Juan Ramon en su reino

Abstract

Francisco Garfias, Juan en su reino. Huelva: E. de la Juan 1995. 187 pp. Unidad (Cuaderno de Textos) de Zenobia g Juan (Y estudios juanramonianos). Ed. Carmen Hernandez-Pinzon Moreno. Huelva: Juan 1996. 97 pp. Juan Moguer (Poesia y prosa). 4th ed. Huelva: E. de la Juan 1996. 214 pp. Ernestina de Champourcin, La ardilla y la rosa (Juan Jimenez en mi memoria). 2nd enlgd. ed. Huelva: E. de la Juan 1997. 193 pp. Exposicion internacional de arte correo Homenqie a Juan Jimenez/Mail Art International Exhibition An Homage to Juan Ed. Fernando Serrano. Huelva: E. de la Juan Jimenez & Junta de Andalucia (Consejeria de Cultura), 1998. 131 pp. Juan Ideolojia II. Metamorfosis IV. Intro. & ed. Emilio Rios. Huelva: E. de la Juan 1998. 184 pp. Juan Un andaluz de fuego (Francisco Giner de los Rios). Intro. & ed. Maria Jesus Dominguez Sio. Huelva: E. de la El Monte & la Juan 1998. 218 pp. This cluster of books signals the initial publishing venture of the Fundacion Juan Jimenez, the editorial branch of the Casa Museo de Zenobia y Juan Ramon located in the poet's birthplace of Moguer. The Director of the Casa, Luis Manuel de la Prada, intends the Foundation to issue comparable editions and studies on a regular basis; indeed, it recently published a magnificently revised and enlarged edition of Antonio Campoamor Gonzalez's 1982 Bibliografia general de Juan Jimenez (1999). With respect to the seven books under review, one is a catalogue of an exhibition and another is the first number of a journal. Three others are editions of the poet's works (Moguer, Ideolojia and Un andaluz de fuego). Francisco Garfias is honored here with a collection of his essays, and the recently deceased Ernestina de Champourcin with a revised version of her memoirs on Zenobia and Juan Ramon. The catalogue itself is intriguing. It reproduces the art of one hundred and fifty-two artists from twenty-seven countries who responded to an appeal by Moguer to commemorate by mail the fortieth anniversary of Juan Ramon's Nobel Prize for Literature (1956). The inspiration for the exhibition, as de la Prada documents in his brief and informative introduction, was the fact that letters themselves played such an important role in Juan Ramon's own life. The artifacts submitted are most diverse in nature but comparable in size (because they were literally mailed to Moguer in an envelope or small package). Joan Brossa and Christo, who for your reviewer are the only well-known contributors, do not even allude in their pieces to juanramoniana, but many of these artifacts and collages do (to Platero, in particular). Mail-art is Dada inspired; it is counter-[k]ultural and anti-bourgeois, but far more humorous than Antonio Orihuela allows in his provocative and ponderous introduction. In one instance, your reviewer caught his traditional, male gaze fixated on a pristine, white-lace brassiere; the prurience of that gaze was shattered when his eyes, traveling slowly down the collage, found the garment to be incongruently juxtaposed above: Los dioses no tuvieron mas sustancia que la que tengo yo (a delightful, if momentarily shocking, debunking of Espacio's first sentence). Unidad is the only issue so far of a new journal to be devoted to juanramoniana. It was edited by Carmen Hernandez-Pinzon Moreno, who has now assumed responsibility for the Jimenez estate from her father and Juan Ramon's nephew, don Francisco Hernandez-Pinzon Jimenez. Unidad contains several sections: one dedicated to unpublished work by the Jimenez; another of homages; another of essays and studies (by Garfias, Palau de Nemes, Rios and Dominguez Sio), and a final section of brief reviews of books devoted to the field. …