Ernestina de Champourcín

Ernestina Michels de Champourcín Morán de Loredo, was born into a Catholic and traditionalist family, which offered her a thorough education (she was taught a range of different languages) as part of an aristocratic and cultured family atmosphere. Her father was a lawyer of monarchical ideas, and despite his liberal-conservative inclination, Antonio Michels de Champourcín possessed the title of baron of Champourcín, a title which pointed to his paternal family's origin in Provence. Ernestina's mother, Ernestina Morán de Loredo Castellanos, was born in Montevideo, being the only daughter of a military man, of Asturian descent, with whom she often traveled to Europe. Her love of reading and the cultured family atmosphere brought her into contact with the greats of universal literature from a very young age, and she grew up with the books of Victor Hugo, Alphonse de Lamartine, Vigny, Maurice Maeterlinck, Paul Verlaine and the great Castilian mystics, John of the Cross and Saint Teresa of Jesus. Later, she read Valle-Inclán, Rubén Darío, Concha Espina, Amado Nervo and, above all, Juan Ramón Jiménez. The figure of Juan Ramón Jiménez is of vital importance in the development of Ernestina as a poet, and in fact, she always considered him as her teacher. Through her acquaintance with him she also got in touch with some of the members of the Generation of '27: Rafael Alberti, Federico García Lorca, Luis Cernuda, Jorge Guillén, Pedro Salinas and Vicente Aleixandre. In addition, thanks to her mentor, she came into contact with classical and modern English poetry (Keats, Shelley, Blake, Yeats). In 1927, Champourcín began a stage in which she published literary criticism works in newspapers (especially in the Heraldo de Madrid and La Época (Madrid) . In these articles published before the Spanish Civil War she deals with issues such as the nature of pure poetry and the aesthetics of the "new poetry" that the young people of the generation of '27 were working on. She herself felt integrated into this group, as she shared the same conception of poetry. She published her first books in Madrid – En silencio (1926), Ahora (1928), La voz en el viento (1931), Cántico inútil (1936) -, which made her well known in the literary world of the capital. An evolution in her work can be discovered from an initial modernism in the shadow of Juan Ramón Jiménez to a more personal poetry marked by the theme of love wrapped in a rich passion. Perhaps that is why Gerardo Diego selected her for his Anthology of Contemporary Spanish Poetry, from 1934. In 1930, while doing activities at the Lyceum Club Femenino, alongside other intellectuals of the Second Spanish Republic, she met Juan José Domenchina, poet and personal secretary of Manuel Azaña, whom she married on 6 November 1936. == The Civil War and exile ==

Shortly before the civil war broke out, Champourcín published what would be her only novel: La casa de enfrente During the Spanish Civil War, Juan Ramón and his wife, Zenobia Camprubí, concerned about orphaned or abandoned children, founded a kind of committee called the "Junta de Protección de Menores". Ernestina de Champourcín joined as a nurse, but due to problems with some militiamen she had to leave and enter the hospital run by Lola Azaña as a nurse's assistant. Although at first Champourcín wrote numerous verses for magazines such as Romance and Rueca , her creative activity was reduced due to her economics needs. During this time she worked as a translator for the Mexican publishing house Fondo de Cultura Económica and an interpreter for the "Association of Technical Staff of International Conferences". During this time she wrote Hai-kais espirituales (1967), Cartas cerradas (1968) and Poemas del ser y del estar (1972). == Return from exile ==

In 1972, Champourcín returned to Spain. The return was not easy and she had to go through a new period of adaptation to her own country, an experience that gave rise to feelings that she reflected in works such as Primer exilio (1978). Feelings of loneliness and old age and an invasion of memories of the places she had been in and the people she had lived with flooded each of her later poems: La pared transparente (1984), Huyeron todas las islas (1988), Los encuentros frustrados (1991), Del vacío y sus dones (1993) and Presencia del pasado (1996). ==Death and legacy==

Champourcin died in Madrid on 27 March 1999. It could be said that de Champourcín suffered the bad luck of the so-called " third ways ", since she was not clearly on the right or left, as was also the case in very different circumstances, with Ortega y Gasset, who was rejected by some as an atheist and by others as an elitist, and simultaneously accused of being on the right and being on the left. Emilio Lamo d'Espinosa also considers that Champourcín's position can also be ascribed to her own personality, her independence, and her will to not be typified, categorized, or reified. Even though we can consider Champourcín as the only woman who really was in a situation of equality with the other poets today called the Generation of ‘27, her recognition in Spain was slow in coming. Her admirers had to wait until 1989, when she was awarded the Euskadi Prize for Literature in Castilian in the Poetry modality is granted to her (1989), which was followed by the Progressive Woman Prize, her nomination to the Prince of Asturias Prize for Letters in 1992 and the Medal for Artistic Merit of Madrid City Council in 1997. ==Stages in her poetry==

First stage: poetry of human love Ernestina's work is divided into three stages, two of which are very clear. A first stage, that of the poetry of human love, includes the four books published before the civil war: from En silencio (1926) to Cántico inútil (1936). In these works the author evolves from origins that could be described as pertaining to late-romanticism and modernism to a “pure poetry” very close to that of Juan Ramón Jiménez. Third stage: poetry of the memory of love The stage of the poetry of the memory of love (1974–1991) begins with her return from exile, at which time new concerns arose for the author: namely to be able to adapt to her new situation, and to be reunited with places both known and unrecognizable. Her final books, like Huyeron todas las islas (1988), are a memory and an epilogue of a poetry that is both intimate and transcendent. ==Works==

• En silencio. Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1926. • Ahora. Madrid, Imprenta Brass, 1928. • La voz en el viento. Madrid, Compañía Ibero-Americana de Publicaciones, 1931. • Cántico inútil. Madrid, Aguilar, 1936. • Presencia a oscuras. Madrid, Rialp, 1952. • El nombre que me diste.... México, Finisterre, 1960. • Cárcel de los sentidos. México, Finisterre, 1964. • Hai-kais espirituales. México, Finisterre, 1967. • Cartas cerradas. México, Finisterre, 1968. • Poemas del ser y del estar. Madrid, Alfaguara, 1972. • Primer exilio. Madrid, Rialp, 1978. • Poemillas navideños. México, 1983. • La pared transparente. Madrid, Los Libros de Fausto, 1984. • Huyeron todas las islas. Madrid, Caballo Griego para la Poesía, 1988. • Antología poética, (prologue by Luz María Jiménez Faro). Madrid, Torremozas, 1988. • Ernestina de Champourcín. Málaga, Centro Cultural de la Generación del 27, 1991. • Los encuentros frustrados. Málaga, El Manatí Dorado, 1991. • Poesía a través del tiempo. Barcelona, Anthropos, 1991. • Del vacío y sus dones. Madrid, Torremozas, 1993. • Presencia del pasado (1994–1995) . Málaga, Poesía circulante, núm. 7, 1996. • Cántico inútil, Cartas cerradas, Primer exilio, Huyeron todas las islas. Málaga, Centro Cultural de la Generación del 27, 1997. • Epistolario (1927–1995) (2007). Correspondencia con Carmen Conde. Edición a cargo de Rosa Fernández Urtasun. . • Poesía esencial (2008). Fundación Banco Santander. Colección Obra Fundamental. . • Al fin de la tarde ==References==