RENATO LEDUC: BIOGRAPHY, STYLE, WORKS, PHRASES - LITERATURE - 2025

Renato Leduc (1897-1986) was a Mexican writer, poet, and journalist who also excelled as a diplomat. The author's taste and talent was perhaps learned or inherited from his father Alberto Leduc, who was a renowned intellectual within the modernist movement.

Renato Leduc's work encompassed various genres of literature, he developed poetry, novels, short stories and chronicles. His writings were characterized by being creative, sarcastic, and at times nostalgic. Using simple and precise language, he also referred to the crimes in his country.

Portrait of Renato Leduc. Fente: Luisalvaz, via Wikimedia Commons

Some of the most renowned titles of this writer were: The classroom, Poems from Paris, The banquets and The beige corsair. Renato's originality made him one of the most important contemporary writers in Mexico and Latin America.

Biography

Birth and family

Renato was born on November 16, 1897 in the town of Tlalpan, Mexico City; He came from a cultured, upper-middle-class family. It is known that his father was the famous journalist and writer Alberto Leduc, that perhaps meant that he grew up surrounded by literature and intellectuals.

His childhood and youth years were marked to a great extent by the political and social events that his country experienced at the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th. Like many, the consequences of the Revolution made life more difficult for him, due to the deficiencies he suffered.

Studies

Leduc's early formative years were in his hometown. Later he trained as a telegrapher, which led him to work for Francisco “Pancho” Villa, head of the Mexican Revolution. Then he studied law at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

First adventures

Leduc was characterized by being a lover of freedom, not in vain did he dedicate himself in his first stage of youth to touring Mexico in any way and means possible. Of those traveling adventures he had, he collected affections and experiences; He promptly followed in his father's footsteps and began practicing journalism.

Although he had qualities for writing, he was not the most polite, refined and elegant when speaking. According to those who knew him, he was characterized by being rude, that is, he expressed himself with many rudeness; however, his authentic personality paved the way for success and recognition.

Leduc's first publications

Renato Leduc's first books were published when he was past thirty years of age. In 1929 his first poetic work entitled: The classroom, considered to date as one of the most important; three years later he published the novel Los banquettes.

Life in paris

In 1935 Renato went to live in Paris after being appointed as a diplomat at the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit. During the seven years he lived in the French capital he dedicated himself to profiling his lyrics; in addition to that, he related to artists such as: André Breton, Alfonso Reyes, Picasso, Salvador Dalí and others.

Federico Cantú, via Wikimedia Commons

From his stay in "the City of Light" the following works were born: Brief Gloss of the Book of Good Love, Poems from Paris and The Beige Corsair. In 1942 the writer spent a season in New York, United States, to later settle in New York.

An unconventional marriage

Renato Leduc married in 1942 Leonora Leduc, an English painter haunted by the Nazis due to her relationship with the German artist Max Ernst. For this reason the writer decided to help his friend to free her; then she managed to be nationalized Mexican.

Affair with María Félix

Leduc was a man of love, always passionate. They say that he was related to the Mexican actress María Félix. According to an anecdote, she proposed to him and he rejected her. Among other things, the writer told him: "… I am happy to be Mr. Leduc, why am I going to be Mr. Félix?…".

Last years and death

Leduc's life passed between letters, diplomacy and love. He dedicated himself to expanding his literary work, both poetic and narrative, as well as journalism. He twice received the National Journalism Prize, in 1978 and 1983. Finally, he died on August 2, 1986 in the city where he was born.

Style

Leduc's literary style was characterized by the use of a clear and precise language, framed in the lines of modernism, it was also creative, novel and ingenious. In many of his works it was notorious to observe a popular verb, perhaps because he was a friend of even the least studied.

Renato Leduc added humor to his works, irony, passion, love and lust. His texts dealt with various topics, from the political to the erotic; the Mexican writer also used his pen to criticize the actions of those who were in government and exercised authority.

Renato Leduc in the bulls with Luisa Gaxiola (1981). Source: University Atheneist, via Wikimedia Commons

Plays

Poetry

- The classroom, etc. (1929).

- Some deliberately romantic poems and a somewhat unnecessary prologue (1933).

- Brief gloss of the Book of Good Love (1939).

- Poems from Paris (1942).

- XV fabulillas of animals, children and scares (1957).

- Fourteen bureaucratic poems and a reactionary corrido, for the solace and entertainment of the economically weak classes (1962).

Novel

- The banquets (1932).

- The beige corsair (1940).

Anthologies and compilations

- Verses and poems (1940).

- Almost unpublished poems (1944).

- Anthology (1948).

- Selected works (1977).

- Poetry interdicta (1979).

- Poetry and prose by Renato Leduc (1979).

- Renatograms (1986).

- Poetic Anthology (1991).

- Toast to life. Selected works (Posthumous edition, 1996).

- Literary work (Posthumous edition, 2000).

Journalism and other texts

- Sidewalk (1961).

- History of the immediate (1976).

- The devils of oil (1986).

- When We Were Less (1989).

Brief description of some of his works

The classroom, etc.

It was one of the most relevant poetic works of this Mexican writer, where he highlighted the main characteristics of his style. A lighthearted, imaginary and creative writing, in which he developed nostalgic themes, as well as those related to Mexico, its history and politics.

This work had a popular character enhanced by the language used by the writer. Leduc was a man who contacted all kinds of people, and that gave simplicity to his texts. This book has been considered one of the most important and read in Mexico during the 20th century.

Some of the poems that made up this work were:

- "The diamond divers".

- "The sea".

- "Civic".

- "Hymenoclast".

- "Topics".

- "The statue".

Fragment

“The Greek teacher told us: the words

they maculated their former purity.

Words were more beautiful before…

Words…

And the voice of the teacher stayed

caught in a spider web.

And a boy with the face of Hamlet repeated:

words… words… words…

… The teacher keeps saying words.

Art… science…

Some abstruse, some illustrious.

The boy with the Hamlet face yawns;

and outside the classroom, a bird sings

golden silences

in silver field…

Fragment of "The diamond divers"

"A clear night in which the rhinestones

sidereal dazzled, the diamond divers, in holy brotherhood, we descended into the sea…

… Let us be impassive, sublime and profound

like the bottom of the sea, if not out of haughtiness, out of disenchantment

let's imitate the gesture of the ocean

drab and brackish.

In a purple sky, Lucifer yawns.

The ponto is singing its great blue song.

The diamond divers, in the holy brotherhood, we return to earth, to live again.

We bring from the abyss the unknown sorrow

of what could be… ".

XV fabulillas of animals, children and scares

It was a work that the writer developed with the collaboration of his wife, Leonora Carrington. The text was characterized by having surreal and creative nuances in terms of content and illustrations; the language was dynamic, playful and insolent at times; there were 15 poems that made it up.

Fragment of "Lullaby to lull children to sleep very awake"

"The big fish eats the little one

more big banker stop banker.

The big fish eat the little one

and the big pig stops the little pig.

… The banker has skinny buttocks

from so much rocking them in an armchair spring.

Sleep my boy… Here come the whores

to give you the tit or the bottle…

Black skyscrapers, red skyscrapers

bald above, lame below…

Fall asleep creature, fall asleep and don't growl

the banker with long nails is coming.

Go to sleep small and no longer make gestures.

Fall asleep and rest as if you were deaf

that soon… one of these days

little fish will eat big fish… ”.

Banquets

It was one of the first novels written by Leduc, in which he explicitly expressed his homophobia. Perhaps his inspiration for writing the work was the large number of homosexuals that was evident in the decade of the thirties in the cultural area, and that apparently caused a certain repulsion in him.

The beige corsair

It was another of Renato Leduc's novels, although many scholars did not consider him a novelist due to his uninhibited life and his intense dedication to journalism. Now this play was about the German government and its atrocities.

The writer made an ironic and sarcastic work as was common in many of his texts. He also exaggerated certain German environments as a result of the Second World War, and entered old age with certain ramblings; politics and poverty intermingled.

The devils of oil

It was a journalistic work that Leduc did to honor and recognize the work of workers in the oil industry. By the time it was published, crude production rose to more than two million barrels per day in Mexico; organization and leadership were essential issues.

Fragment

“In the early years of this twentieth century, during the Porfiriato, in the modest little house that we occupied in the beautiful neighborhood of Porfirio Díaz Avenue, in Villa de Guadalupe, we lit ourselves with paraffin or tallow candles, until one day my Father brought home a beautiful glass lamp with a cockerel painted on the bulb and an inscription that read: 'Sinclair'. These beautiful and useful lamps seem to have been given away by the company 'Mexican Sinclair Pierce Oil' ”.

Fragment of «Brief gloss» of the

"That love whom I loved at the wrong time

martyred me for so long and so long

that I never felt time go by, as acridly as at that time.

Loving loving as in another time

-I was still unaware that time is money-

how much time I lost -ay- how much time.

And today of love I no longer have time, love of those times, how I long for

the joy of wasting time… ”.

Fragment of "The Magician" by

"The magician had two daughters so beautiful… so beautiful

that the mass government was after them.

Serious girls despite their lapses

girls loved gray hair…

(Gray hair: Argentine emblem)

Precocious rich…? If anything Tintino ”.

Fragment of "Little song of the optimist" by

“The cloudy water from the sky rained desperately,

desperate it rained, putting on a rough veil

between I love you and you love me, between your longing and my longing

Love that dissolves water

in a simple dive;

love that is cheated

invoking reason;

love that thinks about tomorrow, it is not love from the heart… ”.

Phrases

- "I wish that even at the end the arduous path was for better or for worse, tree not of cunning science, yes original sin."

- "I live on the little that I still have of you, your perfume, your accent, a tear of yours that quenched my thirst."

- “Wise virtue of knowing the time; in time to love and to untie in time ”.

- "Everything is now faded light, warmth, loneliness, last love…".

- "I live from a smile that you did not know when it was donated."

- “We will not do lasting work. We do not have the tenacious will of the fly ”.

- "Who said that the soul suffered, if I don't have a soul?"

- "Her perfume, her accent, one of her tears that quenched my thirst."

- "Here we talk about lost time, that as the saying goes, the saints mourn it."

- "… As I am sure that I will be the victim of one or another flame, I have no choice but to avoid them cleanly and answer them in advance with a significant gesture of those used by the companions of the rail."

References

1. Renato Leduc. (2019). Spain: Wikipedia. Recovered from: es.wikipedia.org.
2. Martínez, J. (2018). Renato Leduc. Mexico: Encyclopedia of Literature in Mexico. Recovered from: elem.mx.
3. Polidori, A. (2019). Modern Poetry. Mexico: Reading Material. Recovered from: materialdelectura.unam.mx.
4. Argüelles, J. (2018). Renato Leduc haunted by his "legends". Mexico: Weekly Jornada. Recovered from: Semanaal.jornada.com.mx.
5. Serna, E. (2001). Renato Leduc: the pass of disdain. Mexico: Free Letters. Recovered from: letraslibres.com.