André Breton

Hidalgo Socorro

Hidalgo Socorro - André Breton

André Breton, the father of Surrealism, was born in in Tichenbray (Orne) Normandy, France.  His parents were from the working class. He studied psychology and medicine at an early age and worked with traumatized soldiers during World War I.

Breton was a Dadaist but broke with the group due to aesthetic differences.  in 1924, Breton, along with other famous artists of the time, wrote the Surrealist Manifesto, that was the basis for Surrealism, a movement that encompassed mainly writings and art.

Breton, apart from being an avid art collector, produced many writings, of which the most important ones are considered to be his collection of poems Mad Love (1937), the novel Nadja (1928) and his text Communicating Vessels (1932).  He died in Paris on September 28, 1966.

For more information, Hidalgo Socorro recommends you to visit http://www.poets.org

Wisława Szymborska

Hidalgo Socorro

Hidalgo Socorro - Wisława Szymborska

Wisława Szymborska was a Polish poet, essayist and translator.  She received the Nobel Prize on Literature in 1996.  Symborska was born on July 2, 1923 in Prowent, Poland, and grew up in the city of Krakow.  After the war, she studied Polish literature and then changed to Sociology.  She published her first poem in March 1945, “Szukam słowa” (“Looking for a word”) in a daily newspaper.

Symborska married only once, to the poet Adam Włodek, who she divorced in 1954.  She used literary devices such as irony, paradox, contradiction and understatement to talk about philosophical themes and obsessions.  Symborska died on February 1st, 2012 at the age of 88.

For more information, Hidalgo Socorro recommends you to visit: Wisława Szymborska

Some Like Poetry

Write it. Write. In ordinary ink
on ordinary paper: they were given no food,
they all died of hunger. “All. How many?
It’s a big meadow. How much grass
for each one?” Write: I don’t know.
History counts its skeletons in round numbers.
A thousand and one remains a thousand,
as though the one had never existed:
an imaginary embryo, an empty cradle,
an ABC never read,
air that laughs, cries, grows,
emptiness running down steps toward the garden,
nobody’s place in the line.

We stand in the meadow where it became flesh,
and the meadow is silent as a false witness.
Sunny. Green. Nearby, a forest
with wood for chewing and water under the bark-
every day a full ration of the view
until you go blind. Overhead, a bird-
the shadow of its life-giving wings
brushed their lips. Their jaws opened.
Teeth clacked against teeth.
At night, the sickle moon shone in the sky
and reaped wheat for their bread.
Hands came floating from blackened icons,
empty cups in their fingers.
On a spit of barbed wire,
a man was turning.
They sang with their mouths full of earth.
“A lovely song of how war strikes straight
at the heart.” Write: how silent.
“Yes.”

 

Alexander Pushkin

Hidalgo Socorro

Hidalgo Socorro - Alexander Pushkin

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was a Russian author of the romantic era, who is considered the father of modern Russian literature and the best poet of Russia.

He was born in Moscow on June 6, 1799 to Russian nobility parents.  He published his first poem at the age of 15 and became known not only for his poems but also for his theater plays, like the famous Boris Godunov, seen as one of his most important plays.  He also wrote a novel in verse called Eugene Ogenin, which was serialized from 1825 to 1832.  Pushkin died after a duel on February 10, 1837 after losing against a French cavalry officer who was trying to seduce his wife.  He was 37 years old and his death was considered a catastrophe for Russian literature.

For more information, Hidalgo Socorro asks you to visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Pushkin

Gertrude Stein

Hidalgo Socorro

Hidalgo Socorro - Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American poet, writer and art collector born in Allegheny, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  She is famous for coining the term “lost generation”.

Stein was born as the youngest child in a German Jewish family.  She studied at Radcliffe College and then at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.  In 1903 she moved to Paris, where she would spend the remainder of her life.  It was there that she started writing, she also met people like Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Guillaume Apollinaire, Henri Rousseau and others.

Gertrude Stein died in Neuilly-sur-Seine from stomach cancer and was buried in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.

Cézanne

The Irish lady can say, that to-day is every day. Caesar can say that
every day is to-day and they say that every day is as they say.
In this way we have a place to stay and he was not met because
he was settled to stay. When I said settled I meant settled to stay.
When I said settled to stay I meant settled to stay Saturday. In this
way a mouth is a mouth. In this way if in as a mouth if in as a
mouth where, if in as a mouth where and there. Believe they have
water too. Believe they have that water too and blue when you see
blue, is all blue precious too, is all that that is precious too is all
that and they meant to absolve you. In this way Cézanne nearly did
nearly in this way. Cézanne nearly did nearly did and nearly did.
And was I surprised. Was I very surprised. Was I surprised. I was
surprised and in that patient, are you patient when you find bees.
Bees in a garden make a specialty of honey and so does honey. Honey
and prayer. Honey and there. There where the grass can grow nearly
four times yearly.

Solomon ibn Gabirol

Hidalgo Socorro

Hidalgo Socorro - Solomon Ibn Gabirol

Solomon ibn Gabirol (born in Málaga, aproximately in 1021 and died in Valencia approximately in 1058) was an Andalucian Jewish poet and philosopher.  His parents died when he was a child.  At seventeen, he was protected by Jekuthiel Hassan, who would be killed later as a result of a conspiracy.  Gabirol then composed an elegy of more than 200 verses in his honor.

Gabirol is also known for the book Fons Vitae, which is a Neoplatonic philosophy treaty written as a dialogue between a student and its teacher.  The book explains the doctrine of matter and form.  It was also called De Materia et Forma.

AT THE DAWN

At the dawn I seek Thee,
Rock and refuge tried,
In due service speak Thee
Morn and eventide.

‘Neath Thy greatness shrinking,
Stand I sore afraid,
All my secret thinking
Bare before Thee laid.

Little to Thy glory
Heart or tongue can do;
Small remains the story,
Add we spirit too.

Yet since man’s praise ringing
May seem good to Thee,
I will praise Thee singing
While Thy breath’s in me.

 

William Shakespeare – All the World’s a Stage

Por: Hidalgo Socorro

William Shakespeare, one of the world’s most famous writers and poets, delights us with one of his creations. All the World’s a Stage.

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.

At first, the infant, mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.

And then the lover, sighing like furnace,
With a woeful ballad. Made to his mistress’ eyebrow.
Then a soldier, full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation. Even in the cannon’s mouth.

And then the justice, in fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Fuente: Famouspoetsandpoems.com

Federico García Lorca

Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca, was a Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director, who achieved international notoriety as an emblematic member of the Generation of ’27.

He was born on 5 June 1898, in Fuente Vaqueros, a small town a few miles west of Granada, southern Spain.  His father, Federico Garcia Rodriguez, was a landowner and his mother, Vincenta Lorca Romero, was a teacher and gifted pianist.

In 1909, when he was 11, his family moved to Granada.  In 1915, after graduating from secondary school, García Lorca attended Sacred Heart University. During this time his studies included law, literature and composition.  He traveled to Castile, León and Galicia, in northern Spain and from those travels and the encouragement of his university professor, he wrote the book Impresiones y Paisajes (Impressions and Landscapes).  Then, in 1919, and thanks to Don Fernando de los Ríos, Lorca was allowed to enroll in the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid.

It was there where he met influential figures like Manuel de Falla, Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí.  He also became close to playwright Gregorio Martínez Sierra, director of the Teatro Eslava in Madrid and who would encourage Lorca to write his first play in 1919-20 El Maleficio de la Mariposa (The Butterfly’s Evil Spell).

He published his first book of poems in 1921, a compilation of poems written since 1918 and selected with the help of his brother Francisco. They concern the themes of religious faith, isolation and nature that had filled his prose reflections.

Between 1925 and 1928 he was passionately involved with Salvador Dalí, though he mainly rejected his advances.  After the success of Romancero Gitano (Gypsy Ballads) in 1928, his relationship with his lover, the sculptor Emilio Soriano Aladrén ended and he and Dalí drifted more and more apart.  His family decided to send him to New York with Fernando de los Ríos, where he studied in Columbia University School of General Studies and wrote his poem collection Poeta en Nueva York (A Poet in New York).

He returned to Spain in 1930.  The country was in a state of turmoil after the fall of the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and the establishment of the Republic.  He then was given the approval of the government to travel as director of a university theater company, Teatro Universitario la Barraca, and with it he showed many of his emblematic plays, known as the Rural Trilogy: Bodas de Sangre (Blood Wedding), Yerma and La Casa de Bernarda Alba (The House of Bernarda Alba), which all rebelled against the norms of bourgeois Spanish society.

He lived in Huerta de San Vicente as his summer house in Granada from 1926 to 1936.  In that same year (1936) he left Madrid for his family home in Granada only three days before the Spanish Civil War broke out (July 1936).  On 18 August, his brother-in-law, Manuel Fernández-Montesinos, the leftist mayor of Granada, was shot. Lorca was arrested that same afternoon.  García Lorca was shot and killed by Nationalist militia on 19 August 1936.  His body was never found.

Giacomo Leopardi

Giacomo Taldegardo Francesco di Sales Saverio Pietro Leopardi was an Italian poet, essayist, philosopher, and philologist, who lived during the 19th Century and whose work influenced the Romantic era.

He was born in Recanati, at that time ruled by the papacy, on June 29, 1798.  His father was the count Monaldo Leopardi, a man fond of literature, and his mother was the marquise Adelaide Antici Mattei, a cold and authoritarian woman.

Leopardi began studying under the tutelage of two priests.  One of them will later recommend books to Leopardi from his father’s library, which will make Leopardi dive into study in an almost fanatical way.  From this experience, Leopardi would develop a weak health that coupled with a weak physical constitution, was going to plague him all his life.

From 1817 to 1822, Leopardi fought against an ever increasing family problems, he tried to escape many times without success.  In 1822 he traveled to Rome and found himself disillusioned with the city, because it didn’t quite fit the image he had of it, and that he had created in his mind.  During that time, he also was able to visit Milan, Bologna, Florence and Pisa.

In 1824, a bookstore owner called Stella called him to Milan, asking him to write several works.  Leopardi worked with him until 1828, when, physically infirm and worn out by work, he returned to Recanati.

Later, he moved to Naples, thanks to the help of his friend Antonio Ranieri, where he hoped to benefit physically from the climate. He died during the cholera epidemic on June 14, 1837.  He was 38 years old.

By Hidalgo Socorro

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe is an American poet, considered the master of the macabre.

He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 19 of January 1809, the son of actor David Poe Jr. and actress Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe.  His father abandoned the family in 1810 and a year later, her mother died of consumption.  Poe was then taken by John and Frances Allan, a Scottish couple from Richmond, Virginia, but never formally adopted.  He studied in the University of Virginia, but only for a semester, when he left due to lack of money.  Then he enlisted in West Point where he failed as an officer’s cadet, parting ways with the Allans.

Poe then started writing.  His first book was a collection of poems called “Tamerlane and other poems”, published in 1827 and credited only to “A Bostonian”.

He then started writing prose, and spent the next several years working for literary journals and periodicals, becoming a well known literary critic.  In 1835 he married his cousin Virginia Clemm.  In January 1845, Poe published his renowned poem “The Raven”.  Two years later, his wife, Virginia, died of tuberculosis.  Poe would die two years after her, on October 7, 1849, in Baltimore.  According to some sources, Poe’s last words were: “Lord, help my poor soul”.

By: Hidalgo Socorro

 

Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire is one of the major innovators in French literature, and also an important ensayist, art critic and a pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe.

He was born in Paris on April 21, 1821, the son of a civil servant and amateur artist.  His father would die 6 years later and the mother of Baudelaire remarried to an army officer.

He was then sent to Lyon for his education, and later returned to Paris where he started studying law.  After graduating in 1839, and feeling that he had no real vocation, he set up on his literary career.

On behalf of his stepfather, he traveled to Calcutta, India, a trip that would leave deep impressions in him which he later employed in his poetry.  After his return, Baudelaire became a careless free-spender and dilapidated much of the money he inherited until his family was able to put it in a trust fund.

In the early 1850s, Baudelaire suffered from poor health, pressing debts, and irregular literary output.  It was then when he completed the translation of some of Poe’s stories.

In 1857 he got his break when he published Le Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) considered by some as his masterpiece.  A series of poems where sex, death, lesbianism, sacred and profane love, metamorphosis, melancholy, the corruption of the city, lost innocence, the oppressiveness of living, and wine are dominant, as well as Baudelaire’s use of imagery of the sense of smell and of fragrances, which is used to evoke feelings of nostalgia and past intimacy.  The book was considered a masterpiece by many famous authors of the time, including Victor Hugo, but it made him guilty of obscenity, he had to pay a fine and six poems where banned, which were later reinstated in 1949.

After the book, Baudelaire translated and adapted Thomas de Quincey’s Confessions of an Opium Eater.  In 1859, due to his illness, his mother finally relented and let him come to live with her.   In 1864, three years after the bankruptcy of his publisher, he traveled to Belgium, where he hoped to sell the rights to his works and also to give lectures.  He also indulged again into opium and alcohol and suffered a severe stroke in 1866 that left him paralyzed.  He died in Paris on August 31, 1867 and was buried at the Cimetière du Montparnasse.

By: Hidalgo Socorro