SOURCE: “Jorge Guillén,” in On Poets and Others, Seaver Books, 1986, pp. 166-75.

In the following essay, Paz provides commentary on some central themes and stylistic elements of Guillén's poetry.

Jorge Guillén is a Spaniard from Castile, which doesn't mean he's more Spanish than the Spaniards of other regions but that he is Spanish in a different way. He is no purist: Guillén is a European Spaniard and belongs to an historical moment in which Spanish culture was opening out to the thought and art of Europe. But unlike Ortega, who enlivened and inspired that group, Guillén was closer to France than to Germany. He pursued his university studies in Paris, where he was married first and where he taught. He also gave courses at Oxford. He returned to Spain and promptly became a leading figure of a generation which Gerardo Diego introduced in...