Juan Ramon Jimenez: Life and Poetic Evolution

Juan Ramon Jimenez: Important Chronology of Events in His Life

• 1881: Born in Moguer (Huelva).
• 1900: Moved to Madrid "to fight for modernism," invited by Villaespesa and Ruben Dario.
• 1901: Suffered a bout of depression after the death of his father. He was admitted to a mental hospital in France.
• 1905: He moved to Moguer, still living in isolation from the world, which is reflected in his book, *Platero and I*.
• 1911: Returned to Madrid, where he stayed at the Residencia de Estudiantes.
• 1916: Married Zenobia Camprubi in New York. Published *Diary of a Newlywed*. Lived in Madrid until the beginning of the Civil War.
• 1936: Left Spain.
• 1951: Settled permanently in Puerto Rico.
• 1956: Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Death of his wife.
• 1958: Died in Puerto Rico.

Poetic Theory

Juan Ramon Jimenez perfectly represents the poet devoted entirely to his artistic work. For him, there is nothing beyond literary creation. His life is defined by isolation from everything else. Regarding the author's poetic thought, we highlight three key ideas:

a) His is a minority poetry of increasing difficulty. It is a difficult, hermetic poetry.

b) Work in progress. Juan Ramon saw his poetic creation as something never finished, hence he continuously returned to old poems and retouched, changed, or eliminated them.

c) Poetry is defined as a triple desire for beauty, knowledge, and eternity.

Poetic Evolution

The life of Juan Ramon was a constant search for the perfect poetic word and expression. This fact explains the constant changes in tone, theme, and style of his later poems. Much later, J. Ramon reduced his poetic evolution to three phases, although we will make distinctions within each period:

1. Sensitive Period (until approximately 1915)

Within this era, various periods are distinguished:

1.1 Early Poems (approximately 1900)

This is a learning period, and the poems are full of memories and influences of the poetic models of the time:

• Romantic sentimentality in the style of Becquer.
• Early modernist aestheticism.

1.2 Simplicity (between 1903 and 1907)

Juan Ramon now writes poetry in simple forms, away from canonical modernism. The characteristics of this moment are:

• The influence of symbolism and its techniques.
• Themes such as loneliness, melancholy, sadness, and death.
• Very simple metrics, predominantly octosyllabic verses with assonance and very simple rhyme.

The poetry of this period is very similar to that of A. Machado in those years in *Soledades*. It fits within what is called postmodernism.