Vicente Aleixandre
(1898 - 1984) Spain
Poet
A Nobel Prize winning poet, in 1977, his poems are often oscure, filled with violent, organic imagery organized in vivid surrealist composition.
The poet Luis Antonio de Villena and Vicente Molina Foix, a journalist, novlist and playwright, who knw Aleixandre personally, have insisted that the issue of sexual identity was a delicate matter with Aleixandre (who stopped short of identifying himself as a gay man) but he di not made a secret of the fact that his sexual orientation was mostly homoerotic.
Aleixandre did discuss homosexuality openly and was among the very few Spanish intellectuals who did no hesitate in emphasizing that Lorca's homosexuality was central to a full understanding of his work.
He spent the Civil War time on Republican soil. His poor health prevented him from going into exile after Franco settled in power, and from 1944 he was slowly rehabilitated by the regime. In 1950 he became a member of the Real Academia del la Lengua (Spain's top cultural institution about language studies).
Books:
- Pasión de la tierra (1935)
- Diálogos del conocimiento (1973)
Source: Aldrich R. & Wotherspoon G., Who's Who in Contemporary Gay and Lesbian History, Routledge, London, 2001
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