SOURCE: "Vicente Aleixandre: A New Voice of Tradition," in Vicente Aleixandre: A Critical Appraisal, edited by Santiago Daydí-Tolson, Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingue, 1981, pp. 1-34.

A Chilean-born American educator and critic, Daydí-Tolson is the author of The Post-Civil War Spanish Poets (1983) and Five Poets of Aztlan (1985). In the following excerpt, he traces Aleixandre's early career from Ambito to Sombra del paraíso—the collection that marks the arrival of artistic maturity for Aleixandre, according to Daydí-Tolson.

When in 1977 the Nobel Prize for literature was awarded to the Spanish poet Vicente Aleixandre, the name and works of the new laureate were little known outside of Spain and Latin America. He was mainly an author for hispanists, the poet for literary experts. Post-war Spanish poetry was represented in the mind of foreigners by Federico García Lorca and, in some cases, by the less popular poet Jorge Guill...