Carlos Pellicer Camera (1897-1977) was a prominent Mexican writer, poet, politician, and museographer. He is considered one of the most original, creative and profound writers of the mid-twentieth century. His work was framed within the currents of avant-garde and modernism.
The writings of the author were characterized by the use of a well elaborated, precise and intense language. His lyrics were loaded with metaphorical resources and he oriented them towards nature. Pellicer was part of "Los Contemporáneos", a group of young people who were in charge of spreading modern literature in Mexico.
Carlos Pellicer's work is extensive, the writer especially encompassed poetry. Some of the most renowned titles were Stone of Sacrifices, Path, Stanzas to the Sea Sea, Speech for the Flowers Y With words and fire. Also a prominent professor and professor.
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Carlos was born on January 16, 1897 in San Juan Bautista (currently Villahermosa), Tabasco, he came from a cultured and middle-class family. His father was a pharmacist named Carlos Pellicer Marchena and his mother was Deifilia Cámara. His childhood was marked by the teachings of his mother.
Pellicer learned to read thanks to the dedication of his mother, it was precisely she who brought him closer to poetry. His primary education was spent at the Daría González institution in his hometown. In 1909 he moved with his mother to Campeche, and there he attended high school.
Some time later he entered the National Preparatory School and due to his youth leadership, the Venustiano Carranza government sent him to study in Bogotá, Colombia. At that time he visited Venezuela and made a report on the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez.
Pellicer's criticism of the Venezuelan president aroused in the writer José Vasconcelos the interest of meeting him. This is how he began to work as his assistant and shortly after at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. In addition, the poet taught Spanish classes at the National Preparatory School.
In 1918 he participated in the creation of the magazine San-Ev-Ank and was part of the literacy plan devised by Vasconcelos from the Ministry of Public Education. Three years later he published his first book Colors in the sea and other poems.
In the mid-1920s, Pellicer went to Paris to study museography at the Sorbonne University, thanks to a scholarship. After spending three years in Europe, he returned to his country, and supported Vasconcelos' candidacy for the presidency. In 1929 they put him in jail for being a "Basque man".
After being released from jail, Carlos took refuge in writing and financially went through a bad time. In the early thirties, life smiled at him again after publishing his book Five poems. Later he began to work as a teacher at Secondary School No. 4.
Curiosity led the writer to the theater. In 1932 he joined the staging of the Orientación Theater, but his performance was terrible. After his brief stint on the stage, he brought to light Schemes for a tropical ode. At that time he combined teaching with writing.
Carlos Pellicer stood out for his impeccable work as a museologist, since his youth he was attracted to history and archeology. For a long time he was in charge of rescuing objects that had been lost during the colonization process and he dedicated himself to establishing museums.
It was precisely this passion that led him to put aside his more than twenty years of teaching. In the mid-fifties he spent almost two years reorganizing and designing the Tabasco museum, the result was successful. Later, they honored him by naming the gallery after him..
Pellicer spent the last years of his life focused on writing and organizing museums. From that time were the publications: News about Nezahualcóyotl Y Strings, percussion and breath. On September 1, 1976, he was elected senator to Congress for the Institutional Revolutionary Party..
The writer died on February 16, 1977 in Mexico City, he was eighty years old. He was buried in the Rotunda of Illustrious Persons in the Mexican capital. He has been honored on several occasions. Museums, schools, libraries, streets and avenues bear his name.
Carlos Pellicer's literary work was developed within the ranks of modernism and avant-garde. It was characterized by the use of a structured, precise and expressive language, its main literary resource was metaphor. He was a poet who wrote to nature and the world.
- Colors in the sea and other poems (1921).
- Sacrificial stone (1924).
- Six, seven poems (1924).
- June ode (1924).
- Hour and 20 (1927).
- Road (1929).
- Five poems (1931).
- Schemes for a tropical ode (1933).
- Stanzas to the marine sea (1934).
- June time (1937).
- Ara virginum (1940).
- Enclosure and other images (1941).
- Hexagons (1941).
- Speech for the flowers (1946).
- Subordinations (1949).
- Sonnets (1950).
- Flight practice (1956).
- Dealing with writers (1961).
- Poetic material 1918-1961 (1962).
- Two poems (1962).
- With words and fire (1962).
- Teotihuacán and August 13: Ruin of Tenochitlán (1965).
- Bolívar, popular biography essay (1966).
- News about Nezahualcóyotl and some feelings (1972).
- Strings, percussion and wind (1976).
- Little things for the birth (1978).
- Poetic work (nineteen eighty one).
- Letters from Italy (1985).
- Journey notebook (1987).
It was the first book of poems by this author, whose verses were originally published in some print media. The work was inspired by the nature of his native Tabasco and Campeche. Through a sensitive and expressive language he made an intense description of the sea.
“He launched the sea at the great cry of dawn
and it was dismantling the same as a ship.
I dilated my spirit, I became green, and in all
the beach was enchanted by foams and verve.
New decorations saw the world. The morning
gave me back my sweet apples. In the flower
At dawn, I scattered the Rose of the Winds:
To the North, to the South, to the East and to the West love.
… I planted the noble palm grove of your memory on the beach;
I erected you the obelisk of my white loyalty.
Under the palms and in front of the desert
I consecrated myself to the dawn of your immortality ".
It was Pellicer's second publication, and it was framed within an innovative literature. The play was about the natural world, but this time it was about a pilot's perception of America. The writer was inspired by the trips he made to Venezuela and Colombia in his younger years.
"America mine,
I touch you on the relief map
which is on my favorite table.
What things would I say to you
if i were your prophet!
Squeeze with all my hand
your harmonic geography.
My fingers caress your Andes
with a childish idolatry.
I know you all:
my heart has been like a piggy bank
in which I have cast your cities
like the currency of every day.
... You are the treasure
that a great soul left for my joys.
As much as I adore you they only know
the soaring nights that I have filled with you.
I live my youth in impatient courtship
like the good farmer waiting for his wheat ... ".
This work by Carlos Pellicer was conceived during his stay in Europe. The poems were the result of observations he made both of nature and of museums in Greece, the Middle East and Italy. It was an entertaining book, full of expressiveness and literary modernism..
"Groups of pigeons,
notes, clefs, rests, accidentals,
they modify the rhythm of the hill.
The one that is known litmus refines
the luminous wheels of his neck
with looking back at her neighbor.
Gives the sun the look
and drains in a single brushstroke
flight plan to peasant clouds.
The gray is a young foreigner
whose traveling clothes
they give an air of surprises to the landscape.
There is an almost black
who drinks splinters of water on a stone.
Then the beak is polished,
look at her nails, see those of the others,
open a wing and close it, jump
and stands under the roses ... ".
In this poetic work, the writer honored the memory and deeds of the indigenous character Cuauhtémoc. The verses are loaded with recognition, feelings and heroism. Pellicer reconfirmed with this poem his passion for the history and preservation of Mexican culture.
"I have the youth, the life
immortal of life.
Gather, my friend, your golden cup
to my silver cup. Win and laugh
youth! Turn up the tones
to the sweetness of the sweet lyre.
The poetry!
It's all in Einstein's hands.
But I can still pray the Hail Mary
reclining on my mother's chest.
I can still have fun with the cat and the music.
You can spend the afternoon.
… The ship has collided with the moon.
Our luggage suddenly lit up.
We all spoke in verse
and we were referring the most hidden facts.
But the moon went down
despite our romantic efforts ".
"I have spent my life with my eyes
in the hands and the speech in taste
color and volume and vase
of all the gardens in bundles.
With what agility I stole bolts!
He did not know the language.
and after geographic search
I bruised the blue from the red highs.
... Without my shadow my body corresponds
is that the silence happened between noises
and he has known how and where ".
"A while ago,
my mother and I stopped praying.
I went into my bedroom and opened the window.
The night moved deeply full of loneliness.
The sky falls on the dark garden
and the wind searches among the trees
the hidden star of darkness.
The night smells like open windows
and everything near me wants to talk.
I've never been closer to me than tonight:
the islands of my absences have taken me out of the depths
from sea.
... My mother is called Deifilia,
What does it mean, daughter of God, flower of all truth.
I'm thinking of her with such force
that I feel the swell of his blood in my blood
and in his eyes its luminosity.
My mother is cheerful and loves the countryside and the
rain,
and the complicated order of the city.
He has white hair, and the grace with which
walk
says of his health and agility ... ".
- "The poem is the greatest passionate declaration that a man can make to a hero: the most surrendered admiration in the midst of a sadness that would have wanted to be great".
- "Things by themselves handle their own rhetoric and their eloquence is their intrinsic heritage".
- “Nothing hurts us as much as finding a flower buried in the pages of a book. Reading is silent; and in our eyes, the sadness of love moistens the flower of an ancient tenderness ".
- “Without the present absence of a handkerchief the days go by in poor bunches. My willingness to be does not have a limit".
- "I read poems and you were so close to my voice that poetry was our unity and verse was just the remote pulsation of the flesh".
- “You are more my eyes because you see what in my eyes I carry from your life. And so I walk blind of myself illuminated by my eyes that burn with the fire of you ".
- "All in my eyes the nakedness of your presence shines".
- "I do not know how to walk except towards you, along the smooth path of looking at you".
- "I hardly know you and I already say to myself: Will he never know that his person exalts all that is in me of blood and fire?".
- "Let that door close that does not let me be alone with your kisses".
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