Pedro Salinas Serrano (1891-1951) was a renowned Spanish writer who expressed his thoughts and ideas through literary genres such as essays and poetry. He was part of the Generation of 27, a group that sought the maximum balance between the traditional and the innovative in Spanish literature.
Serrano stood out for his interest in making poetry free, both in rhyme and rhythm. Not in vain the writer Federico García Lorca asserted that if he was a poet because of divine power, he was also a poet because of his skill and passion. He was one of the most outstanding poets of his time.
The work of this poet is usually divided into three stages. In each of these he made the concept that he developed about poetry coincide: he affirmed that poetry was a path to truth in which beauty, inspiration and naturalness were the pillars of his creation..
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Pedro Salinas was born on November 27, 1891 in the city of Madrid. His parents were Pedro Salinas Elmos, a merchant; and Soledad Serrano Fernández. The father of the future poet died when he was just six years old.
The first years of academic training for Pedro Salinas were at the Colegio Hispano Francés, and later at the Instituto de San Isidro..
In his younger years he enrolled at the University of Madrid to study law. Later he withdrew to study arts and philosophy.
Salinas began to write from his youth. At the age of twenty he had the opportunity to publish his first poems in the magazine Prometheus.
In 1913, at the age of twenty-three, he was part of the Ateneo de Madrid; It was there where, in the company of several colleagues, he proposed a greater use of free verse, without metrics.
For a time Salinas went to Paris to work at the Sorbonne University. In that period he met and married the one who was his life partner for more than three decades: the young Margarita Bonmatí Botella. As a result of the marriage, Soledad and Jaime Salinas were born.
While the couple lived in France, the writer had the opportunity to translate the works of the Frenchman Marcel Proust.
However, not everything was favorable. Salinas was unfaithful to his wife with the American Katherine Whitmore, with whom he maintained a relationship through letters for a long time. Because of this affair, Pedro's wife tried to commit suicide.
Whitmore later married and she and the poet lost contact, but they saw each other shortly before the Spaniard's death. The American authorized her correspondence with Salinas to be published 20 years after the poet's death.
After his stay in France, the poet returned to his native land. In 1918 he managed to become a professor at the University of Seville and was so for almost eleven years. He also served as a professor of Spanish at the University of Cambridge.
Some time later, in 1930, he began to teach at the Language School of the Spanish capital and it was in that decade when he managed to found the magazine Literary index. He was also part of the Center for Historical Studies.
When the Spanish civil war broke out in 1936, Salinas was in Santander. There he saw the opportunity to flee to France, and then go to the United States as an exile. In the north he worked at Wellesley College and Johns Hopkins.
During the time he lived in North America, he received an invitation to work at the University of Puerto Rico, specifically in 1943. Five years later, on December 4, 1951, he died in the city of Boston. His remains were buried in the Puerto Rican capital.
Pedro Salinas was one of those writers of phases, of periods, probably influenced by personal experiences or by the need to innovate within his area, always focused on perfection. The three characteristic stages of his work are described below:
This stage includes the years of youth of Salinas; It goes from 1923 to 1932. The poet was strongly influenced by the work of the Spanish writer Juan Ramón Jiménez and his so-called pure poetry, which consisted in seeking the essence of words and in rejecting rhetoric.
In this cycle Pedro Salinas was preparing for his next phase. This he did looking for his poetry to be perfect and, at the same time, that love was the central theme. Omens, Random insurance, Y Fable and sign were the works that emerged in this stage.
It includes from 1933 to 1939. It is considered the stage of fullness because it corresponds to the time of his romance with Katherine Whitmore; therefore love was the main theme again. The voice due to you, Love reason Y Long regret belonged to this stage.
This phase ran from 1940 to 1951. The sea of the city of San Juan in Puerto Rico inspired him to write The contemplated. The war also motivated him, so he expressed his dissatisfaction with nuclear weapons through his work Zero.
The works of Pedro Salinas were characterized by a constant presence of love and finesse. In addition to this, he played with the alliance between the intellect and the emotions, which made his poetry natural and spontaneous. His verses were simple and often free.
His main poetic works were the following:
- Omen (1923).
- Random insurance (1929).
- Fable and sign (1931).
- The voice due to you (1933).
- Love reason (1936).
- Poetry together (1942).
- The contemplated (1946).
- Everything clearer and other poems (1949).
After his death, his Complete poems (1955-1956).
In the case of the narrative, the following works stood out:
- Modernized version of the song of Mio Cid (1926).
- Eve of joy (1926).
- The incredible bomb (1950).
- The flawless nude and other narratives (1951).
In 1998 a publication of his complete works in this literary genre was made.
As a good essayist that he was, he published the following works:
- Spanish literature. Twentieth century (1940).
- Jorge Manrique or tradition and originality (1947).
- The poetry of Rubén Darío (1948).
In 2002 a Madrid publishing house published the work The defender.
Salinas also wrote for theater. In this literary genre the following works stood out:
- Director (1936).
- They and their sources (1943).
- The island of the treasure (1944).
- The head of the medusa (1945).
- About insurance (1945).
- Cain or a scientific glory (1945).
- The fountain of the archangel (1946).
- The price (1947).
- The blackmailer (1947).
Most of the translations made by Pedro Salinas were related to the works of the Frenchman Marcel Proust.
- Down the swann road (1920).
- In the shadow of the girls in bloom (1922).
- The world of Guermantes (1931).
This work by Salinas belongs to its initial stage. He wrote it motivated by his mentor, the also Spanish writer and poet Juan Ramón Jiménez. It was conceived under the parameters of what became known as pure poetry.
In the first part you can see the balance and harmony. Later the poetry of contradictory content arises; In this context he expressed the sufferings and put in evidence the opposition of things: he is the man upset. In the work the writer made special use of nouns and adverbs.
"The barren land, no tree
no mountain, the dry sky,
orphan of cloud or bird;
so still the two, so alone ...
The earth is already down here
and the sky up there,
already the plain is immense
and the little walker ".
This work is part of the trilogy about love that Pedro Salinas began to write in his prime stage. The saga was shaped by the titles Love reason Y Long regret.
With this work the author sought the expression of love, the encounter and discovery of the woman who loves herself.
It is known that the central theme of the book stems from the reality of the writer. While still married, Salinas fell in love with an American student with whom he had a long-standing relationship through letters.
The work is composed of about seventy poems. The poet did not organize them; therefore the structure lacks an enum itself.
The rhythm of reading leads to joy, passion and restlessness. For the poet, love is the greatest force.
"I love you pure, free
irreducible: you.
I know that when I call you
among all people
of the world,
only you, will be you.
And when you ask me
who is the one that calls you,
the one who wants you his,
i will bury the names,
the labels, the story.
I will go breaking everything
what they threw at me
since before birth.
And back to the anonymous
eternal of the nude,
of the stone, of the world,
I'll tell you:
I love you, it's me ".
Love reason was published after The voice due to you. This work expresses the emotions and feelings that the author experienced after meeting with the loved one, which, at the same time, was the beginning of a farewell that he knew was permanent..
Unrequited love is evident in the poems; in this case, the love that the protagonist Jeremías feels for Matilda. The tragedy comes when the lover goes to strange sources to consummate their love and both end up taking their lives.
"Sometimes one does not deny
more than I wanted, it becomes multiple.
It is said no, I will not go
and infinite plots unravel
woven by yeses slowly,
the promises that nobody made us are denied
but ourselves, in the ear.
Every brief minute refused
-Was it fifteen, was it thirty?-
It expands in endless numbers, it's been centuries,
and a no, not tonight
can deny the eternity of nights,
pure eternity.
How difficult to know where it hurts
a no! Innocently
a non-pure comes from pure lips;
without stain, or love
to hurt, goes through the air ".
With The incredible bomb Pedro Salinas protested against the causes and consequences of the Cold War and rejected the use of arms with the population. In addition, it reflected the fear of society in such situations.
Salinas described the environment of the play as a non-existent country on an island, where there was a state that appeared to be kind to its inhabitants but was actually preparing to slap it. A bomb in the museum of peace is what gives rise to the name of history.
In the story, the incredible bomb begins to blow a kind of bubbles after the blows of a police man who is amazed after the appearance of the artifact in the place. With this description the author made an analogy about the drama and pain that citizens suffer from a country at war.
The inhabitants of the country invented by Salinas are forced to leave the nation because the situation becomes untenable. Such bubbles take over the place and life becomes impossible.
The work of Pedro Salinas suggests a tireless search for love: in this feeling the author found beauty and poetry itself. This is how he summarized it with his statement: "I have always had such a strong desire for love, that is why I have been a poet".
Salinas knew how to unite feelings and intelligence. He managed to make these ingenious conceptions that resulted in a unique poetic work. In addition, he knew how to reach the reader through short verses and in many cases discarding the structuralism of rhyme: this author opted for free poetry.
Pedro Salinas became one of the highest representatives of the Generation of 27. His works, always clean, perfect and sober, earned him the place of great among the greats..
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