méxico (1952-1960)

In November 1952, Cernuda resigned from Mount Holyoke and settled in Mexico. He spent the first year in a rented apartment in the city center and then moved to Concha Méndez’s house on Tres Cruces St., Coyoacan. The large garden offered him the peace needed for a sober and simple life. The change of address is significant because, except for brief interruptions, this will be the poet’s home for his ten remaining years. Concha Méndez, her daughter, Paloma Altolaguirre, her son-in-law Manuel Ulacia and her future grandchildren (Manuel, Luis, Paloma and Isabel Ulacia Altolaguirre) became, to some extent, the family that Cernuda never had.

In 1954, with the help of Octavio Paz, Cernuda got a part-time job teaching at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and a grant from El Colegio de México that allowed him to dedicate himself to literary research. The first outcome of this research was his controversial Estudios sobre la poesía española contemporánea, a book that caused an uproar in the Spanish literary establishment when it was published in Madrid, in 1957. The grant also enabled him to write the essays for his book Pensamiento poético en la lírica inglesa (siglo XIX,) published in Mexico in 1958.

But 1958 was an important year for Cernuda especially due to the publication of La realidad y el deseo’s third edition in the Fondo de Cultura Económica of México. This edition collected all the poetry written by the poet and called the attention of a new generation of readers.