Profile of Luis Cernuda on Famous Like Me

Luis Cernuda (born Luis Cernuda Bidón September 21, 1902 – November, 1963), was a Spanish poet.

He was born in Seville, the son of a military man. Cernuda received a strict education as a child and then studied law at the University of Seville. In the 1920s, Cernuda moved to Madrid, where he quickly became part of the literary scene. For a year, he worked as a reader at the University of Toulouse, returning to Spain after the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic. Cernuda collaborated with many organisations working to support a more liberal and tolerant Spain. He participated in the Second Congress of Anti-Fascist Intellectuals in Valencia.

The central concerns of this poet are evident in the title of his life's major opus: La Realidad y el Deseo (Reality and Desire). In this work, which Cernuda began in the 1930s and expanded on almost until his death in 1963, the poet explores desire, love, subject, object, history and sexuality in poems which draw influences from romanticism, classicism, and the surrealist avant-garde.

Cernuda is known as a member of the Generation of '27, a group of Spanish poets and artists including Federico Garcia Lorca. He broke new ground with "Los Placeres Prohibidos" (Forbidden Pleasures), an avant-garde work in which the poet used surrealism to explore his sexuality.

During the Spanish Civil War, Cernuda fled to England, where he began an exile that later took him to France, Scotland, Massachusetts (Mount Holyoke College), Mexico, and California; he never returned to Spain.

He died in Mexico City.

His major works include

• Poetry: La realidad y el deseo
• Prose poems: Ocnos, Variaciones sobre un tema Mexicano
• Criticism: Literatura Poesia I & II

His major English language critics include Derek Harris and Phillip Silver.

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