Biography of León Felipe

His given name was Felipe Camino Galicia.  He signed his first poems with different pseudonyms, in which he conjugated his true first name and surnames, but ¨León Felipe,¨ for which he is universally known today was utilized for the first time in 1919, when in Almonacid de Zórita he concluded the definitive version of his book: ¨Versos y oraciones de caminante¨. 

He was born in Tábara (Zamora), in 1884, where his father served as a notary.  But very early the family relocated to Sequeros (Salamanca).  Seven years later a second relocation took the family to Santander, where he attended secondary school.  In Valladolid he began university study for Pharmacy (1900) and continued in Madrid. 

He was licenced and with the money that he obtained from a loan, his father opened the ¨Pharmacy of the Center¨ on San Francisco Street in Santander.  As his father died suddenly, that Pharmacy would have to have been the economic sustenance of the family but the sale of pharmaceutical products did not provide the life of gathering in literary circles to discuss philosophy, politics and art, of which Felipe was accustomed.  He went into debt and one day disappeared from Santander, took flight as free bird wandering through Barcelona, Madrid, many towns of Spanish Levante and also Portuguese localities.  He was a theatre actor in travelling companies but that only earned him hunger and hardship.

One terrible day the creditors found him and he was imprisoned:  three years in prison, victim of his ineptitude in business and the use of monetary loans.

From the prison Felipe took the experience of many heartaches and the lesson of Quijote that resonated in him very deeply.

He began to write.  The verses that he Publisher in the magazine ¨España¨, and the reading in the Ateneo of his first book of poems: ¨Versos y oraciones del caminante¨, carried him to fame, through which the vice-secretary of government, who had been a friend of his father in Santander, offered him help and he accepted the position of Administrator of Hospitals in Spanish Guinea. 

He was located in Elobey, Bata y Santa Isabel.  In Bata he reported a case of dirty business.  It seemed to be that the medical director remained with almost 90% of the profit for each patient.  When they proposed that he participate in the business he was outraged.  He took very little from the denouncement, but it was consistent with his conscience and when the governor bid him goodbye, he awarded him the Medal of Muni.  According to the words of the governor, it was the first time that he granted the award because Felipe was the first decent person to pass through there.

Felipe returned to Madrid and with all the money that he brought from Africa bought a trip to go to Mexico in the winery of a ship.

In Mexico he carried on a relatively relaxed life as a teacher.  He married Berta Gamboa and together they relocated to the United States.  There he translated to Spanish the works of American writers: Waldo Frank and Walt Whitman and published the long poem titled: ¨Drop a star¨.

He returned to Madrid in 1934.  Shortly after he went to Panamá as professor of Literature and as cultural attaché of the Spanish government.  A few months after arriving to Panamá the Spanish Civil War broke out and he wrote ¨Good bye Panamá¨, where he bid farewell to that country, in order to return to Spain obeying an imperious voice: that of the fidelity of the government that had named him and of the love of his homeland.

  During the war there was a time that he lived in the same house as Emilio Prados, Rafael Alberti and María Teresa León.  His outings, on occasion, consisted of solitary walks without direction or course, other times he would go to the trenches and others he drifted around in anguish.  Much later he relocated to Valencia where the Republican government and the intellectuals were already located.  In Valencia he wrote ¨La Insignia¨, a denouncement of the ¨partidismos¨and ¨partidos¨ that from within the rearguard, many times, had been a useless force, while heroic where the men that fought on the frontlines of the battle. 

In 1938 he left Spain for good and was exhiled to Mexico.  That is when he wrote ¨Español del éxodo y del llanto¨.  He continued working and writing poems.  He passed the time and already, the effects of old-age were chipping at the body and the spirit of Felipe.  In 1957 Berta died, and it was a cruel blow for his emotional health, and on the 18^th of September 1968 León Felipe died.  Today in the woodland of Chapultepec of Mexico there is a bronze statue erected in honor and memory of the poet.

HOW LEÓN FELIPE ACHIEVED SUCCESS

In the years 1918 and 1919, León Felipe lived hungry and without recourses of any type in Madrid and following an impulse that animated him he manifested himself publicly as a poet, gathered his best poems that he had and called on the door of the famous Juan Ramón Jiménez in order to beg him to read them and give the opinion that they deserved.  A few days passed nervously for León Felipe, without receiving response, he returned to the house of Juan Ramón Jiménez where he and his wife, Zenobia, graciously received him.  They all chatted, animated and affably and in a given moment Juan Ramón got up, and returned to him the poems, with giving any commentary.  It was clear, so clear that when he left, Felipe ripped his papers into tiny pieces and threw them into a sewer in the street.  The poet in the making was despondent. 

A little later he obtained a regent placement of Pharmacy in Almonacid of Zorita (Guadalajara) and there, alone in a room, encountered a distinct poetic voice and breath that permitted him, in two or three months, wrote the poems ¨Versos y oraciones del caminante¨.  The fundamental themes of the book:  lonliness, the walk and God, which were united as common themes in the echoes of poets such as Juan Ramón Jiménez, Antonio Machado and Francis Jammes.

The sculptor Emilio de Madariaga read the verses of the book and the seemed good to him, but in order to make certain of the accuracy of his opinion he passed them on to the critic Enrique Díez-Canedo, who after many vicissitudes read them and not only concurred with the opinion of Madariaga but also published a selection in the magazine ¨España¨.  The march to fame was given and the Ateneo of Madrid opened its doors to the new poet to host a lecture.

The Ateneo was an institution of great great intellectual prestige because to it arrived regularly writers like Rubén Darío, Valle Inclán and Unamuno, and the presence of the same would be occupied, some years later, by Manuel Azañan, future president of the Spanish Republic and a man of a marked literary vocation. 

León Felipe, who until now was an obscure and unknown poet, passed on to form part of the intellectual and artistic elite of Madrid.

However, ¨Did you pass through merit or by a stroke of luck?  Said in another way: How is your poetry?  What characteristics make it worthy of the favourable reception that they give it?  Felipe said the same thing:  ¨I did not enter through the traditional door.  In reality, by then, 1818-1820, all the doors began to collapse and great holes in the old sacred walls began to open, by which the young revolutionary poets hung a tiny picture.  Neither did I enter through those holes (…).  I did not come to defend anyone, nor to belong to any fraternity (…).  But I spoke with a pained Castilian accent of defeat that later I have seen was more universal than Castilian.

This means that there was a group of poets, the modernists to whom León refers when he speaks of ¨the old sacred walls¨.  These were the poets that defended a movement of enthusiasm, of liberty, of metric renovation, that they utilized in their musical rhythms which decorated their poetry with exotica and rare characteristics.  And there was another group, ¨the young group¨, who fought through poetry against the modernists because their poetry formed part of the European avant-garde and were aligned with movements such as futurism, machinism, dadaísmo, creationism, ultraism, etc.  They tried to introduce new themes using metaphors, new spellings, literary deletions, such as punctuation.  It was the era of the dynamic, roaring twenties. 

León Felipe was from neither one, nor the other group.  His poetry was more personal, more authentic and represented a flight to the simplicity in the midst of that chaos.  Furthermore, the poetry was of a painful nature, because unfortunately, things were not easy.  His poetry was, as he said, of a ¨pained Castilian accent¨ and ¨universal¨. 

  THE INSCRIPTION OF LEÓN FELIPE IN THE CIVIL REGISTRY

This is a transcription of the original inscription of León Felipe in the Civil Registry:

"In the Village of Tábara at three p.m., 13 of April 1884 before Municipal Judge Mr. Manuel Moráis Calvo and Secretary Mr. Francisco Probanza. Mr. Dionisio Velasco y Alonso from Poza (Idem)  assisted with his personal number eight expedited in Tábara. Retired Coronel and with residence in Plaza Mayor, 6. Whose objective was to inscribe in the Civil Registry a child and as a resident I declare:

That said child was born in his father´s home the 11^th day of the actual month at 7 p.m.

That said child is the son of  Mr. Higinio Camino de la Rosa from Herrín de Campos (Valladolid), married, notary and resident in this village. And, his wife Mrs. Valeriana Galicia from Valdenebro (Valladolid), housewife and resident in the same.

That said child is grandson of Mr. Mariano Camino del Rey from Herrín de Campos, married, farm hand and resident in the same, and Mrs. Vicenta de la Rosa from Fuentes de Nava, married, veterinarian and resident in Vallladolid, and Mrs. Salustiana Ayala from Valdenebro, resident in her husband´s. And that the expressed child has been given the name Felipe.

All this is presented by the testimony of Domingo Fresno from this village, married, owner and resident in the same and Mr. Anastasio Vara Villallón, from Burgos, married and resident in the referred city.

Read this document in its entirety, as it was stamped by the Municipal Judge, and signed by the Judge, the declarer and the witnesses, and a copy will be dictated setting confirmation.

Note:  The said person died in México, 18 September 1968, according to communication from the Consulate of Spain."

TÁBARA TOWN: Its history.

Presumably, the village was inhabited in the Roman era, although there is no written or archaeological data that allows for confirmation.  However, there are references of the passage of Visigoths through Tábara in the VII century, because in 675, and under the reign of Wamba, when the XI Concilio de Toledo was celebrated, the village of Tábara was included in the astur-leonesa region. 

According to the ecclesiastic cronicals, San Froilán was who founded a monastery called San Salvador of Távara (earlier Tábara was written with ¨v¨) by petition of Alfonso III, that accommodated 600 monks of both sexes.  At the end of the IX century, more concretely in the year of 869, there was a school of copyists and painters in this monastery.  They made, among other works, the Beato in Apocalipsim, called Tavarense, which was illustrated by Magio and his disciple Emeterio.  It was conserved in the National Historic Archive and a miniature was reproduced of the tower of the monastery of Távara ¨alta et lapidea¨, with the scriptorium where a scroll was prepared and they copied other works.

Although the remains of the monastery of Távara have disappeared, which permit confirmation, they could be localized under the Church of Santa María of said village.

The said Emeterio and the nun Ende illustrated another codex, named Beato de Gerona,in the year 975.

Much before, Carlos V conceded to the Marquisate of Távara, the title of King, created in 1541 in favour Bernardino Pimentel and Enrique, married with Mrs. Constanza Osorio, steward of the emperor’s sons.  His palace would correspond to the houses that encircle the Plaza Mayor today.

A curious fact, perhaps through the advances of the era, it is said that in Tábara there was a talking head, a robot species that spoke, that frightened away the jews and the torrential rain.  In it Cervantes was inspired to write the episode of Quijote in the house of Mr. Ambrosio Moreno.