Juan Eduardo Cirlot
Encyclopedia
Juan Eduardo Cirlot Laporta (April 9, 1916 – May 11, 1973) was a Spanish
poet
, art critic
, hermeneutist, mythologist
, and musician
.
to Juan Cirlot and Maria Laporta. There he matriculated high school from the College of the Jesuits
and worked in a customs agency and the Banco Hispanoamericano while also studying music.
In 1937, he was mobilized to fight for the Second Spanish Republic
. In early 1940, he was mobilized again, but this time by the pro-Franco
side. He was in Zaragoza
until 1943; there he frequented the city's intellectual and artistic circles and associated with the painter Alfonso Buñuel—brother of Luis Buñuel
—with whom he translated the poems of Paul Éluard
, André Breton
, and Antonin Artaud
. During this period, he read many avant-garde
art books and magazines.
In the summer of 1943, he returned to Barcelona to work in the Banco Hispanoamericano. He met novelist Benítez de Castro, who introduced him in the media as an art critic. On 11 August 1947, he married Gloria Valenzuela, then began to work in the editorial bookstore "Argos". He composed music and worked with the artists of the Dau al Set
, a Catalan
group. On 21 October 1948, he premiered his Preludio in the Ateneo Barcelonés.
In 1949, his daughter Lourdes was born, and he became a writer for the Dau al Set magazine journal. In October, he traveled to Paris
and met André Breton. Igor Stravinsky, his first treatise, was published. In 1951, he began to work in the Gustavo Gili publishing house, where he remained until his death. That year, he also began to collect antique swords.
Between 1949 and 1954, in Barcelona, Cirlot befriended and worked with the German
ethnologist
and musicologist
Marius Schneider, who initiated him into the science of symbology
. Jose Gudiol Ricart likewise introduced him to the study of Gothic art
. His work El Ojo en la Mitología: su simbolismo [The Eye in Mythology: Its Symbolism] was published in 1954. His daughter Victoria
was born the same year, and he helped found the Academia del Faro de San Cristóbal.
In 1958, he began to write collaborations, such as Goya, Papeles de Son Armadans, and published, through the publishing house Luis Miracle, his most famous and international work, the Diccionario de símbolos tradicionales. Years of intense activity as a critic and lecturer followed.
In 1962, his father died and he published his dictionary in English under the title A Dictionary of Symbols, with a prologue by Herbert Read
. In 1963, he severed ties with Dau al Set member Antoni Tàpies
. In 1966, he saw Franklin Schaffner
's film The War Lord
, which had a great impact on his poetic work.
Cirlot fell ill with pancreatic cancer
in 1971, for which he underwent surgery on 11 May 1973. He died that day in his home on calle Herzegovino in Barcelona.
school and to Dada
ism, soon assuming a very broad-horizoned spiritualist tradition of universal longing (Kabbalah
, Sufism
, and Eastern
studies). From this was sparked the interest in symbology that permeated all his literary activity and his important work as an art critic. As a member of the Dau al Set school, he was a collaborator of Joan Brossa and Antoni Tàpies. He conducted comprehensive studies on medieval symbology and hermeneutics, accruing an impressive collection of swords, and his prolific and varied poetic output—more than fifty books—remained independent of the trends that dominated the poetry of the postwar period because of their darkness and hermetism; nevertheless, his impact has never ceased to be reevaluated through continuous revisions, reeditions, appearances of unpublished works, and tributes. The best-known part of his work is the phase of his poetic evolution centered in the actress Rosemary Forsyth
, who played Bronwyn in the Franklin Schaffner film The War Lord (1965) and inspired the permutational phase of his poetry.
As a poet his writing ranges from playful invitations and lexical juggling acts within a general elegiac
tone. There are echoes of avant-garde fantasy.
Cirlot also cultivated aphorism
in his book Del no mundo (1969), in which his thought can be traced back to its sources in Nietzsche
and Lao Tse
. In 1986 El mundo del objeto a la luz del surrealismo was published unedited. Written in 1953, it went beyond the conceptual trends of the previous decades and continues to be an essential reference for professors and students of the universe of the work of art
. In 1988 88 sueños, a complete collection of the dreams transcribed by Cirlot published partially in the Catalan journal Dau al Set, was published, clearly showing the importance that the Surrealist school had on his formation.
As a scholar, Cirlot is known internationally from his Dictionary of Symbols, which continues to be successfully reissued in the wake of symbologists like Carl Gustav Jung, Mircea Eliade
, Gaston Bachelard
, René Guénon
, Gilbert Durand
, and Paul Diel
. One reviewer in 1962 called the book "a momentous contribution to symbology".
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, art critic
Art critic
An art critic is a person who specializes in evaluating art. Their written critiques, or reviews, are published in newspapers, magazines, books and on web sites...
, hermeneutist, mythologist
Mythography
A mythographer, or a mythologist is a compiler of myths. The word derives from the Greek "μυθογραφία" , "writing of fables", from "μῦθος" , "speech, word, fact, story, narrative" + "γράφω" , "to write, to inscribe". Mythography is then the rendering of myths in the arts...
, and musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
.
Biography
Cirlot was born in BarcelonaBarcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
to Juan Cirlot and Maria Laporta. There he matriculated high school from the College of the Jesuits
Society of Jesus
The Society of Jesus is a Catholic male religious order that follows the teachings of the Catholic Church. The members are called Jesuits, and are also known colloquially as "God's Army" and as "The Company," these being references to founder Ignatius of Loyola's military background and a...
and worked in a customs agency and the Banco Hispanoamericano while also studying music.
In 1937, he was mobilized to fight for the Second Spanish Republic
Second Spanish Republic
The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....
. In early 1940, he was mobilized again, but this time by the pro-Franco
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
side. He was in Zaragoza
Zaragoza
Zaragoza , also called Saragossa in English, is the capital city of the Zaragoza Province and of the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain...
until 1943; there he frequented the city's intellectual and artistic circles and associated with the painter Alfonso Buñuel—brother of Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish-born filmmaker — later a naturalized citizen of Mexico — who worked in Spain, Mexico, France and the US..-Early years:...
—with whom he translated the poems of Paul Éluard
Paul Éluard
Paul Éluard, born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel , was a French poet who was one of the founders of the surrealist movement.-Biography:...
, André Breton
André Breton
André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....
, and Antonin Artaud
Antonin Artaud
Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud, more well-known as Antonin Artaud was a French playwright, poet, actor and theatre director...
. During this period, he read many avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
art books and magazines.
In the summer of 1943, he returned to Barcelona to work in the Banco Hispanoamericano. He met novelist Benítez de Castro, who introduced him in the media as an art critic. On 11 August 1947, he married Gloria Valenzuela, then began to work in the editorial bookstore "Argos". He composed music and worked with the artists of the Dau al Set
Dau al Set
Dau al Set , the first post-World War II artistic movement in Catalonia, was founded in Barcelona in October 1948 by poet Joan Brossa. The avant-garde group had connections to the Surrealist and Dadaist movements and stressed the importance of both the conscious and unconscious in their works...
, a Catalan
Catalan people
The Catalans or Catalonians are the people from, or with origins in, Catalonia that form a historical nationality in Spain. The inhabitants of the adjacent portion of southern France are sometimes included in this definition...
group. On 21 October 1948, he premiered his Preludio in the Ateneo Barcelonés.
In 1949, his daughter Lourdes was born, and he became a writer for the Dau al Set magazine journal. In October, he traveled to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and met André Breton. Igor Stravinsky, his first treatise, was published. In 1951, he began to work in the Gustavo Gili publishing house, where he remained until his death. That year, he also began to collect antique swords.
Between 1949 and 1954, in Barcelona, Cirlot befriended and worked with the German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
ethnologist
Ethnology
Ethnology is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the ethnic, racial, and/or national divisions of humanity.-Scientific discipline:Compared to ethnography, the study of single groups through direct...
and musicologist
Musicology
Musicology is the scholarly study of music. The word is used in narrow, broad and intermediate senses. In the narrow sense, musicology is confined to the music history of Western culture...
Marius Schneider, who initiated him into the science of symbology
Symbology
Symbology concerns the study of symbols.Symbology may also refer to:-Academics:* Semiotics, study of signs and symbols* Iconography, branch of art history which studies images...
. Jose Gudiol Ricart likewise introduced him to the study of Gothic art
Gothic art
Gothic art was a Medieval art movement that developed in France out of Romanesque art in the mid-12th century, led by the concurrent development of Gothic architecture. It spread to all of Western Europe, but took over art more completely north of the Alps, never quite effacing more classical...
. His work El Ojo en la Mitología: su simbolismo [The Eye in Mythology: Its Symbolism] was published in 1954. His daughter Victoria
Victoria Cirlot
Victoria Cirlot Valenzuela is a Spanish scholar of medieval culture and literature, philologist, translator and editor. She is currently a professor of medieval literature and comparative literature at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Celtic religion professor at the University of...
was born the same year, and he helped found the Academia del Faro de San Cristóbal.
In 1958, he began to write collaborations, such as Goya, Papeles de Son Armadans, and published, through the publishing house Luis Miracle, his most famous and international work, the Diccionario de símbolos tradicionales. Years of intense activity as a critic and lecturer followed.
In 1962, his father died and he published his dictionary in English under the title A Dictionary of Symbols, with a prologue by Herbert Read
Herbert Read
Sir Herbert Edward Read, DSO, MC was an English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art. He was one of the earliest English writers to take notice of existentialism, and was strongly influenced by proto-existentialist thinker Max Stirner....
. In 1963, he severed ties with Dau al Set member Antoni Tàpies
Antoni Tàpies
Antoni Tàpies i Puig, 1st Marquess of Tàpies is a Catalan painter. He is one of the most famous European artists of his generation. After studying law for 3 years, he devoted himself from 1943 onwards only to his painting...
. In 1966, he saw Franklin Schaffner
Franklin Schaffner
Franklin James Schaffner was an American film director best known for such films as Planet of the Apes , Patton , Papillon , and The Boys from Brazil .-Early life:...
's film The War Lord
The War Lord
The War Lord is a 1965 film starring Charlton Heston, Richard Boone, Rosemary Forsyth, Guy Stockwell, Maurice Evans, Niall MacGinnis, Henry Wilcoxon and James Farentino, with Jon Alderson, Allen Jaffe, Sammy Ross, and Woodrow Parfrey. The film was directed by the future Oscar winning Director...
, which had a great impact on his poetic work.
Cirlot fell ill with pancreatic cancer
Pancreatic cancer
Pancreatic cancer refers to a malignant neoplasm of the pancreas. The most common type of pancreatic cancer, accounting for 95% of these tumors is adenocarcinoma, which arises within the exocrine component of the pancreas. A minority arises from the islet cells and is classified as a...
in 1971, for which he underwent surgery on 11 May 1973. He died that day in his home on calle Herzegovino in Barcelona.
Analysis
Beginning in the 1940s, Cirlot ascribed himself to the French SurrealistSurrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
school and to Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
ism, soon assuming a very broad-horizoned spiritualist tradition of universal longing (Kabbalah
Kabbalah
Kabbalah/Kabala is a discipline and school of thought concerned with the esoteric aspect of Rabbinic Judaism. It was systematized in 11th-13th century Hachmei Provence and Spain, and again after the Expulsion from Spain, in 16th century Ottoman Palestine...
, Sufism
Sufism
Sufism or ' is defined by its adherents as the inner, mystical dimension of Islam. A practitioner of this tradition is generally known as a '...
, and Eastern
Eastern religion
This article is about far east and Indian religions. For other eastern religions see: Eastern_world#Eastern_cultureEastern religions refers to religions originating in the Eastern world —India, China, Japan and Southeast Asia —and thus having dissimilarities with Western religions...
studies). From this was sparked the interest in symbology that permeated all his literary activity and his important work as an art critic. As a member of the Dau al Set school, he was a collaborator of Joan Brossa and Antoni Tàpies. He conducted comprehensive studies on medieval symbology and hermeneutics, accruing an impressive collection of swords, and his prolific and varied poetic output—more than fifty books—remained independent of the trends that dominated the poetry of the postwar period because of their darkness and hermetism; nevertheless, his impact has never ceased to be reevaluated through continuous revisions, reeditions, appearances of unpublished works, and tributes. The best-known part of his work is the phase of his poetic evolution centered in the actress Rosemary Forsyth
Rosemary Forsyth
Rosemary Forsyth is a Canadian-born American actress most notable for her role as Bronwyn opposite Charlton Heston in The War Lord in 1965....
, who played Bronwyn in the Franklin Schaffner film The War Lord (1965) and inspired the permutational phase of his poetry.
As a poet his writing ranges from playful invitations and lexical juggling acts within a general elegiac
Elegiac
Elegiac refers either to those compositions that are like elegies or to a specific poetic meter used in Classical elegies. The Classical elegiac meter has two lines, making it a couplet: a line of dactylic hexameter, followed by a line of dactylic pentameter...
tone. There are echoes of avant-garde fantasy.
Cirlot also cultivated aphorism
Aphorism
An aphorism is an original thought, spoken or written in a laconic and memorable form.The term was first used in the Aphorisms of Hippocrates...
in his book Del no mundo (1969), in which his thought can be traced back to its sources in Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
and Lao Tse
Laozi
Laozi was a mystic philosopher of ancient China, best known as the author of the Tao Te Ching . His association with the Tao Te Ching has led him to be traditionally considered the founder of Taoism...
. In 1986 El mundo del objeto a la luz del surrealismo was published unedited. Written in 1953, it went beyond the conceptual trends of the previous decades and continues to be an essential reference for professors and students of the universe of the work of art
Work of art
A work of art, artwork, art piece, or art object is an aesthetic item or artistic creation.The term "a work of art" can apply to:*an example of fine art, such as a painting or sculpture*a fine work of architecture or landscape design...
. In 1988 88 sueños, a complete collection of the dreams transcribed by Cirlot published partially in the Catalan journal Dau al Set, was published, clearly showing the importance that the Surrealist school had on his formation.
As a scholar, Cirlot is known internationally from his Dictionary of Symbols, which continues to be successfully reissued in the wake of symbologists like Carl Gustav Jung, Mircea Eliade
Mircea Eliade
Mircea Eliade was a Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago. He was a leading interpreter of religious experience, who established paradigms in religious studies that persist to this day...
, Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard was a French philosopher. He made contributions in the fields of poetics and the philosophy of science. To the latter he introduced the concepts of epistemological obstacle and epistemological break...
, René Guénon
René Guénon
René Guénon , also known as Shaykh `Abd al-Wahid Yahya was a French author and intellectual who remains an influential figure in the domain of metaphysics, having written on topics ranging from metaphysics, sacred science and traditional studies to symbolism and initiation.In his writings, he...
, Gilbert Durand
Gilbert Durand
Gilbert Durand is a French academic known for his work on the imagination and mythology.He was teacher of philosophy from 1947 to 1956, then professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Grenoble II. Gilbert Durand was the co-founder - with Léon Cellier and Paul Deschamps in 1966 - and the director...
, and Paul Diel
Paul Diel
Paul Diel was a French psychologist of Austrian origin who developed the method of introspective analysis and the psychology of motivation.-Life:...
. One reviewer in 1962 called the book "a momentous contribution to symbology".
Poetry
- Canto de la Vida muerta [Song of the Living Dead] (1946)
- Donde las lilas crecen [Where the Lilacs Grow] (1946)
- Cuarto canto de la vida muerta y otros fragmentos [Fourth Song of the Living Dead and Other Fragments] (1961)
- Regina tenebrarum [Queen of the Shadows] (1966)
- Bronwyn (1967)
- Cosmogonía [Cosmogony] (1969)
- Orfeo (1970)
- 44 sonetos de amor [44 Love Sonnets] (1971)
- Variaciones fonovisuales [Audiovisual Variations] (1996)
- En la llama. Poesía (1943–1959) [In the Flame: Poetry (1943–1959)] (2005)
Treatises
- Diccionario de los ismos [Dictionary of -isms] (1949)
- Ferias y atracciones [Fairs and Attractions] (1950)
- El arte de Gaudí [The Art of Gaudí] (1950)
- La pintura abstracta [Abstract Painting] (1951)
- El estilo del siglo XX [20th Century Style] (1952)
- Introducción al surrealismo [Introduction to Surrealism] (1953)
- El mundo del objeto a la luz del surrealismo [The World of the Object to the Light of Surrealism] (1953)
- El Ojo en la Mitología: su simbolismo [The Eye in Mythology: Its Symbolism] (1954)
- El espíritu abstracto desde la prehistoria a la Edad Media [The Abstract Spirit from Prehistory to the Middle Ages] (1965)
- Diccionario de símbolos [A Dictionary of Symbols] (1958)
- Del no mundo : Aforismos [From No World: Aphorisms] (1969)
- 88 sueños; Los sentimientos imaginarios y otros artículos [88 Dreams: Imaginary Feelings and Other Articles] (1988)
- Confidencias literarias [Literary Secrets] (1996)