Dámaso Alonso
(Madrid, 1898 - Madrid, 1990)

Dámaso Alonso y Fernández de las Redondas’ work and personality showed, like no other, what his colleague, José Fernández Montesinos called "the art of not giving anything up.” He liked to try everything. He was an important poet of the "Generation of 27”, a term which his splendid article of 1948, without mentioning it, contributed to and reinforced. He renewed Spanish poetry with his dramatic book Hijos de la ira (1944),directly inspired by the Civil War. He worked at the Center for Historical Studies (Centro de Estudios Históricos) from very early on and wrote seminal studies on philology that influenced the literary creation of his contemporaries and were also enjoyed by non-specialists. Good examples are his studies on Góngora between 1927, when he published his edition of the Soledades, and 1935, with the publication of his La lengua poética de Góngora, which placed the poet from Cordoba among the favorites of the new generation of poets. His book Poesía española, Ensayo de límites y métodos estilísticos (1950), had its origins in a series of lectures given at the Instituto de Humanidades, invited by Ortega y Gasset. The book marked the founding of a new critical approach in the academic world called the Spanish Stylistics and the reference work for the understanding and reading of the poetry by Garcilaso, Juan de la Cruz, Fray Luís de León, Quevedo, Lope, and Góngora.

Alonso wrote about almost everything, always with an exuberant prose, non- rhetorical in appearance, with a passionate, vibrant, lyrical tone, and with a fine sense of humor. His influence was clear on the early stage of the Biblioteca Románica Hispánica (Gredos), which was decisive for academic philology, and for the introduction of text analysis as a practice in the educational reform law of 1957. As member of the la Real Academia Española since 1945 and its director, he gave the institution a modern and efficient way of working.  His research publications dealt with the history of the language and provided accurate insights into issues of medieval literature, and faultless editions and studies on modern poetry (his most fruitful and constant field of work). Poetas españoles contemporáneos (1952) is an enlightening work on the poets of the 20th century. Along with the leading figure of Ramón Menéndez Pidal, Dámaso Alonso was the master of modern Spanish philology.