Vicente Pío Marcelino Cirilo Aleixandre y Merlo (April 26, 1898 – December 14, 1984) was a Spanish

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...

 who was born in Seville

Seville

Seville is the artistic, historic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain. It is the capital of the autonomous community of Andalusia and of the province of Seville. It is situated on the plain of the River Guadalquivir, with an average elevation of above sea level...

. Aleixandre was a Nobel Prize

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

 laureate for Literature in 1977. He was part of the Generation of '27

Generation of '27

The Generation of '27 was an influential group of poets that arose in Spanish literary circles between 1923 and 1927, essentially out of a shared desire to experience and work with avant-garde forms of art and poetry. Their first formal meeting took place in Seville in 1927 to mark the 300th...

. He died in Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

 in 1984.

Aleixandre's early poetry, which he wrote mostly in free verse, is highly surrealistic

Surrealism

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....

. It also praises the beauty of nature by using symbols that represent the earth and the sea. Many of Aleixandre's early poems are filled with sadness. They reflect his feeling that people have lost the passion and free spirit that he saw in nature.

His works

His early collections of poetry include Passion of the Earth (1935) and Destruction or Love (1933). In 1944, he wrote Shadow of Paradise, the poetry where he first began to concentrate on themes such as fellowship, friendliness, and spiritual unity. His later books of poetry include History of the Heart (1954) and In a Vast Dominion (1962).

Aleixandre studied law at the University of Madrid

University of Madrid

The Complutense University of Madrid is a public university in Madrid, Spain, and one of the oldest universities in the world.The University of Madrid may also refer to:* The Autonomous University of Madrid, a public university founded in 1968...

. Selections of his work were translated into English in Twenty Poems of Vicente Aleixandre (1977) and A Longing for the Light: Selected Poems of Vincent Aleixandre (1979; Copper Canyon Press

Copper Canyon Press

Copper Canyon Press is an independent, non-profit small press, specializing in the publication of poetry and located in the picturesque town of Port Townsend, Washington. Since 1972, the Press has published poetry exclusively and has established an international reputation for its commitment to...

, 2007) (translated by Lewis Hyde

Lewis Hyde

Lewis Hyde is a scholar, essayist, translator, cultural critic and writer whose scholarly work focuses on the nature of imagination, creativity, and property.-Early life:...

).