SALVADOR NOVO: BIOGRAPHY, STYLE, WORKS AND PHRASES - LITERATURE - 2025

Salvador Novo López (1904-1974) was a Mexican writer, poet, essayist, and playwright. He also stood out as a historian and theater writer. He was part of the group of intellectuals Los Contemporáneos, being one of the main characters who spread the new forms of art in Mexico.

Novo's work was characterized by being avant-garde, constantly focused on innovation, with certain ironic nuances. It also encompassed several literary genres, including poetry, essays, chronicles, novels, and theater.

Salvador Novo, on the microphone, at a conference at the Museum of Mexico City. Source: CDMX Government, via Wikimedia Commons

Some of the most outstanding titles of the Mexican writer were: Nuevo amor, Seamen rhymes, Yocasta almost and Nueva grandeza de México. Salvador Novo's literary work made him worthy of several distinctions, and his talent led him to become one of the most important writers in Latin America.

Biography

Birth and family

Salvador was born on July 30, 1904 in Mexico City. He came from a cultured, middle-class family. His parents were Andrés Novo Blanco and Amelia López Espino. The initial six years of his life were spent in his homeland.

Novo Education

Novo's early years of educational training were in the city of Torreón, where he moved with his family in 1910. That was the time when his taste for literature was born. Then, in 1916, he returned to the Mexican capital; There he attended high school and high school, until he entered the university.

Mexico City, the birthplace of Salvador Novo. Source: Microstar, via Wikimedia Commons

He began university studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, first in law school, which he promptly abandoned, and later in languages, where he trained as a teacher. He graduated in the mid-1920s, and soon began teaching English, Italian, and French.

First post

Salvador Novo's literary interest quickly led him to the publication of his first collection of poems. In 1925 XX poems came to light, a work in which the writer began to show and express his alignment with the avant-garde movement.

Literary entrepreneur

Novo proved to be an intellectual of new ideas, he was always in search of innovation. He was also always an entrepreneur. Thus, together with his personal friend, the writer Xavier Villaurrutia, they created Ulises, in 1927, a magazine, and also a modern theater group.

A year later, in 1928, he was part, along with other young people, of the foundation of Los Contemporáneos, an institution that apart from being a group of intellectuals, was a literary magazine. Salvador Novo was one of the group's most prominent writers, due to the ironic and modernist tone of his poetic work.

A writer of stature

Novo's performance in Mexican literature had already given him some prestige and recognition. However, it was in 1933, with the publication of Nuevo amor, that his performance as a writer crossed borders, because the work was very popular and was translated into several languages.

He has been considered the first poet of Mexican origin to have a complete translation in the English language; and it was with New Love, whose translation Edna Worthley did, that such a feat was achieved. The text was also translated into Portuguese and French.

Writing in English

Salvador Novo was knowledgeable in several languages, including English. So in 1934 he took on the task of writing in this language. He began with his renowned Seamen rhymes, which he also wrote in Spanish under the title Rimas del lobo de mar.

Novo in Coyoacán

Novo had an intense literary activity during the 1930s and early 1940s. He published works such as: Décimas en el mar, In defense of what is used and other essays and Poetry chosen. Then, in 1941, he moved to the Coyoacán area, where he continued his artistic interests. There he was in charge of inaugurating the La Capilla theater.

La Capilla de Coyoacán Theater, premiered by Novo in 1953. Source: Trinidad photo, via Wikimedia Commons

During those years he was part of the National Institute of Fine Arts. He also published, in 1947, one of his most important chronicles: New Mexican Greatness, which earned him recognition as the chronicler of Mexico City, for the precision of his work.

Advertising time

Novo also made a professional life within the advertising activity. In 1944 he became a partner of Augusto Riquelme, to create an agency. He also served as editor-in-chief of the advertising texts. At that time he wrote for media such as Hoy and Excelsior.

It should be noted that in the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Relations, Novo served for a season as head of the department that was in charge of advertising.

Logo of the Ministry of Foreign Relations of Mexico, where Novo was in charge of advertising for a time. Miki Angel Maldonado, via Wikimedia Commons

Novo and the theater

Salvador Novo's capacity for the theater was remarkable. From a young age he had worked as a critic of dramatic works. In 1946 he served as director of the theater section of the Institute of Fine Arts. However, after nearly seven years he put that role aside.

In 1953 he opened his own theater space in Coyoacán, which he called La Capilla. His affinity for the avant-garde led him to present in this space the renowned work of the Irishman Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot. He also presented A eight columns, a work that dealt with the decomposition of the media.

Performance as a chronicler and historian

The Mexican writer throughout his life was interested in the history and culture of his country, and was a defender of national identity. For this reason, in the sixties he focused his attention and talent on developing literary content dedicated to Mexico.

His performance as a chronicler and historian led him to write works related to Mexican idiosyncrasy. He also focused on making the life of the artistic and intellectual characters of his country known. This work was exercised until the end of his last days of life.

Last years and death

Salvador Novo was always active in all the areas in which he worked. Some of his last works were: The crazy women, the sex, the brothels and A year ago, a hundred. He died on January 13, 1974, in Mexico City. He left no descendants, due to his homosexual orientation.

Awards and honours

- Member of the Mexican Academy of the Language, since June 12, 1952; She took chair XXXII.

- Chronicler of Mexico City, in 1965, appointed by President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz.

- National Prize of Sciences and Arts, in linguistics and literature, in 1967.

- The street where he lived in Mexico City, received his name, in 1968.

Style

Salvador Novo's literary style was framed in the avant-garde movement. He used a well-crafted, creative and innovative language. The works of the Mexican writer were also characterized by being sagacious, and with high traits of irony and sarcasm.

Novo's abundant work reflected his interest in the patriotic, in the culture and history of Mexico, themes that he developed especially in his essays and chronicles. His poetry was related to love, as well as the advances of modernity.

Plays

Poetry, essays and chronicles

Brief description of some of his works

New love

It was the second collection of poems by Salvador Novo, and considered one of his most important and outstanding texts. The poems that made up the book were loving, within a creative and innovative language. The work was translated into English, French and Portuguese.

Fragment of "Brief romance of the absence"

"… My hands have forgotten you

but my eyes saw you

and when the world is bitter

to look at you I close them.

I never want to find you

that you are with me and I don't want

that tears your life apart

what makes my dream.

How one day you gave it to me

long live your image I have, who wash my eyes daily

with tears your memory.

Another is this, not me,

world, conforming and eternal

like this love, already so mine

that will go with me dying ”.

Mirror

This work by Novo was published the same year as New Love, and has been considered one of the author's most expressive collections of poems. Salvador reflected a poetry full of depth, feelings and naturalness. In the theme that he handled, there was love and eroticism, from the encounter with the internal "I".

Fragment of "Love"

"Loving is this shy silence

close to you, without you knowing, and remember your voice when you leave

and feel the warmth of your greeting.

To love is to wait for you

as if you were part of the sunset, neither before nor after, so that we are alone

between games and stories

on dry land.

To love is to perceive when you are absent, your perfume in the air that I breathe, and contemplate the star in which you walk away

when I close the door at night ”.

Fragment of

"The least I can

to thank you because you exist

is to know your name and repeat it.

… I repeat your name when I see, sumptuous and vegetal bird, your nest

anchored in that tree that nourishes you…

The least i can

to thank you because you exist

to speak to God who created you, Oh flower, multiple miracle!

is to know your name and repeat it

in a litany of colors

and in a symphony of perfumes ”.

Theater plays

Phrases

- "In you my loneliness is reconciled to think of you."

- "My offering is all in the seed that the rays of your suns dried up."

- "To love is to perceive, when you are absent, your perfume in the air that I breathe, and to contemplate the star in which you move away when I close the door at night."

- “To write poems, to be a poet with a passionate and romantic life whose books are in everyone's hands and who makes books and publishes portraits in newspapers, it is necessary to say the things that I read, those of the heart, of the woman and of the of the landscape, of the failed love and of the painful life, in perfectly measured verses… ”.

- "How is it possible that nothing moves you, that there is no rain to squeeze you or sun to render your fatigue?".

- "This intense perfume of your flesh is nothing more than the world that the blue globes of your eyes move and move, and the earth and the blue rivers of the veins that imprison your arms."

- "Art-creation only decays when the spirit decays."

- "Between your dawn and my sunset, time would disappear and it was ours and it was mine, blood, lip, wine and glass."

- "My offering is all yours in the seed that the rays of your suns dried up."

- "The least I can to thank you because you exist is to know your name and repeat it."

References

1. Tamaro, E. (2004-2019). Salvador Novo. (N / a): Biographies and Lives. Recovered from: biografiasyvidas.com.
2. Salvador Novo López. (S. f.). Cuba: Ecu Red. Recovered from: ecured.cu.
3. 20 exceptional phrases of the great Salvador Novo. (2018). Mexico: MX City. Recovered from: mxcity.mx.
4. Salvador Novo. (2019). Spain: Wikipedia. Recovered from: es.wikipedia.org.
5. Guerra, H. (2018). Salvador Novo. Mexico: Encyclopedia of Literature in Mexico. Recovered from: elem.mx.