Resales Camacho, Luis

b. 1910, Granada; d. 1992, Madrid

   Poet and literary critic

   A member of the Royal Academy of Language (see also Royal Academies), Resales Camacho received numerous prizes including the National Poetry Prize and the Cervantes Prize, and was secretary of the literary magazine, Escorial, a publication that played an important role in the post-war rehabilitation of liberal writers. Resales directed the literary journals Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos and Nueva Estafeta Literaria and produced a number of works dealing with the literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such as Cervantes y la libertad (Cervantes and Freedom) and Pasión y muerte del conde de Villamediana (The Passion and Death of the Count of Villamediana). A member of the "Generation of 1936", he attempted to restore the lyric tradition of the renaissance in response to neo-Gongorism. His collection Abril (April) is a manifesto for Catholic humanism in reaction to the pure poetry of the "Generation of 1927". In La casa encendida (The Burning House) daily experience, especially loneliness and disillu-sion, is raised to universal dimensions. Stylistically he fuses narrative and lyric, colloquial speech with surrealism. El contenido en el corazón (The Content of the Heart) constitutes a poetic search into love and friendship, and Diario de una resurrección (Diary of a Resurrection) his best collection of poems, is a brilliant synthesis of conceptual and linguistic clarity concerning man's search for freedom. Resales" lyrics capture the pulse of life with simplicity. Linguistically his work reflects a direct and spontaneous communication with the reader.

   See also: poetry

   Further reading

   - Various (1971) "Homenaje a Luis Resales", Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, 257–8; May-June (an overall assessment by several critics of Resales" works).

   JOSÉ ORTEGA