Biography of Xavier Abril:- Poet and Peruvian narrator, introducer of surrealism in the poetry of his country, and whose creative evolution went through various aesthetic proposals (Xavier Abril de Vivero, Lima, 1905 – Montevideo, 1990).
Biography of Xavier Abril
- Born:- 4 November 1905, Lima, Peru
- Died:- 1 January 1990, Montevideo, Uruguay
He completed his primary and secondary studies at the German School of Lima (1911-1923) and completed his training at the Institute Lima, where he specialized in the study of Spanish literature.
See Also: Biography of Joao Capistrano De Abreu
In 1926, at the age of twenty-one, he moved to Spain and studied for a year at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts in Madrid.
Upon his return to Lima, he undertook higher studies in the Faculty of Economic Sciences of the National University of San Marcos; but left them to return to Europe and settle in France, where he came into contact with the most representative voices of the avant-gardes.
Later it settled down in Spain, where it participated actively in the literary and intellectual forums of the time. With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War he returned to his native Peru. From 1948 it resided in Montevideo, where it would be of cultural aggregate of the Peruvian Embassy in Uruguay (1958-1990).
The artistic process in the writing of April resembles a journey whose starting point was the adoption of surrealism and its final destination a “return to order” based on the classic values of the Spanish tradition.
Hollywood. Contemporary Stories (1931) and Difficult Work (1935) served for Abril to be considered the founder of surrealist poetry in the Peruvian realm.
Subsequent books such as Discovery of the Dawn (1937) and The Rose written (1987) reveal an attitude of caution against the avant-garde expressive adventure and let us guess, rather, a return to the classic forms of poetry, under the notorious influence of Gonzalo of Berceo , Jorge Manrique and San Juan de la Cruz . This stage intensifies a deepening in the sense of poetry, a sort of metapoetics as the main creative concern.
Declaration of our days (1988), the last book published in the life of the poet, offers a radical break with the rest of his work, insofar as it approaches a form of political commitment. Posthumously, in 1994, the automaton was published for the first time , a vanguard nouvelle written in the 1930s and had remained unpublished ever since.
Xavier Abril is also the author of an Anthology of Modern Hispanic Poetry (1957) and of several studies on César Vallejo , with whom he had become friends in Spain: César Vallejo, Anthology (1943), Vallejo , Two studies: Vallejo and Mallarmé (1960), Cesar Vallejo or poetic theory (1963) and Exegesis trilica (1981).
The studies of April, in which Vallejo considered the most original and innovative poet of Castilian literature in the first half of the twentieth century, contributed to the high estimate that his work deserves.
He also analyzed the production of the Peruvian poet Jose Maria Eguren in Eguren el oscuro. Symbolism in America (1979), work awarded the National Prize for Literary Essay. In 1986 the whole of his work was awarded the National Prize for Literature.
