Guillermo de Torre facts for kids

Guillermo de Torre with Norah Borges.

Guillermo de Torre (born in Madrid, 1900 – died in Buenos Aires, 14 January 1971) was a Spanish writer. He wrote essays, poems, and was a literary critic. He was part of an art movement called Dada and a group of writers known as the Generation of '27. He was also the brother-in-law of the famous Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges.

Early Life and Writing

Guillermo de Torre started writing when he was very young. A writer named Ramón Gómez de la Serna once described him as "an intelligent and crazy young man."

In 1918, he met other artists like Vicente Huidobro, Robert Delaunay, and Sonia Delaunay. He studied law and earned a degree. However, he could not become a diplomat because he was deaf. He traveled around Europe and learned about many new art styles, called avant-garde movements.

New Art Movements

In 1919, Guillermo de Torre wrote a special paper called the manifesto of Ultraism. This paper explained the ideas behind Ultraism, a new poetry movement. He also worked with Jorge Luis Borges and Tristan Tzara to write a poem using a technique called automatic writing. This meant writing without thinking too much, letting ideas flow freely.

In 1920, he wrote another paper called a Vertical Manifesto about Ultraism. That same year, he started a magazine called Reflector with José de Ciria y Escalante.

Helixes and Early Poems

In 1923, Guillermo de Torre published a book of poems called Helixes. These poems were part of the Dadaist movement. The book used many interesting styles:

• Calligrams: Poems shaped like pictures.
• Negative space: Using empty parts of the page as part of the art.
• Free verse: Poems without a regular rhythm or rhyme.
• Proparoxytones: Words where the stress is on the third-to-last syllable.
• Ideas from Futurism: An art movement that loved machines and speed.

The cover of Helixes was designed by Rafael Barradas. The book also had woodcut illustrations by Norah Borges, who would later become his wife. Critics at the time did not like the book because it was so different. However, it was important because it included some of the first haikus (short Japanese poems) written in Spanish. Here is an example:

La tijera del viento

corta las cabelleras

de las espigas más esbeltas.

This translates to:

The scissors of the wind

cut the hair

of the most slender ears of wheat.

Literary Discussions

Guillermo de Torre wrote for many magazines that supported Ultraism, such as Grecia, Cervantes, and Ultra. He also wrote for European magazines.

In 1923, he argued against Creacionismo, another art movement started by his old friend Vicente Huidobro. De Torre said that Huidobro had taken ideas from an Uruguayan writer named Julio Herrera y Reissig.

Important Works and Travels

In 1924, De Torre translated a book by Max Jacob. In 1925, he published European Vanguard Literature. This book was very popular in Spain and Latin America. It helped many people understand the new and complex art movements of the time. Later, in 1965, he released a bigger and updated version called History of Vanguard Literature.

De Torre was very interested in how poetry and visual art connected. He also explored the idea of cybernetics, which is about how systems control themselves. His books often looked at the work of important writers like Apollinaire, Rimbaud, T. S. Eliot, and Albert Camus.

Moving to Buenos Aires

In 1927, Guillermo de Torre helped start La Gaceta Literaria, a magazine for the Generation of '27 writers. He also wrote for Revista de Occidente.

He married Norah Borges, who was the sister of Jorge Luis Borges. After they married, they moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina. There, he wrote for a newspaper called Gaceta Americana. During these years, he wrote important books about art and literature, such as Test of conscience: Aesthetic problems of the new Spanish generation (1928) and Itinerary of new Spanish painting (1931).

Life in Madrid and Exile

Between 1932 and 1936, Guillermo de Torre and his wife lived in Madrid. He wrote for newspapers like El Sol and cultural magazines. In 1932, he helped create the Society of Iberian Artists (SAI). He also started Índice Literario with Pedro Salinas.

When the Spanish Civil War began, he moved to Paris. He worked for the Spanish republican tourism office there. Later, he moved back to Buenos Aires for good.

Later Career and Legacy

In Buenos Aires, Guillermo de Torre became the head of the literature department at the University of Buenos Aires. He also taught at many other universities in the Americas. He continued to write about literature and art.

He helped start a publishing company called Losada. There, he helped put together the Complete Works of famous writers like Federico García Lorca. He also supported writers like Rafael Alberti, William Faulkner, and Franz Kafka. He wrote for many Spanish and Latin American magazines. He especially loved studying comparative literature, which looks at how different literatures relate to each other.

Like his brother-in-law Jorge Luis Borges, Guillermo de Torre became blind as he got older. He passed away in Buenos Aires on January 14, 1971.

His only book of poems, Eliche, was translated into Italian in 2005. This edition included notes about him written by his son, Miguel de Torre Borges.

Guillermo de Torre was a very skilled literary critic, like other great poets of his time such as Juan Ramón Jiménez. However, he sometimes made mistakes in his judgments. For example, he turned down Gabriel García Márquez's first novel, Leaf Storm, which was a big disappointment for the author. He also did not appreciate the poetry of Pablo Neruda.

As an art critic, he was known for his biography Life and Art of Picasso. He also wrote essays like Menéndez Pelayo and the Two Spains. His theoretical works include Guillaume Apollinaire: His Life, His Work, the Theories of Cubism and Keys to Hispanoamerican Literature. He also wrote about "engaged literature," which is art that deals with social issues.

His last works included Minorities and Masses in Contemporary Culture and Art (1963) and New Directions in Literary Criticism (1970).

Works

Poetry

• Hélices, Madrid: Mundo Latino, 1923.

Criticism

• Manifiesto vertical, 1920.
• Literaturas europeas de vanguardia, Madrid: Caro Raggio, 1925.
• Examen de conciencia. Problemas estéticos de la nueva generación española. Buenos Aires: Humanidades, 1928.
• Itinerario de la nueva pintura española, Montevideo, 1931.
• Vida y arte de Picasso (1936)
• El fiel de la balanza, (1941), essay.
• Menéndez Pelayo y las dos Españas (1943)
• Guillaume Apollinaire: su vida, su obra y las teorías del cubismo (1946).
• Problemática de la literatura (1951)
• La metamorfosis de Proteo, (1956), essays.
• Claves de literatura hispanoamericana (1959)
• La aventura estética de nuestro tiempo (1961)
• Historia de las literaturas de Vanguardia (Madrid, Guadarrama, 1965).
• Ultraísmo, Existencialismo y Objetivismo en Literatura. Madrid: Guadarrama, 1968.
• El espejo y el camino (1968), essays.
• Minorías y masas en la cultura y el arte contemporáneo (1963)
• Al pie de las letras (1967)
• La metamorfosis de Proteo (1967)
• Nueva direcciones de la crítica literaria (1970)
• Doctrina y crítica literaria (1970).
• Correspondencia Juan Ramón Jiménez / Guillermo de Torre 1920-1956. Madrid / Fráncfort: Iberoamericana / Vervuert, 2006.

See also

In Spanish: Guillermo de Torre para niños