Talk:Juan Ramón Jiménez

Latest comment: 15 years ago by SDeGiulio in topic Assessment comment

One surname or two?

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I could be wrong, but I get the impression that Ramón was Juan Ramón Jiménez's first surname, not his middle name as the article's consistent reference to him as "Jiménez" seems to suggest. (See the Nobel presentation address at [1], for instance, which refers to him as "Juan Ramón" and as "Ramón Jiménez", but never simply as "Jiménez".) If anyone has contrary evidence to present (his real second surname would be good), I would request that he do so in a reply to this entry. If not, this page and several others that link to it should be corrected in short order. -Agur bar Jacé (talk) 21:54, 25 January 2009 (UTC)Reply


Assessment comment

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Colleagues,

I wonder if the assertion, often made, that Jimenez' wife, Zenobia Comprubi, was a noted translator of Tagore (Bengali, 1861-1941; Noble in Literature 1913), is entirely correct.

I have read that that the many volumes (some 20, I believe) of Spanish translations of Tagore were done jointly by Jimemez and Comprubi, with Comprubi, a bilingual, multiculutural speaker of Spanish and English, doing a rough version in Spanish, and Jimenez putting it into literary Spanish. If so, this should certainly be stated.

On the other hand, if this is wrong, and they were done by Comprubi, the language could stand as is, but this point could also be emphasized.

Sorry, I am not well enough versed in the facts to judge this--I hope others are.

I understand that these translations were popular and helped pay the bills. They were made (largely, completely?) from the MacMillan English versions, not the Bengali originals. These English versions are now being replaced by more adequate translations, but the Comprubi/Jimenez Spanish versions are an interesting chapter in popular, if not literary, hispanic culture, and should be noted, even in a short bio of Jimemez, I think, because of their association with his name and the possibility that familiarity with Tagore was a significant intellectual/literary influence.

If these translations do bear Jimenez' mark, to a significant extent, as is likely, they will also be of value in understanding Jimenez' own work.

As recently as the late 1980's I frequently found copies of these translations for sale in bookstores in Mexico, perhaps they are still selling.

Apart from seeing a more adequate mention of this work in the bio, I would love to get any information about them, or about studies of their popular/literary history and value. If I knew more, I would write more! Thanks. SDeGiulio (talk) 16:45, 8 March 2009 (UTC)Reply

Last edited at 17:48, 8 March 2009 (UTC). Substituted at 20:39, 29 April 2016 (UTC)