León de Greiff

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León de Greiff
BornFrancisco de Asís León Bogislao de Greiff Haeusler
(1895-07-22)July 22, 1895
Colombian
Period1915-1976
GenrePoetry
Subjectsolitude, the tedium of existence, and the past
Literary movementModernismo
Notable worksTergiversaciones (1925)
Notable awards
List of Awards
Boris de Greiff Bernal
Hjalmar de Greiff Bernal
Axel de Greiff Bernal
 Literature portal
In this
Spanish name, the first or paternal surname
is de Greiff and the second or maternal family name is Haeusler.

Francisco de Asís León Bogislao de Greiff Haeusler (July 22, 1895 – July 11, 1976), was a

pen names. The most popular were Leo le Gris and Gaspar Von Der Nacht. De Greiff was one of the founders of Los Panidas, a literary and artistic group established in 1915 in the city of Medellín
.

Family and background

León de Greiff at the age of one. Taken by Melitón Rodríguez Roldán in 1896.

De Greiff was born on July 22, 1895, in the city of

cabinetmaker who emigrated to Colombia in 1839). De Greiff was also the great-grandson of Francisco Antonio Obregón Muñoz
, who had been Governor of Antioquia between 1836 and 1841.

Greiff was

half brother
, Luis Eduardo.

On July 23, 1927, de Greiff married María Teresa Matilde Bernal Nicholls, a Colombian of

cellist
and editor; and Axel an architect who resettled in Sweden.

Education

Greiff was educated at the Lyceum of the University of Antioquia in Medellín and went on to study engineering at the School of Mines of the University of Antioquia.[5] In 1913 the administration expelled him along with other students for claims of being "subversive and disruptive"[6] as a result of the political turmoil of the times and his leftist tendencies and associations. In 1914 he traveled to Bogotá as secretary ad hoc to General Rafael Uribe Uribe, a personal friend of his father.[7][5] Once in Bogotá, he attended the Free University of Colombia and studied Law. He did not finish his studies, choosing rather to drop out of school and focus on his writings and poetry. As he put it, his decision to move to Bogotá was not to become a lawyer: "It was rather to get to know Bogotá.[8]

Bishop of Lund, great-great-grandfather of León de Greiff.[9]

As a poet

Cover of the 1st issue of Panida featuring de Greiff's first published poem, Ballad of the Mad Owls.

When de Greiff returned to Medellín in 1914, he joined the tertulias that gathered in the local cafés of the city, most prominently the ones that met in the café of the bookstore El Globo. It was there that he became acquainted with the underground cultural movement of his time and began developing and experimenting the style of poetry that would define him later on.

Musicians, rhapsodists, prosodians,
poets, poets, poets,
painters, cartoonists,
erudites, thorough aesthetes;
Romanticists or classicists
and decadents, "if you will"
but yes, madmen and artists
the Panidas were we thirteen!

León de Greiff,[10]

A group of 13 young bohemian artist and writers that formed during that time became known as los Panidas, named after the god

fjords by giving it a familiar antioqueño feel, a combination of the two worlds that were part of de Greiff’s life He also became known for his eclectic use of the language often using a lexicon so unfamiliar to most Spanish speaking audiences of that time that it would sound as if it were a foreign language, and introduced references to obscure or unknown authors and works of art and literature that were not part of standard curricula. Also present in de Greiff’s and the panida’s work was the influence of symbolism, and more significant that of parnassiastic
thought, of creating poetry in its purest form to more closely resemble art. De Greiff described the purpose of the panidas in these words:

We were encouraged, above all, by a purpose of renewal. At that time poetry had become too academic. It seemed a mediocre thing, a thing which we must fight against. It was essentially that generational criterion that we were trying to impose.

— León de Greiff[6]

The artistic group published a quincenal literary magazine called Panida in February 1915. This short lived publication of only ten issues was illustrated by Ricardo Rendón first directed by de Greiff, and later by Félix Mejía Arango. De Greiff had its works published for the first time in this magazine under the pen name Leo le Gris, the first one being his Ballad of the Mad Owls.

No sooner had the magazine been published than the Roman Catholic Church in Colombia banned for fear of corrupting the youth with its pernicious and extravagant content. The public reception was not welcoming either, the writing style of de Greiff and the other panidas was at the vanguard of its time, but too far-off from what mundane Colombian society was familiar with. It did however earn the praise and support of prominent Medellín literati such as writer Tomás Carrasquilla and journalist Fidel Cano Gutiérrez.

The magazine went out of circulation in June, mostly due to the dispersion of the panidas. De Greiff moved to Bogotá, and many others went into business leaving their artistic aspirations behind. Others chose the

nihilist path of suicide.[citation needed
] In 1925, when he published his first book Tergiversaciones, de Greiff dedicated it to the memory of "The 13 Panidas".

Los Nuevos

Caricature of León de Greiff by fellow panida Ricardo Rendón.

In 1925 now in Bogotá, de Greiff was now a regular of the tertulias that gathered in the Windsor café and part of the publication of a new vanguard magazine called Los Nuevos (es:The New Ones).

Jorge Zalamea and Germán Arciniegas among others as regular contributors to the magazine. Los Nuevos was of political, artistic, literary and social content, and aimed to challenge the remnants of exhausted romanticist writings, regionalist politics, and conservative society. This movement followed the path that the panidas had begun in Medellín and that was a representation of modernismo in Colombia much like the ultraist movement
in Spain.

Influenced by

creacionismos
standards of poetry, reinventing himself to make each poem unique, translatable, and truly poetic. His poetry is sometimes criticized as standoffish and intricate. He was devoted to the artistic form of poetry.

Mamotretos

Starting with his first book Tergiversaciones in 1925, every one of his published books of poetry that was directed by him were named in order as mamotretos, which in Spanish loosely refers to a bulky jumbled collection of writings that could be loosely interpreted as a tome. The name was both an example of de Greiff's masterful use of language and his humility towards his work and himself. His eighth and last mamotreto would be Nova et Vetera, published a year before his death, and was a collection of new and old found poems of his from even before Panida.

Music and Poetry

Although de Greiff studied poetry, he had also been influenced by music as a child, and musical qualities guided both his poetry and his prose. Even though he did not follow the same musical path as his brother Otto, his knowledge and love of music drove him to seek and become Professor of

Music History at the Conservatory of the National University of Colombia
on September 1, 1946. The relationship of his poetry to music has been noted by Stephen C. Mohler in his doctoral thesis (The Poetic Style of León de Greiff, Ann Arbor, Michigan,1969). De Greiff had previously taught at the University from March 1940 to January 1, 1943, as Professor of Literature and Redaction at the Faculty of Engineering

Civil servant

In 1916 de Greiff received his first job as a

La Pintada
Railway Construction Project until June 11, 1927, when he becomes Chief Statistician for the Departmental Directorate of Roads of Antioquia until June 13, 1931, when he moved to Bogotá and becomes Chief Statistician for National Railways on June 15 until January 27, 1945.

From July 1, 1945, to February 28, 1950, he works for the

II Bolivarian Games
.

In his role as Director of Cultural Promotion and Fine Arts he co-founds in 1949 with a large group of intellectuals and artists that included

Jorge Zalamea for “political reasons” that were never explained. De Greiff had been victim of the political and violent turmoil that had been engulfing the country known as La Violencia
and his left-leaning tendencies and relations made him a target of the newly elected conservative Government. He was released on December 6; shortly after, he presented his letters of resignation to the Ministry, and steps down as Director of Cultural Promotion and Fine Arts and as Professor at the National University on March and May 1950 respectively.

Feeling betrayed and persecuted by the government, he chooses to best serve the nation as a check on the government, this time as a tax auditor for the independent government agency of the

Office of the Comptroller General of Colombia on June 1, 1950, until February 25, 1957. He would return to work at the Office of the Comptroller for a short time in 1959 from January 20 to May 25.[12]

Diplomat

By 1959, de Greiff had grown in popularity and international recognition and had the opportunity to return to the land of his ancestors for the first time when he was invited to the Congress of Nations for Disarmament and International Cooperation held by the

SFR Yugoslavia, and France
. The trip lasted a total of 115 days and it would mark him politically and personally as a friend and ally of the communists.

In 1958, upon his return to Colombia and after pressure from Juan Lozano y Lozano, President

Chargés d’affaires ad interim
.

While in Sweden, de Greiff gained fame and popularity and even maintained a friendship with His Majesty King Gustaf VI Adolf, who in 1964 awarded him the Order of the Polar Star in the grade of Knight.[16]

In 1975 in recognition of his diplomatic work de Greiff was awarded the Order of San Carlos in the grade of Grand Officer by the Government of Colombia.[17]

Later life and death

Bogota Philharmonic
The León de Greiff Library and park designed by Giancarlo Mazzanti

León de Greiff retired on October 1, 1963, and at that time he started to enjoy his modest pension after 34 years as a civil servant. No longer at the service of the government, de Greiff took an active interest in promoting literature and education in and out of the country.

In 1965 de Greiff was awarded the

La Havana, where he was a judge in the Poetry Prize competition, as well as the 1970 Iberoamerican Community of Writers summit in Caracas, the Second Latin American Conference on Cultural Development and University Expansion in Mexico in 1972, and was part of the jury for the Quimantú (El Sol del Saber) Prize of Chile
.

In Venezuela, architect Carlos Celis Cepero created the León de Greiff Hispanic-American Prize of Poetry (Premio Hispanoamericano de Poesía León de Greiff) which was first awarded on May 5, 1956, to the Venezuelan poet Juan Manuel González.[19][20]

Upon his return to private life in Colombia, he remained involved with international political work. In 1967 he was elected President of the Colombo-

Luis Echeverría Álvarez in 1970, and in 1972 was invited to Costa Rica by its President José Figueres Ferrer
.

León de Greiff died at the age 80 in the early hours of Sunday July 11, 1976, in his home in Bogotá. Shortly after his death, the National University renamed its Central Auditorium in his honor. It is now a

Bogota Philharmonic.[21] In 2007 when a new public library-park was built, the city choose to name the León de Grieff Library in his honor and to promote culture and education in the city.[22]

Other works

See also

References

^a Alternative transliterated spelling from German to Spanish used: Häusler=Haeusler.
^b Alternative transliterated spelling from Swedish to Spanish used: Carlos Fromholt Sigismundo de Greiff. See von.
  1. ^ Bäckstedt, Eva, ed. (2009-09-15), "Axel von Greiff" (PDF), Svenska Dagbladet (in Swedish), Stockholm, p. 15, retrieved 2009-11-28 [dead link]
  2. ^
    OCLC 145745763
    .
  3. ^ De Greiff Bernal, Hjalmar (1995-07-23). "Deshilvanadas precisiones acerca de León de Greiff" [Disjointed details about León de Greiff]. El Tiempo (in Spanish). Retrieved 2009-11-28.
  4. ISBN 958-701-378-6
    . Retrieved 2009-11-28.
  5. ^ a b Luque Cavallazzi, Gino (2004-12-09). "León de Greiff". Gran Enciclopedia de Colombia del Círculo de Lectores (in Spanish) (Virtual ed.). Biblioteca Virtual del Banco de la República. Retrieved 2009-11-28.
  6. ^ a b c Escobar Calle, Miguel (October 1995). "Los Pánidas de Medellín, Crónica sobre el grupo literario y su revista de 1915" [The Pánidas of Medellín, Chronicle of the literary group and its 1915 magazine]. Revista Credencial Historia (in Spanish) (70). Bogotá: Biblioteca Virtual del Banco de la República. Retrieved 2009-11-29.
  7. ISBN 958-701-378-6
    . Retrieved 2009-11-28.
  8. ^ De Greiff, León (September 1973). "Unos Vodkas con León de Greiff" (PDF). Revista Arco. Nº 152 (transcript). Interviewed by Jaime Sanín Echeverri. Bogotá. p. 6. Retrieved 2009-11-28.[permanent dead link]
  9. ^ De Greiff, León (September 1973). "Unos Vodkas con León de Greiff" (PDF). Revista Arco. Nº 152 (transcript). Interviewed by Jaime Sanín Echeverri. Bogotá. pp. 3–4. Retrieved 2009-11-28.[permanent dead link]
  10. ^ Trivial Ballad of the 13 Panidas, Verse I (1915)
  11. ISSN 1885-5008
    . Retrieved 2009-12-07.
  12. ISSN 0120-4998. Retrieved 2009-12-02. [dead link
    ]
  13. ISSN 1692-0066. Archived from the original
    on 2009-11-19. Retrieved 2009-11-29.
  14. OCLC 145745763
    .
  15. ISBN 958-701-378-6
    . Retrieved 2009-11-28.
  16. OCLC 13405559. {{cite journal}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link
    )
  17. ^ Decreto Nº 1401, Registrado bajo el Nº 3002 de 1975.
  18. ^ Instituto Caro y Cuervo. Resolución Nº 2793 del 29 de noviembre de 1974
  19. ISBN 958-701-378-6
    . Retrieved 2009-11-28.
  20. OCLC 1639896. {{cite journal}}: Missing or empty |title= (help
    )
  21. ^ "Auditorio León de Greiff" (in Spanish). Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Retrieved 2009-11-30.[dead link]
  22. ^ Fajardo Valderrama, Sergio; Jorge Humberto Melguizo (2006-11-21). "Informe de Ponencia. Proyecto de Acuerdo No. 281 de 2006" [Paper Report. Draft Agreement No. 281 of 2006] (in Spanish). Medellín: Concejo de Medellín. pp. 1–5. Archived from the original (DOC) on 2016-03-03. Retrieved 2009-11-30.

Further reading

External links
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