JUAN GIL-ALBERT: BIOGRAPHY, STYLE AND WORKS - LITERATURE - 2025

Juan Gil-Albert, real name Juan de Mata Gil Simón (1904-1994), was a Valencian poet and writer, avant-garde and surrealist in his beginnings and possessed of a very careful aesthetic. He is considered by many specialists a "off the hook" member of the Generation of 27.

Over the years, and due to his political commitments, Juan Gil-Albert, in his writings, was committed to the reality of his times, clearly expressing his experiences in the Spanish Civil War and his exile.

Source: Letralia

He was a man of integrity, always faithful to his principles and indefatigable, rebellious at times, from broad Greco-Latin cultural references, raised in a wealthy family that gave him a very good education. He had a great sensitivity towards beauty and his works vary between narration and evocation, reflection and criticism.

In 1927 he published his first two prose works, The Fascination of the Unreal and Vibration of the Summer, for which he received rave reviews. Her definitive consecration came in 1982, when she won the Valencian Country Literature Prize. Later she received the Medal of Merit in Fine Arts.

Biography

Birth and bourgeois formation

He was born on April 1, 1904, in Alcoy, Alicante, and was called Juan de Mata Gil Simón, although he was later better known as Juan Gil-Albert. Coming from a family belonging to the upper bourgeoisie, his first years of training were run by a private teacher and in a nuns' school in Alcoy.

When he was just nine years old, his family moved to Valencia, where his father opened a hardware store. At that time he entered the Colegio de los Escolapios as an intern. In Valencia he finished high school and began studies in law and philosophy and letters, without finishing these careers out of boredom.

Juan Gil-Albert loved reading, the authors who most marked him were Gabriel Miró, Valle-Inclán and Azorín. In 1927, at just 21 years old, he published his first two prose works; The fascination of the unreal, a collection of stories funded by himself and with influences from Oscar Wilde and Gabriel Miró, and Vibration of the summer.

Evolution of his work

After his early works, he evolved towards an avant-garde aesthetic, as evidenced by his work How Could They Be, published in 1929 and which dealt with some of the most famous portraits in the Prado Museum. This was followed by Chronicles to Serve the Study of Our Time, published in 1932.

Bust of Gabriel Miró, an influential writer in the work of Gil-Albert. Source: Joanbanjo, via Wikimedia Commons

These last two manuscripts showed a renewed writer, with a bold, fresh and imaginative expression. Later he inaugurated his poetic career, with the verses of Misteriosa Presence (1936), a work composed of 36 Gongorine sonnets with erotic content, written according to a totally classicist pattern.

That same year he published Candente horror (1936), but in this work the author explored other more surrealist channels, here he dared to touch on a controversial issue that had to do with his political attitude committed to anti-fascism.

After these works full of passion, he collaborated in the founding of the magazine Hora de España, after meeting Luis Cernuda and Federico García Lorca. This magazine became the organ of republican writers. At this time many of his writings were ignored and exile also cost him.

Exile in Mexico and Argentina and return to Valencia

When the war passed, he was able to go into exile in Mexico, where he was secretary of the magazine Taller, directed by Octavio Paz. Exiled in Mexico, he participated in various publishing companies of the emigres and published Las illusiones (1945), which represents a return to classicism.

At the end of 1942 he traveled to Buenos Aires and collaborated in the Argentine newspapers Sur and in the literary page of La Nación. He returned to Valencia in 1947. After his return to Spain he published El Existe medita suriente (1949), Concertar es amor (1951) and fell into a public silence in which, however, it was a very creative period.

Multiple acknowledgments and death

Starting in 1974, numerous works appeared, including the prose of the General Chronicle, the novel Valentine and the Heracles essay. Gil-Albert, whose influence on Hispanic literature has not ceased to increase with the passage of time, received the Gold Medal for Fine Arts.

At that time it is considered that it reached its peak. In 1982 he was also awarded the Prize for Letters of the Valencian Country, he was also named Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Alicante, without neglecting that he was also awarded the honorable merit of being the Favorite son of Alcoy.

Octavio Paz, director of the magazine Taller, where Gil-Albert worked. Source: Photo: Jonn Leffmann, via Wikimedia Commons

Due to the action of the years, the health of the writer was declining until he died in 1994, on July 4, at the age of 90.

Style

The style of Juan Gil-Albert, in the different literary genres that he handled, stood out for presenting a clear and concise language. Each work has biographical airs with a strong cultural load, where a full awareness of the real beauty of things can be appreciated.

The lyrical evolution in the handling of the writer's lyrics is very notorious from his first works, The fascination of the unreal and Vibration of the summer (1920s), to the excellence of General Chronicle (1970s), evolution of the confrontation Direct with life and situations.

Gil, with his literary style, makes it easier for the reader to understand his experiences. The aesthetics of the works is strongly linked to ethics, with a need to communicate things with real weight, without the waste of ornaments, since each space counts and requires an accurate use of them.

Plays

Poetry

- Mysterious presence (1936).

- Red hot horror (1936).

- Seven war romances (1937).

- They are unknown names (1938).

- The illusions with the poems of El Convaleciente (1944).

- Poems. Existing meditates its current (1949).

- Concerting is love (1951).

- Poetry: Carmina manu trementi duoere (1961).

- The inextricable plot (critical poetry prose) (1968).

- Fuentes de la constancia (1972, Poetic Anthology with unpublished poems).

- The Meta-physics (1974).

- To the pre-Socratics, followed by Crumbs of our bread (1976).

- Boulders (1976)

- Tributes and in promptus (1976).

- The idler and the professions (1979).

- Inexhaustible reasoning with a final letter (1979).

- My compromised voice (1936-1939, Burning horror, Seven war romances, They are unknown names).

- Complete poetic work (1981).

- Variations on an inexhaustible theme (1981).

- Poetic Anthology (1936-1976).

- Spain, commitment to a fiction (1984).

- Sources of constancy (1984).

- Poetic Anthology (1993).

- First poetic work: 1936-1938 (1996, posthumous work).

- Concert in Me (poetic anthology) (2004, posthumous work).

- Complete poetry (2004, posthumous work).

Prose and essay

- How could they be (1929).

- Gabriel Miró: (The writer and the man) (1931).

- The lie of the shadows: film criticism published in «Romance» (1941).

- Attempt of a Valencian cataloging (about Pedro de Valencia and his «region») (1955).

- Taurine: (Chronicle) (1962).

- Tribute to the pre-Socratics (1963).

- The inextricable plot: prose, poetry, criticism (1968).

- Concert in "E" minor (1974).

- Against the cinema. Valencia: Prometheus (1974).

- Revolt table (1974).

- The days are numbered (1974).

- Valentine: Tribute to William Shakespeare (1974).

- Memorabilia (1975).

- Tributes and in promptus (1976).

- National drama: testimony (1964).

- One world: prose, poetry, criticism (1978).

- Breviarium vitae (1979).

- The archangels: parable (1981).

- Concerto in "E" minor; The inextricable plot; Memorabilia (1934-1939) (1982).

- Leisure and its myths (1982).

- The oval portrait (1983).

- Summer vibration (1984).

- Letters to a friend (1987).

- Yehudá Haleví (1987).

- Tobeyo or Del amor: homage to Mexico (1989).

- General Chronicle (1995, posthumous edition).

- The idle and the professions (1998, posthumous edition).

- Breviarium vitae (1999, posthumous edition).

- Complete work in prose (1999, posthumous edition).

- Heracles: on a way of being (2002, posthumous edition).

- The lie of the shadows: film criticism published in «Romance» (2003, posthumous edition).

References

1. Gil-Albert, Juan. (2019). (N / A): Escritores.org. Recovered from: writers.org
2. Juan Gil-Albert. (2019). Spain: Wikipedia. Recovered from: es.wikipedia.org.
3. Juan Gil-Albert. (2019). (N / a): Biographies and Lives. Recovered from: biografiasyvidas.com.
4. Juan Gil-Albert. (2019). (N / a): In a low voice. Recovered from amediavoz.com.
5. Juan Gil-Albert. (2019). Spain: Spain is culture. Recovered from: xn--espaaescultura-tnb.es.