maximino's legacy, committed suicide.
Post a Comment
Read more