Juan Ramón Jiménez: Life, Poetic Theory, and Evolution

Juan Ramón Jiménez

Chronology of Key Life Events

• 1881: Born in Moguer (Huelva).
• 1900: Moves to Madrid, called by Villaespesa and Rubén Darío.
• 1901: Suffers a depressive crisis following the death of his father. Interned in a mental hospital.
• 1905: Moves back to Moguer due to depression. Lives there in isolation, which is reflected in Platero y yo.
• 1911: Returns to Madrid, residing at the Residencia de Estudiantes.
• 1916: Marries Zenobia Camprubí in New York. Publishes Diary of a Newly Married Poet. Lives in Madrid until the Civil War.
• 1936: Abandons Spain due to the Civil War. Travels to American countries.
• 1951: Settles in Puerto Rico.
• 1956: Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. His wife dies shortly thereafter.
• 1958: Dies in Puerto Rico.

Poetic Theory

Juan Ramón Jiménez represents the poet entirely devoted to his artistic work. Three key ideas define his thinking and are essential to understanding his works:

1. Poetry for the Minority: Poetry is difficult and aimed at the few ("In the minority, always").
2. Work in Progress: He considered his work to be in constant creation, hence his frequent revision and retouching of older poems.
3. The Triple Desire: Poetry is defined by the triple desire for beauty, knowledge, and eternity. This desire is identified with beauty, perfection, Nature, and God.

Poetic Evolution

His life was a constant search for perfect poetic expression, which explains the changes in tone, theme, and style. He attempted to explain this evolution in a poem in 1918, later reducing his development into three distinct phases:

The Sensitive Era (Until 1915)

This period includes several distinct moments:

• Early Poems (Until 1900): A learning period. Poems are full of memories and influences: romantic scenography, Bécquerian sentimentality, and canonical modernist aesthetics.
• First Simplicity (1903–1907): Poetry of simpler forms, moving away from Canonical Modernism. Characteristics include symbolism, themes of loneliness, melancholy, sadness, time, and death. Metric often uses octosyllable verse with assonance and simple language. This phase aligns with Postmodernism.
• Canonical Modernism (1908–1915): Strong influence of canonical modernist aesthetics. Attempts to communicate sensory content through abundant adjectives, long verse, and complex metric and rhyme. Also includes poems of an easier tone (e.g., "Spring Yellow").

The Intellectual Era (1916–1936)

The publication of Diary of a Newly Married Poet in 1916 marked a radical change in his poetry. Key characteristics of this new phase:

• A move away from aestheticism.
• Fewer adjectives and simplified vocabulary.
• Elimination of the superficial and anecdotal in favor of conceptual and emotional concentration.
• Short poems and short verse, often based on free metric.
• Evocations of the past disappear, replaced by a continuous present.
• Dominant theme: Literary creation as the ultimate goal, often equating the poet with God the creator.

The Essential Era (1936–1958)

Poetry becomes increasingly essential and bare, leading to greater difficulty for the reader. Characteristics include:

• Content concentrated as much as possible.
• Symbols become increasingly difficult to understand.
• Predominant theme: God identified with nature, perfection, and beauty. This is not a religious concept but an artistic one.