FIL Program 2024 Program Search
Spain, Guest of Honor
Guest of Honor Pavilion
Meetings (and misunderstandings). Luis Cernuda y Xavier Villaurrutia
Guest of Honor Pavilion
Meetings (and misunderstandings). Luis Cernuda y Xavier Villaurrutia
In 1952, Luis Cernuda (1902-1963), weary of life in the United States, with no intellectual or personal incentives, went to Mexico, where he began working part-time at UNAM. Cernuda's years in Mexico were the most fruitful of his life. Here he would find the warmth of the people and the color of a landscape so reminiscent of the Seville he had been forcibly exiled from, first to England, then France, later the United States and finally to Mexico, where he died. In Variaciones sobre tema mexicano, the poet talks about his experience and his reclaimed childhood. The death of the multifaceted Xavier Villaurrutia, also a poet, two years before Cernuda's arrival frustrated the opportunity to hold a personal meeting that would have very likely been mediated by Octavio Paz, a friend of both poets. The work of Cernuda, who was part of the Generation of '27, and the poetry of Villaurrutia, founder, together with Salvador Novo, of the group and magazine Contemporáneos, have interesting overlaps both in the themes they cover in their verses and in their aesthetic and formal concerns. Love and death, homosexuality and the human condition. Their verses are not devoid of social criticism, mainly against the conventions of a rigid and hypocritical bourgeoisie. Both were advocates of the independence of art. The two also embraced surrealism, a rich realm of dreams and a perfect canvas for exploring eroticism. While the exiled Cernuda did not hide Los placeres prohibidos, Villaurrutia suffered the attacks and permanent exclusion by adherents to the nationalist and sexist cultural policy of the Alvaro Obregón government, although the author of Nocturno de los ángeles found in poetry a place that was conducive to "open confession." At this discussion, our guests, also poets, will make it possible for Cernuda and Villaurrutia to meet at last.
Participants: Hernán Bravo Varela, Antonio Rivero Taravillo
Moderator: Àngels Gregori
Wednesday, December 04
17:00 to 17:50