European and American Itineraries of Juan Ramón Jiménez

Join us for an evening of music, art and literature to celebrate Juan Ramón Jiménez, the Spanish poet, editor and critic who won the Nobel Prize literature in 1956.

To commemorate the centennial of the publishing of Juan Ramón Jiménez’s Diary of a Newlywed Poet (Diario de un poeta recién casado, 1917), the Universtity of Maryland and SPAIN arts & culture present a concert by Spanish composer Carlos José Martínez Fernández, with some of Jiménez’s famous poems interpreted by Spanish-American soprano Anaïs Naharro-Murphy, alongside pianist David Hughes, and with watercolors by Juan Gómez Macías inspired by the work of this Nobel Prize winner.

This event will provide a long awaited multi-aesthetic tribute through the ground-breaking poetic travelogue in the Northeastern United States (from Boston to D.C.) that the poet discovered on his honeymoon with his Spanish-Puerto Rican muse and companion, Zenobia Camprubí.

Complemented by other texts written in the USA (1939-1950) during exile from the Spanish Civil War, the selection also recalls the couple as faculty of the Department of Spanish at the University of Maryland (1943-1951). From the campus in 1956, Dr. Graciela Palau-Nemes (Emerita) lead the call for the Literature Nobel Award to Jiménez. These 22 visual lieder complete brilliantly the poet’s wishes for a book of total ethical beauty: music, art, and literature embrace here Jimenez’s cry for social justice, equality, and the lyrical defense of what his dear friend and Vice-president of the United States, Henry A. Wallace, named The Common Man.

The concert will be preceded by a colloquium, from 2 to 4 pm, at St Mary’s Hall / The Language House, University of Maryland, College Park, on European Sights and Sounds and USA Landscapes with the participation of Dr. Fatemeh Keshavarz-Karamustafa (Director SLLC, UM), Dr. Peter Beicken, (Germanic Studies, UM), Dr. Carmen Benito-Vessels, (Spanish, UM), Dr. Saverio Giovacchini (History, UM), Dr. Carlos José Martinez Fernández (PH.D Musicology), and Dr. José M. Naharro-Calderón (Spanish, UM & coordinator of the event).