Juan Ramón Jiménez
Facts
Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.
Juan Ramón Jiménez
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1956
Born: 24 December 1881, Moguer, Spain
Died: 29 May 1958, San Juan, Puerto Rico
Residence at the time of the award: Spain
Prize motivation: “for his lyrical poetry, which in Spanish language constitutes an example of high spirit and artistical purity”
Language: Spanish
Prize share: 1/1
Life
Juan Ramón Jimenez was educated in a Jesuit boarding school and then studied law in Seville, but he did not finish his studies. Jimenez was a poet, literary critic and editor of a literary magazine. In 1917 he married Zenobia Camprubí, a poet and translator. After the Spanish Civil War, he left Spain to stay in Cuba for a couple of years, then went to the United States and finally settled in Puerto Rico, where he became a professor of Spanish literature at the University of Puerto Rico.
Work
Juan Ramón Jiménez belonged to the modernist literary movement, whose leader, Rubén Darío, helped arrange publication of Jiménez’s first poetry collection, Almas de violeta (1900) (Souls of Violet). His early poetry was inspired by German romanticism and French symbolism. It is visual and full of imagery and predominated by the colors yellow and green. Then he turned to poetic prose in which the color white predominates; this is clearly evident in Diario de un poeta recién casado (Diary of a Newly-Wed Poet). Jimenez worked as a poet, literary critic and editor of a literary magazine.
Streams during Nobel Week
