León Felipe
León Felipe, born Felipe Camino Galicia de la Rosa on April 11, 1884, in Tábara, Spain, was a significant Spanish poet and playwright. Initially trained as a pharmacist, he felt unfulfilled in that career and ventured into the arts, which led to a tumultuous life marked by a three-year imprisonment for financial crimes. His literary journey began in earnest with the publication of his first poetry collection in 1920. Felipe spent a transformative period in Mexico after impulsively moving there in 1922, where he became involved in the vibrant artistic community and eventually married American professor Berta Gamboa.
His poetry was influenced by prominent figures such as Walt Whitman and T. S. Eliot, and he produced notable works reflecting the political turmoil of his time, particularly during the Spanish Civil War, which profoundly impacted him. After fleeing Spain in 1938 due to the rise of Francisco Franco, Felipe settled in Mexico City, where he continued to write and lecture throughout Central and South America. His final work was published when he was eighty-two, and he passed away on September 18, 1968. León Felipe's legacy endures in his contributions to Spanish poetry, inspiring future generations with his calls for justice and his reflections on the Spanish Republic.
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León Felipe
Writer
- Born: April 11, 1884
- Birthplace: Tábara, Spain
- Died: September 18, 1968
- Place of death: Mexico City, Mexico
Biography
León Felipe was born on April 11, 1884, in Tábara, Spain, as Felipe Camino Galicia de la Rosa. His father was a notary. Felipe received a bachelor’s degree from the Instituto de Santander. He studied pharmacy in Madrid. At his father’s death, Felipe returned to Santander to work as a pharmacist and to support his family financially. He found the work unsatisfying, and once he had his family cared for, he joined a traveling theater group. He wound up spending three years in jail during this period for financial crimes.
After his release from jail, Felipe moved to Madrid. In 1920, he published his first volume of poetry, Versos y oraciones de caminante. In 1920, he accepted a position as a hospital administrator in Spanish Guinea, a post he held for two years. He impulsively chose to travel to Mexico in 1922, and he quickly became a part of the artistic and literary culture there. While in Mexico in 1924, he met an American professor named Berta Gamboa. The two fell in love and married soon after Felipe followed her to New York. Over the next years, he worked as teacher of Spanish at various institutions in the United States. One such position was at Cornell University, where Gamboa was also employed. Felipe used this time to produce another volume of poems, and he also translated work by Waldo Frank and Walt Whitman. Whitman, in particular, exerted considerable influence on Felipe’s poetry. In 1933, he published a long poem, Drop a Star, that reveals the influence of T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland. During the early 1930’s, Felipe traveled in Spain, Mexico, and the United States, taking a variety of teaching positions. In 1936, he traveled to Panama as the Spanish cultural attaché. It was in Panama that he received word of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.
Felipe immediately returned to Spain, where he was an outspoken partisan of the Republican cause. In 1936, he wrote La insignia, a long poem on the war. He gave many public readings of his work. Certainly, the Spanish Civil War was the most profound experience of his life. In 1938, he fled Spain as it fell to the armies of Francisco Franco; he ultimately settled in Mexico City where he produced some of his most moving work. He worked at the Casa de España (later the Colegio de México) and helped found the journal Cuadernos americanos. Between 1945 and 1968, Felipe traveled throughout Central and South America giving lectures and readings. In addition, he continued to published poems and drama. Felipe’s last work was Oh, este viejo y roto violin! (oh, this old and broken violin!), published in his eighty-second year. Felipe died on September 18, 1968, in Mexico City. His achievements are evident in the influence he exerted on a generation of younger Spanish poets, who saw in him the remnants of the Spanish Republic. He called for justice for his nation. Both his poetic work and his journal stand as important features in the landscape of twentieth century Spanish poetry.