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Juan Gelman

Author profile

born

May 03, 1930 in Buenos Aires, Argentina

gender

male

genre

Poetry

About this author

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Juan Gelman is one of the most read and influential poets in the Spanish language. He has published more than twenty books of poetry since 1956 and has been translated into fourteen languages. A political activist and critical journalist since his youth, Gelman has not only been a literary paradigm but also a moral one, within and outside of Argentina. Among his most recent awards are the National Poetry Prize (Argentina, 1997), the Juan Rulfo Prize in Latin American and Caribbean Literature (Mexico, 2000), the Pablo Neruda Prize (Chile, 2005), the Queen Sofia Prize in Ibero-American Poetry (Spain, 2005), and the Cervantes Prize (the most important award given to a Hispanic writer, Spain, 2007).

Long biographical note

Juan Gelman is the most...more Juan Gelman is one of the most read and influential poets in the Spanish language. He has published more than twenty books of poetry since 1956 and has been translated into fourteen languages. A political activist and critical journalist since his youth, Gelman has not only been a literary paradigm but also a moral one, within and outside of Argentina. Among his most recent awards are the National Poetry Prize (Argentina, 1997), the Juan Rulfo Prize in Latin American and Caribbean Literature (Mexico, 2000), the Pablo Neruda Prize (Chile, 2005), the Queen Sofia Prize in Ibero-American Poetry (Spain, 2005), and the Cervantes Prize (the most important award given to a Hispanic writer, Spain, 2007).

Long biographical note

Juan Gelman is the most significant, contemporary Argentine intellectual figure and one of the most read and influential poets in the Spanish language. Son of a family of Jewish immigrants from the Ukraine, he grew up like any other porteño, among soccer and tango, in the populous neighborhood of Villa Crespo. At 11, he published his first poem in the magazine Rojo y negro, and in the 1950s formed part of the group of rebel writers, El Pan Duro. He was discovered by Raúl González Túñón, among the most relevant voices of the southern country’s poetic avant-garde, who saw in the young man’s verses “a rich and vivacious lyricism and a principally social content […] that does not elude the richness of fantasy.”

Gelman has published, from his initial Violín y otras cuestiones (1956) to his most recent Mundar (2008), more than twenty books of poetry. These works, as Mario Benedetti asserted early on, constitute “the most coherent, and also the most daring, participatory repertoire (in spite of its inevitable wells of solitude), and ultimately the one most suited to its environment, that Argentine poetry has today”, and Hispanic poetry in general, as the profusion of re-editions of his books and numerous anthologies proves. Gelman’s poetry has achieved international recognition, with translations into fourteen languages, including English. Among his awards are the National Poetry Prize (Argentina, 1997), the Juan Rulfo Prize in Latin American and Caribbean Literature (Mexico, 2000), the Pablo Neruda Prize (Chile, 2005), the Queen Sofia Prize in Ibero-American Poetry (Spain, 2005), and the Cervantes Prize (Spain, 2007), the most important award in Hispanic Letters. No one should be surprised to see him the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature one day.

It would be relevant to note that Juan Gelman has not only been a literary paradigm but also a moral one, within and outside of Argentina. A political activist and critical journalist since his youth, he was forced into an exile of thirteen years because of the military dictatorship that ravaged his country from 1976 to 1983, and the weak governments that followed. In 1976 the ultra-right kidnapped his children, Nora Eva, 19, and Marcelo Ariel, 20, along with his son’s wife, María Claudia Iruretagoyena, 19, who was 7 months pregnant. Nora Eva would later return, unlike his son and daughter-in-law, who were killed; their child born in a concentration camp. The vehement search for the truth about the fate of these family members, which culminated in finding his granddaughter in Uruguay in 2000, has made the poet a symbol of the struggle for respect for human rights.

Like other poets from his time and space, Juan Gelman creates his work starting from a critique of the so-called post-avante-garde poetry, which surges in the Hispanic world in the 1940s and breaks with the powerful avante-garde. He is a poet who denies the labors of the Mexican Octavio Paz, the Cuban José Lezama Lima, the Argentine Alberto Girri, among others, to reaffirm it in his own way. It is a poetry that goes against the current, transgresses the established social and cultural order, challenges the individualism intrinsic to modernity and the neo-colonial condition. A poetry that renounc(less)

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Books by Juan Gelman

Average rating: 4.04 · 180 ratings · 9 reviews · 45 distinct works

	Los Poemas De Sidney West 4.15 avg rating — 13 ratings — 3 editions	My rating:
	Unthinkable Tenderness 4.55 avg rating — 11 ratings — 2 editions	My rating:
	Colera Buey 4.60 avg rating — 10 ratings — published 1994	My rating:
	Pais Que Fue Sera 3.69 avg rating — 13 ratings — 3 editions	My rating:
	Interrupciones I 4.20 avg rating — 10 ratings — published 1988 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Gotán 3.77 avg rating — 13 ratings — published 1962 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Interrupciones 2 4.56 avg rating — 9 ratings — published 1998	My rating:
	Valer La Pena: Mexico, 1996-2000 4.08 avg rating — 12 ratings — published 2001 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Dibaxu 3.71 avg rating — 7 ratings	My rating:
	Pesar Todo: Antologia 4.33 avg rating — 6 ratings	My rating:

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Quotes by Juan Gelman

“هائلٌ هو الحزن الذى فى
مقدور رجل وامرأة أن يخلُقاه
فيما بينهما،
مثلما هما كبيران ذانك العصفوران
الواقفان على الغصن يتناقران
وكبيرةٌ هى الشجرة نفسها
مع أمطار تحت الشمس
باديةٍ على وجهها

ستمطر أم لن تمطر؟
سيغرّد العصفوران نفساهما؟
هل سيدوم
تدفق ذلك الحزن الهائل مثل بحيرة
أو بحرٍ بين رجل وامرأة؟

هل سيطير الحزن بين شجرة وشجرة؟
مثل خطوات وحيدة فى غرفة؟
مثل لآلىء فى الهواء؟
مثل ألواح مثل جسورٍ مدمرَّة؟

ثمة غُصَين سقط على الغصن
طافيا.
هائل هو الحزن الذى فى مقدور
رجل وامرأة أن يسبّباه لنفسيهما
مثلما هو هائل إبحار الغصن فى البحيرة
مبتلاً بجسارتهِ ذاتِها.”
― Juan Gelman

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Polls

The Nobel Prize for Literature will be announced on Thursday. Who do you think will win it?

Haruki Murakami

58 votes, 29.9%

Cormac McCarthy

51 votes, 26.3%

Alice Munro

22 votes, 11.3%

Ngugi wa Thiong'o

21 votes, 10.8%

Joyce Carol Oates

21 votes, 10.8%

Thomas Pynchon

11 votes, 5.7%

Ulrich Holbein

4 votes, 2.1%

Ko Un

3 votes, 1.5%

Juan Gelman

3 votes, 1.5%

Gerald Murnane

0 votes, 0.0%

194 total votes

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Juan's Fans (7)

Juan Gelman

Author profile

combine editionsBooks by Juan Gelman

Upcoming Events

Quotes by Juan Gelman

Polls

Topics Mentioning This Author

combine editions
Books by Juan Gelman