Juan Gelman (3 May 1930 – 14 January 2014) was an Argentine poet. He published more than twenty books of poetry between 1956 and his death in early 2014. He was a naturalized citizen of Mexico,[1] country where he arrived as a political exile of the Process, the military junta ruling Argentinia from 1976 to 1983.
In 2007, Gelman was awarded the Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the most important in Spanish literature. His works celebrate life but are also tempered with social and political commentary and reflect his painful experiences with the politics of Argentina.
Biography
Juan Gelman Burichson was born on May 3, 1930, in Buenos AiresVilla Crespo neighborhood to Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. As a boy, he read Russian and European literature widely under the tutelage of his brother Boris.
[2] His father, José Gelman, was a social revolutionary who participated in the Russian Revolution of 1905; he immigrated to Argentina, went back shortly after the October Revolution, and then returned to Argentina for good, disillusioned.[2]
Gelman learned to read when he was three years old and spent much of his childhood reading and playing soccer. He developed an interest in poetry at a very young age, influenced by his brother Boris, who read him several poems in Russian, a language the boy did not know. The experience of reading Fyodor Dostoevsky's Insulted and Humiliated (1861) at age eight made a profound impression on him.
As a young man, he was a member of several notable literary groups and later became an important journalist. He also translated at the United Nations. He was always an ardent political activist. In 1975, he became involved with the Montoneros, though he later distanced himself from the group. After the 1976 Argentine coup, he was forced into exile from Argentina. In 1976, his son Marcelo and his pregnant daughter-in-law, Maria Claudia, aged 20 and 19, were kidnapped from their home. They became two of the 30,000 desaparecidos, the people who were forcibly "vanished" without a trace during the reign of the military junta. In 1990, Gelman was led to identify his son's remains (he had been executed and buried in a barrel filled with sand and cement). Years later, in 2000, he was able to trace his granddaughter, born in a backdoor hospital before Maria Claudia's murder and given to a pro-government family in Uruguay. The remains of Maria Claudia have not yet been recovered.
During his long exile, Gelman lived in Europe until 1988, then in the United States and later in Mexico, with his wife, Argentine psychologist Mara La Madrid.
In 1997, Gelman received the Argentine National Poetry Prize, in recognition of his life's work, and in 2007 the Cervantes Prize, the most important prize for Spanish-language writers. He also had a long and brilliant career as journalist, writing for the Argentine newspaper Pagina/12 until his death.
Gelman included Uruguayan police officer Hugo Campos Hermida in a legal suit lodged in Spain for the "disappearance" of his daughter-in-law in Uruguay.[3]
His granddaughter
At the beginning of the 21st century, Uruguayan President Jorge Batlle Ibáñez ordered an investigation and Gelman's granddaughter, Macarena Gelman was found. Macarena, who had lived as an adopted child, took the surnames of her parents and started a career as a human rights activist.
Death
Gelman died at age 83 of complications with preleukemia at his home in the Condesa neighborhood of Mexico City.[4] His granddaughter, Macarena, flew in from Uruguay to attend the funeral. Three days of national mourning was declared by Argentina's President, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
Personal papers
Juan Gelman's archive which includes drafts of writings and a collection of files he kept pertaining to his human rights investigations is available for research at the Manuscripts Division in the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Princeton University.[5]
Works
Published in English translation
Unthinkable Tenderness: Selected Poems, trans.: Joan Lindgren, University of California Press, 1997
The Poems of Sidney West, trans.: Katherine M. Hedeen & Victor Rodríguez Nuñez, Salt Publishing, 2009
Between Words: Juan Gelman Public Letter, trans.: Lisa Rose Bradford, CIAL, 2010
Commentaries and Citations, trans.: Lisa Rose Bradford, Coimbra Editions, Poetry in Translation, 2011
Nightingales again, trans.: J. S. Tennant, in MPT Review, Series 3 no. 11 Frontiers, 2011
Com/positions, trans.: Lisa Rose Bradford, Coimbra Editions, Poetry in Translation, 2013
Published in Spanish
Poetry
Violín y otras cuestiones, Buenos Aires, Gleizer, 1956.
El juego en que andamos, Buenos Aires, Nueva Expresión, 1959.
Velorio del solo, Buenos Aires, Nueva Expresión, 1961.
Gotán (1956-1962), Buenos Aires, La Rosa Blindada, 1962. (Neuauflage 1996)
Cólera Buey, La Habana, La Tertulia, 1965. (Neuauflage 1994)
Los poemas de Sidney West, Buenos Aires, Galerna, 1969. (Neuauflage 1995)
Fábulas, Buenos Aires, La Rosa Blindada, 1971.
Relaciones, Buenos Aires, La Rosa Blindada, 1973.
Hechos y Relaciones, Barcelona, Lumen, 1980.
Si dulcemente, Barcelona, Lumen, 1980.
Citas y Comentarios, Visor Madrid, 1982.
Hacia el Sur, México, Marcha, 1982.
Com/posiciones (1983-1984), Barcelona, Ediciones del Mall, 1986.
Interrupciones I, Buenos Aires, Libros de Tierra Firme, 1986.
Interrupciones II, Buenos Aires, Libros de Tierra Firme, 1988.
Anunciaciones, Madrid, Visor, 1988.
Carta a mi madre, Buenos Aires, Libros de Tierra Firme, 1989.
Dibaxu, Buenos Aires, Seix Barral, 1994.
Salarios del impío, Buenos Aires, Libros de Tierra Firme, 1993.
Incompletamente, Buenos Aires, Seix Barral, 1997.
Tantear la noche, Lanzarote, Fundación César Manrique, 2000.
Valer la pena, Buenos Aires, Seix Barral, 2001.
País que fue será, Buenos Aires, Seix Barral, 2004.
Mundar, Buenos Aires, Seix Barral, 2007.
De atrásalante en su porfía, Madrid, Visor, und Buenos Aires, Seix Barral, 2009
El emperrado corazón amora, Barcelona, Tusquets und Buenos Aires, Seix Barral, 2011
Anthologies
Poemas, Casa de las Américas, La Habana, 1960.
Obra poética, Corregidor, Buenos Aires, 1975.
Poesía, Casa de las Américas, La Habana, 1985.
Antología poética, Vintén, Montevideo, (1993).
Antología personal, Desde la Gente, Instituto Movilizador de Fondos Cooperativos, Buenos Aires, 1993.
En abierta oscuridad, Siglo XXI, México, 1993.
Antología poética, Espasa Calpe, Buenos Aires, 1994.
De palabra (1971-1987). Prefazione di Julio Cortázar, Visor, Madrid, 1994.
Oficio Ardiente (2005), Patrimonio Nacional y la Universidad de Salamanca.
Fulgor del aire (2007), LOM Ediciones, Santiago del Chile
De palabra: Poesía III (1973-1989) (2008), Visor Libros, Madrid
Bajo la luvia ajena (2009), Seix Barral, Barcelona
Prose
Prosa de prensa, Ediciones B, España, 1997
Ni el flaco perdón de Dios/Hijos de desaparecidos (coautore con Mara La Madrid), Planeta, Buenos Aires, 1997
Nueva prosa de prensa, Ediciones B Argentina, Buenos Aires, 1999
Afghanistan/Iraq: el imperio empantanado, Buenos Aires, 2001
Miradas, Seix Barral, Buenos Aires, 2005
Escritos urgentes, Capital Intellectual, Buenos Aires, 2009
Escritos urgentes II, Capital intellectual, Buenos Aires, 2010
El ciempiés y la araña, ilustraciones de Eleonora Arroyo, Capital intellectual, México, 2011
^ ab"I am the only Argentine in the family. My parents and my two siblings were Ukrainian. They
immigrated in 1928." Juan Gelman: SemblanzaArchived 2008-12-24 at the Wayback Machine(in Spanish) In the same brief autobiographical text, Gelman states that his mother was a student of medicine and the daughter of a rabbi from a small town. "[My parents] never shut us up in a ghetto, culturally or otherwise. [...] I received no religious education." Gelman would later write poems in Ladino, i.e., Judeo-Spanish; he is also known for being sharply critical of Israel.
