Ramón Gómez de la Serna y Puig (3 July 1888 in

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...

– 13 January 1963 in

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

) was a Spanish writer, dramatist and

avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretica ...

agitator. He strongly influenced

surrealist Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to ...

film maker

Luis Buñuel Luis Buñuel Portolés (; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish-Mexican filmmaker who worked in France, Mexico, and Spain. He has been widely considered by many film critics, historians, and directors to be one of the greatest and ...

. Ramón Gómez de la Serna was especially known for "

Greguería In Spanish and Latin American literature, a is a short statement, usually one sentence, in which the author expresses a philosophical, pragmatic, or humorous idea in a witty and original way. A ''greguería'' is roughly similar to an aphorism o ...

", a short form of poetry that roughly corresponds to the one-liner in comedy. The Gregueria is especially able to grant a new and often humorous perspective. Serna published over 90 works in all literary genres. In 1933, he was invited to

. He stayed there during the

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlism, Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebeli ...

and the following

Spanish State Francoist Spain ( es, España franquista), or the Francoist dictatorship (), was the period of Spanish history between 1939 and 1975, when Francisco Franco ruled Spain after the Spanish Civil War with the title . After his death in 1975, Spai ...

and died there.

Biography

Born into an upper-middle-class family, Gómez de la Serna refused to follow his father into law or politics and soon adopted the marginal lifestyle of a bohemian bourgeois artist, writing for the journal '' Prometeo'', funded by his father between 1908 and 1912. In April 1909 Gómez de la Serna published the

manifesto of futurism The ''Manifesto of Futurism'' (Italian language, Italian: ''Manifesto del Futurismo'') is a manifesto written by the Italians, Italian poetry, poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and published in 1909. Marinetti expresses an artistic philosophy called ...

in the magazine which was translated by him into Spanish. During the First World War, Gómez became Spain's chief exponent of avant-garde writing, establishing a base in the literary ''tertulia'' he founded at the centre of Madrid. This was Spain's most famous contribution to what

Roger Shattuck Roger Whitney Shattuck (August 20, 1923 in Manhattan, New York – December 8, 2005 in Lincoln, Vermont) was an American writer best known for his books on French literature, French art, art, and French classical music, music of the twentieth centu ...

has called ''"the banquet years"''. But behind the self-publicizing avant-garde antics, Gómez developed not only an extravagant public persona, but also his own equivalent of what Shattuck defines as a "reversal of consciousness", deliberately divesting himself of conventional ways of thinking and being in order to adopt a peculiarly innovative way of looking at the world, one which influenced the younger 1927 generation of poets (as

Luis Cernuda Luis Cernuda Bidón (September 21, 1902 – November 5, 1963) was a Spanish poet, a member of the Generation of '27. During the Spanish Civil War, in early 1938, he went to the UK to deliver some lectures and this became the start of an exile t ...

has explained). The six or so remarkable books he published from 1914 to 1918 – ''El Rastro'' (The Flea-Market), ''El Doctor Inverosímil'' (The Improbable Doctor), ''Greguerías'' (Greguerias), ''Senos'' (Breasts), ''Pombo'' (Pombo), and ''El circo'' (The Circus) – illustrate most of his main characteristics: his search for a new fragmentary genre of short prose poems (giving them the arbitrary name of ''greguerías''), his exaltation of trivial everyday objects, his emphasis on eroticism, his exuberant self-projection and exclusive dedication to art, his playful humour, his contemplative secular mysticism, and above all his cult of the image, especially witty surprising images. These abound in all his works, especially his many, utterly idiosyncratic and textually pleasurable novels, such as the first real one ''La viuda blanca y negra'' (The Black and White Widow), written in 1921, inspired by his relationship with the early feminist writer,

Carmen de Burgos Carmen de Burgos y Seguí (pseudonyms, Colombine, Gabriel Luna, Perico el de los Palotes, Raquel, Honorine and Marianela; Almería, December 10, 1867 – Madrid, October 9, 1932) was a Spanish journalist, writer, translator and women's rights ac ...

. It was in fact the ''greguerías'' that first attracted the attention of

Valery Larbaud Valery Larbaud (29 August 1881 – 2 February 1957) was a French writer and poet. Life He was born in Vichy, the only child of a pharmacist. His father died when he was 8, and he was brought up by his mother and aunt. His father had been owne ...

, who in the 1920s soon had him translated into French. Within Spain, though his work often provoked controversy and sometimes hostility, one of his most eminent defenders was

José Ortega y Gasset José Ortega y Gasset (; 9 May 1883 – 18 October 1955) was a Spanish philosopher and essayist. He worked during the first half of the 20th century, while Spain oscillated between monarchy, republicanism, and dictatorship. His philosoph ...

. Subsequently, unorganized consensus in mainstream

Hispanism Hispanism (sometimes referred to as Hispanic studies or Spanish studies) is the study of the literature and culture of the Spanish-speaking world, principally that of Spain and Hispanic America. It can also entail studying Spanish language a ...

deemed Gómez's work to have been overrated. Gómez's lack of commitment during the Republic, followed by his declaration of support for Franco after self-exile to his younger, Jewish wife's flat in Buenos Aires at the outbreak of civil war, led to ostracism and neglect. Despite still producing some of the most original works in Spanish of the twentieth century – the existential-surrealist novel ''El hombre perdido'' (The Lost Man) (1947) and his autobiography ''Automoribundia'' (Automoribund) 948– his life in exile was one of pathetic isolation and increasing poverty, neither of which were helped by the knowledge that he had left behind (and in 1947 donated to the Spanish State) the painting of the Pombo Tertulia by Gutiérrez-Solana (now given pride of place in Madrid's

Reina Sofia Museum Reina (the Spanish word for queen) or La Reina may refer to: Geography * Reina, Badajoz, a municipality in the province of Badajoz, Extremadura, Spain * Reina, Estonia, a village in Saaremaa Parish, Saare County, Estonia * La Reina, a commune ...

), in addition to the cubist portrait of him painted in 1915 by

Diego Rivera Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez, known as Diego Rivera (; December 8, 1886 – November 24, 1957), was a prominent Mexican painter. His large frescoes helped establish the ...

(which was lost during the civil war, but has apparently resurfaced). On 13 January 1963 Gómez died from natural causes. In a letter to one of his companions, he mentions acknowledging his imminent death and welcomed it. Despite the decline in Gómez's reputation, two notable voices in particular declared their admiration:

Octavio Paz Octavio Paz Lozano (March 31, 1914 – April 19, 1998) was a Mexican poet and diplomat. For his body of work, he was awarded the 1977 Jerusalem Prize, the 1981 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1982 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and ...

, who wrote the following in a letter to ''Papeles de Son Armadans'' in 1967: 'Para mí es el gran escritor español: el Escritor o, mejor, la Escritura. Comparto la admiración, el fanatismo, de Larbaud: yo también habría aprendido el español sólo para leerlo’ (For me he is the great Spanish writer: ''the'' Writer, or rather, Writing. I share Larbaud’s admiration, his fanaticism: I also would have learned Spanish just to read him), and

Pablo Neruda Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973), better known by his pen name and, later, legal name Pablo Neruda (; ), was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. Nerud ...

, who in his prologue to Ramón's ''Obras selectas'' (Selected Works) (1971) claimed that 'la gran figura del surrealismo, entre todos los países, ha sido Ramón' (the major figure of surrealism, in any country, has been Ramón). His works have been published in 20 volumes by Círculo de Lectores/Galaxia Gutenberg (Barcelona), edited by Ioana Zlotescu.

Works

*''El circo'' ''Translations into English:'' *''Aphorisms'', trans. by Miguel Gonzalez-Gerth (Pittsburgh: Latin American Literary Review Press, 1989) *''Dalí'', trans. by Nicholas Fry (New York: Park Lane,

979 Year 979 ( CMLXXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Byzantine Empire * March 24 – Second Battle of Pankaleia: An Ibero-Byzantine expeditionary ...

*''Eight Novellas'', trans. by Herlinda Charpentier Saitz and Robert L. Saitz (New York: Lang, 2005) *''Greguerías: The Wit and Wisdom of Ramón Gómez de la Serna'', trans. by Philip Ward (Cambridge: Oleander Press, 1982) *''Movieland'', trans. by Angel Flores (New York: Macaulay, 1930; new edition: Arlington, MA: Tough Poets Press, 2022) *''Some Greguerías'', trans. by Helen Granville-Barker (New York: . pub.printed by Rudge's Sons, 1944)

References

Citations

* An earlier version of this article by Alan Hoyle first appeared in a special number ('Marginals and Megalomaniacs') of ''Aura: A Journal of the Avant-Garde'', no. 3 (Summer 1995), 51–53, ed. by Jeremy Stubbs and Andrew Hussey, and published in the Department of French, University of Manchester.

External links

The Ramón Gómez de la Serna Papers collection at the University of Pittsburgh

Ramón Gómez de la Serna
hosts the internet journal ''BoletínRAMÓN'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Gomez De La Serna, Ramon 1888 births 1963 deaths Spanish people of the Spanish Civil War (National faction) Writers from Madrid Spanish male dramatists and playwrights 20th-century Spanish dramatists and playwrights 20th-century Spanish male writers

Biography

Works

References

Citations

Further reading

External links