University professor, decorated poet, world traveler, and noted friend to burros: Juan Ramón Jiménez was quite the renaissance man. Being as such, it wouldn't come as much of a surprise if he a hit with the ladies back in his day, but true gentlemen take their knowledge of such liaisons to the grave.
The verses would be no more than the erotic, if masterful, outpourings of a prodigious poet and Nobel laureate were it not for the fact that they appear to talk of his amatory adventures with a series of nuns. But now that a Spanish publishing company has decided it is time to publish the erotic musings of Juan Ramón Jiménez, an outraged order of nuns has asked for his poems to be silenced.
As if anyone needed more proof that Spaniards are awesome. Any old erudite writer can pen an epic about their collected orgiastic love affairs, but it takes a real forward-thinker to get down at a convent. Undaunted, our young Jiménez made the hospital of just such a place the scene his crimes, spending two years all laid-up in more ways than one. (Hey-o!)
Jiménez, who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1956, two years before he died, is believed to have become involved with at least three nuns from the Sisters of the Holy Rosary congregation. The three worked at a nursing home run by the order in Madrid, where the young poet spent two years at the beginning of the last century. He later described the period between 1901 and 1903 when, on doctor's orders, he was cared for by the nuns, as the "happiest of my life".
And how! But wait, there's more:
Jiménez, whose neurotic fear of sudden death meant he always needed to be near a doctor, stayed as a privileged guest at the nursing home. He had gone there after suddenly leaving a psychiatric hospital in France where he had been staying in the director's house and appeared to have embarked on a red-blooded affair with his wife - who also features in the poems.
What a guy! So now this Spanish publisher thinks that the time has finally come to put this set of poems out there (the only reason no one had before was out of respect for Jiménez's wife), and needless to say, the Sisters of the Holy Rosary are a little nonplussed. First of all, there's the issue of tarnish on the good Sisters' name. Then, of course, there's the gray area of libel, as he refers to his hospital bed friends by name. Even José Antonio Expósito, editor of this forthcoming volume, has conceded that, kind of like any good fiction, it's impossible to really tell where the truth ends and fantasies begin.
"They were young, like him," said Mr Exposito... "We cannot say exactly what their relationship was."
Naturally, the poems will have to speak for themselves as they are, just poetry, whether they're true or just a way to fight boredom and let off some steam whilst in a psych ward for two years. When it comes to Nobel Laureate stature writers, would one truth make the poems any less good than another? Either way, I've got to admit I'm not too familiar with his work, but after the reading this article has provoked, I for one am pretty eager to check it out.
Read his book Platero and I. Platero is his donkey or burro and alter ego. It takes place in the village or town of Moguer in Andalusia Spain. It is beautifully illustrated also. It is one of my favorite little boooks of all time.
chrissteele said:
Read his book Platero and I. Platero is his donkey or burro and alter ego. It takes place in the village or town of Moguer in Andalusia Spain. It is beautifully illustrated also. It is one of my favorite little boooks of all time.
Sure, sure, donkeys and such. But the dude nailed nuns!!!!!
_DictionaryGirl_
NEWSWIRE
San Diego, CA
JUN 20, 2007 06:11 PM