ERNESTINA DE CHAMPOURCÍN: BIOGRAPHY, STYLE AND WORKS - LITERATURE - 2025

Ernestina de Champourcín Morán de Loredo (1905-1999) was a Spanish poet belonging to the well-known Generation of 27. She was on the list of Las Sinsombrero, which was the way they called the intellectual and thinker women of the aforementioned literary movement.

Champourcín's work was characterized by contrasting liveliness with depth, as well as being simple and rhythmic. The clarity with which she wrote allowed for easy understanding by the public, at the same time she bare her soul and that made her closer to the reader.

Ernestina de Champourcín, on the left. Source: Edith Checa, via Wikimedia Commons

Ernestina, like many writers of her time, had to go into exile. This experience drastically changed her life and her literary work. As of her departure from Spain, the content of her work became more spiritual, and of high religious content.

Biography

Birth and family

Ernestina was born on June 10, 1905 in Vitoria. Her family enjoyed a good socioeconomic level, in addition she was studied, conservative and religious. Her parents were Antonio Michels de Champourcín, a lawyer, and Ernestina Morán de Loredo Castellanos, originally from Montevideo, Uruguay.

Champourcín Education

The fact that she came from a cultured and studied family gave her access to a quality education from a very young age. Her teaching included learning other languages. Her early formative years were spent in her hometown.

In 1915, when he was ten years old, he moved with his family to Madrid. There he began to study at the Colegio del Sagrado Corazón, and also received instruction from private teachers. He then went on to study high school at the Instituto Cardenal Cisneros.

Desire for university studies

At the end of high school, Ernestina de Champourcín wanted to pursue university studies. However, her father objected, despite the intervention of her mother, who offered to accompany her to classes. However, the poet had to accept the parental decision, so she took refuge in reading and writing.

At that time he began to write his first poems in French, and that is how he decided to start in the world of literature, beginning by reading great writers such as Víctor Hugo, Valle-Inclán, San Juan de la Cruz, Rubén Darío, Amado Nervo and, especially, Juan Ramón Jiménez.

First poems

Champourcín's first poems were published in 1923, in magazines such as La Libertad, Manantial and Cartagena Ilustrada. With the development and promotion of her first works, Ernestina began to interact with personalities in literature, she even became part of the Lyceum Club Femenino in 1926.

While the poet was in charge of coordinating and developing the literary activities within the women's club, she also published In Silence. The aforementioned work was sent to her admired Juan Ramón Jiménez, in order for her to evaluate it.

Consolidation as a writer and poet

Ernestina did not receive a response from Ramón Jiménez after sending him In Silence. However, some time later she met him in person, that's how the friendship arose, and Ernestina received his teachings; the poet directed her to read English authors such as John Keats and William Yeats.

Instituto Cardenal Cisneros, where the poet studied. Source: Luis García, via Wikimedia Commons

The writer had reached consolidation, and in 1927 she began to write literary criticisms in newspapers such as La Época and El Heraldo de Madrid. The main themes were pure and new poetry. A year later her collection of poems Now came out.

Love and time before the Civil War

Ernestina's professional and literary life remained active and growing. In 1930 she met Juan José Domenchina, a writer from the Generation of 27, with whom she began a love relationship. On November 6, 1936, the couple got married.

Shortly after the Spanish Civil War began, the writer published the novel La casa de Frente. The work was about the education and training of the girls of the high society of her time. In the manuscript, in addition, the writer outlined her feminist ideas and thoughts.

Poet's exile

During the war, Ernestina collaborated as a nurse for the orphaned children who were in charge of Juan Ramón Jiménez and his wife Zenobia Camprubi. Then the writer joined the corps of nurses at a hospital, in the face of conflicts with some soldiers.

Soon she and her husband had to leave Spain. At first they arrived in France, until in 1939 they settled in Mexico; At that time she worked as a translator and interpreter, while also publishing articles for some magazines.

The years spent abroad were not easy. The marriage presented financial problems. In addition, she and her husband had not been able to conceive children, and that, among other things, clouded Domenchina's life until her death.

Return to Spain and death

Despite the vicissitudes that Ernestina went through in exile, she also managed to make her literary work boom. She published works such as spiritual Hai-kais, Closed letters and Poems of being and being. Then, in 1972, she returned to her homeland, but it was not easy, so many years abroad required a period of adaptation.

In fact, she felt strange in her own country, the feelings were stoked and the loneliness along the years were felt. Around that time she wrote First Exile, All the Islands and Presence of the Past Fled. She passed away due to age-related complications on March 27, 1999.

Style

Ernestina Champourcín's literary work was characterized by having a simple and easily understood language. Her poetry was written with passion, and she enjoyed being deep and concrete. She was influenced by the readings she made, and especially by Juan Ramón Jiménez.

Her first writings were avant-garde and modernist, but the experience of exile led her to a writing oriented to religiosity. Scholars divide her work into three stages related to love: the human, the divine, and the meaning.

Plays

Poetry

First stage: human love

Champourcín's works from this stage correspond to the time prior to the Spanish Civil War in 1936. They were characterized at first by late romanticism and some modernist features, later he manifested the influence of Juan Ramón Jiménez with his pure poetry.

Poetic works belonging to this stage

- In silence (1926).

- Now (1928).

- The voice in the wind (1931).

Juan Ramón Jiménez, friend and mentor of the writer. Source: See page for author, via Wikimedia Commons

- Canticle useless (1936).

Fragment of In Silence (1926)

“It was a beautiful silence, a divine silence, vibrant with thoughts, trembling with emotion, a very serious silence, of feeling a pilgrim, a very quiet silence, with hints of prayer.

Shut up; I already know that your lips murmur

infinite tenderness, created for me;

shut up; without speaking a thousand voices whisper them, shut up; silence brings me closer to you ”.

Fragment of The voice in the wind (1931)

"My eyes in the wind!

What will my eyes look at

already loose in the air?

Subject goes the space

between my two pupils.

I, naked limit

I have to gird it all

until it is immobile

in the eternal chalice

of the perfect rose… ".

Second stage: divine love

The beginning of this stage corresponded to the first years of exile, where Champourcín wrote and produced little. That pause was due to the fact that he dedicated himself to working to be able to survive, however, the writings of that time had a high religious content.

Poetic works belonging to this stage

- Presence in the dark (1952).

- The name you gave me (1960).

- Prison of the senses (1964).

- Spiritual Hai-kais (1967).

- Closed letters (1968).

- Poems of being and being (1972).

Fragment of The Name You Gave Me (1960)

"I don't know my name…

You know it, Lord.

you know the name

what's in your heart

and it's only mine;

the name that your love

will give me forever

if I respond to your voice… ”.

Third stage: mor sense

This period belonged to his return to Spain. The works that Ernestina wrote between 1978 and 1991 arose from the difficulty that the writer had to reconnect her homeland. That poetry was nostalgic, full of memories related to people and places, it was characterized by being more personal.

Poetic works belonging to this stage

- First exile (1978).

- Christmas Poems (1983).

- The transparent wall (1984).

- All the islands fled (1988).

- Poetic Anthology (1988).

- Ernestina de Champourcín (1991).

- The frustrated encounters (1991).

- Poetry through time (1991).

- Then the following titles followed:

- From the void and its gifts (1993).

- Presence of the past, 1994-1995 (1996).

- Canticle useless, Closed letters, First exile, All the islands fled (1997).

- Essential poetry (2008).

Fragment of First Exile (1978)

"If you tear down the wall

What joy everywhere.

What a loop of words

You will feel on the ground

And everything will be new

As a newborn… ”.

Novels

- The house opposite (1936).

- María de Magdala (1943).

Translations

- Sonnets from the Portuguese (1942). By Elizabeth Browning.

- The scorpion god. Three short novels. (1973). From the Nobel Prize winner: William Golding.

- Selected work of the author Emily Dickinson (1946).

- Tales of Edgar Allan Poe (1971).

- Diary V: 1947-1955 by Anais Nin (1985).

- The air and dreams (1943). From the author Gaston Bachelard.

- Shamanism and the archaic techniques of ecstasy (1951). By Romanian Mircea Eliade.

Others

- Epistolary, 1927-1955 (2007).

Awards and recognition for Ernestina Champourcín

Ernestina Champourcín's literary work was recognized many years later in her native Spain. The following were some of the awards he was awarded:

- Euskadi Prize for Literature in Spanish in its poetry modality (1989).

- Progressive Women Award (1991).

- Nomination for the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature (1992).

- Medal for Artistic Merit of the Madrid City Council (1997).

References

1. Ernestina de Champourcín. (2019). Spain: Wikipedia. Recovered from: es.wikipedia.org.
2. Bravo, Ana. (2007). Ernestina de Champourcín, the unknown poet of the Generation of 27. Spain: The World. Recovered from: elmundo.es.
3. Díaz, F. (2008). Champourcín. Special poetry. (N / a): The Cultural. Recovered from: elcultural.com.
4. Poetic work: Ernestina de Champourcín 1905-1999. (Sf). (N / a): Poems. Recovered from: poesi.as.
5. Ernestina de Champourcín. (2016). (N / a): Footprints of Great Women. Recovered from: banderasdemujeresgeniales.com.