Background
Jorge Carrera Andrade was born in Quito, Ecuador on September 28, 1903.
Jorge Carrera Andrade was born in Quito, Ecuador on September 28, 1903.
He studied literature in Spain at the University of Barcelona and in France at Aix-en-Provence.
After graduating he became secretary-general of the Ecuadorian Socialist Party (1927 - 1928) and later entered the diplomatic service, occupying posts in Europe, Asia, and South America. Carrera Andrade and the Chilean Pablo Neruda have been called the greatest modern poets of Spanish America, but they have developed in opposite ways. Neruda began by writing poems of purely aesthetic value but turned later to social and political themes; Carrera Andrade, on the other hand, was an active revolutionary in his earlier years, but when he wrote poetry he was guided exclusively by aesthetic principles. He started writing when he was very young, and his first book, El Estanque inefable (Secret Country, 1946) dates from 1922, but the work that made him famous was Boletines de mar y tierra ("Bulletins of Sea and Land"), published with a prologue by Gabriela Mistral in 1930. His fame increased with El Tiempo manual (1935; "Manual Time"), Rol de la manzana (1935; "Catalogue of the Apple"), Biografía para uso de los pájarospajaros (1937; "Biography for the Birds"), and La Hora de las ventanas iluminadas (1937; "Hour of the Lighted Windows"). In 1942 an anthology of his poetry was published whose title Registro del mundo ("Census of the World"), reflects the artist's intent to examine the world, to know it step by step, and to prepare almost a catalogue of terrestrial beauty. Other books of poetry include Aquí yace la espuma (1950; "Here Lies the Foam"), Edades poéticas (1958; "Poetical Ages") and Libro del exilio (1968; "Book of the Exile"). A series of lectures appeared in translation in 1973 as the volume Reflections on Spanish-American Poetry. Carrera Andrade's poetry, taken in one aspect, is poetry of the restless traveler, and he confesses his feeling that his blood is "full of ships that come and go with each moment. " The other basic aspect of his poetry is an inventory of material things, and in his poem El Objecto y su sombra ("The Object and Its Shadow") he expresses his feeling for them: "Things that is to say, life. " His ambition as a poet is to see these things limpidly and to clear the world "of the phantoms of the mind, " but he does not hesitate to use metaphors for most of them, and this characteristic is responsible for much of his poetic power.
(By the close of the twentieth century, the brilliant poet...)
(The poems are entertaining, and revealingly sincere; thei...)
