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Juan Gelman

Author profile

born

in Buenos Aires, Argentina

May 03, 1930

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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Juan Gelman's Books

Average rating: 4.01 · 285 ratings · 18 reviews · 58 distinct works · Similar authors

	Gotán 3.76 of 5 stars 3.76 avg rating — 25 ratings — published 1962 — 2 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Colera Buey 4.5 of 5 stars 4.50 avg rating — 16 ratings — published 1994	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Los Poemas De Sidney West 4.11 of 5 stars 4.11 avg rating — 19 ratings — published 2006 — 4 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Unthinkable Tenderness: Selected Poems by Juan Gelman, Joan Lindgren (Translator) 4.54 of 5 stars 4.54 avg rating — 13 ratings — published 1997 — 3 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Pais Que Fue Sera 3.62 of 5 stars 3.62 avg rating — 16 ratings — 3 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Dark Times Filled with Light by Juan Gelman, Hardie St. Martin (Translator) 3.4 of 5 stars 3.40 avg rating — 15 ratings — published 2012	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Interrupciones I 4.25 of 5 stars 4.25 avg rating — 12 ratings — published 1988 — 2 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Valer La Pena: Mexico, 1996-2000 3.94 of 5 stars 3.94 avg rating — 17 ratings — published 2001 — 2 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Interrupciones 2 4.6 of 5 stars 4.60 avg rating — 10 ratings — published 1998	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Dibaxu 4.1 of 5 stars 4.10 avg rating — 10 ratings	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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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

12 people liked it

“Look, words are like the air: they belong to everybody. Words are not the problem; it's the tone, the context, where those words are aimed, and in whose company they are uttered. Of course murderers and victims use the same words, but I never read the words utopia, or beauty, or tenderness in police descriptions. Do you know that the Argentinean dictatorship burnt The Little Prince ? And I think they were right to do so, not because I do not love The Little Prince , but because the book is so full of tenderness that it would harm any dictatorship.”
― Juan Gelman

tags: dictatorship, the-little-prince, words

4 people liked it

“Nosotros arrastramos los pies en ríos de sangre seca, almas que se pegaron a la tierra por amor, no queremos otros mundos que el de la libertad y esta palabra no la palabreamos porque sabemos hace mucha muerte que se habla enamorado y no del amor, se habla claro, no de la claridad, se habla libre, no de la libertad.”
― Juan Gelman, Bajo La Lluvia Ajena:

1 person liked it

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Polls

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

Haruki Murakami

57 votes, 29.8%

Cormac McCarthy

51 votes, 26.7%

Alice Munro

22 votes, 11.5%

Ngugi wa Thiong'o

21 votes, 11.0%

Joyce Carol Oates

20 votes, 10.5%

Thomas Pynchon

10 votes, 5.2%

Ulrich Holbein

4 votes, 2.1%

Ko Un

3 votes, 1.6%

Juan Gelman

3 votes, 1.6%

Gerald Murnane

0 votes, 0.0%

191 total votes

21 comments

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Juan's Fans (14)

Juan Gelman

Author profile

combine editionsJuan Gelman's Books

Upcoming Events

Quotes by Juan Gelman

Polls

Topics Mentioning This Author

combine editions
Juan Gelman's Books