Uruguay Rare 1904 Postcard Literature – Handwritten & Signed Poem by J...

Item Specifics

Country

Uruguay

Condition

Cover (Postal History)

Stamp Format

Single

Item Description

Exceptional Literary and Philatelic Piece!
This rare vintage postcard, dated MARCH 21, 1904, features a handwritten poem titled _"Los ojos" (The Eyes)_ by the renowned Uruguayan modernist poet JULIO HERRERA Y REISSIG (1875-1910). The poem is penned in his own handwriting and signed at the bottom, making it a unique artifact of literary and historical value.

Herrera y Reissig was a leading figure of SPANISH-AMERICAN MODERNISM, known for his decadent and symbolist poetry. This piece may be an UNPUBLISHED WORK, adding to its significance.

Transcription of the Poem:

_"Los ojos_
Son una senda sombría,
y como eran dos me rendí
pensando en los riesgos a que me exponía;
su aventurera hidalguía
me condujo a un torreón,
dieronme un néctar y al son
de mágicos violoncelos
me aletargué en el divino
tálamo de la ilusión.
Nadie a perturbarme vino
ni el generoso ladrón
excedióse en su atención
de echar en mi copa vino.
Mas, al despertar ¡oh cielos!,
me hallé sin el corazón,
tiritando en el camino
corvo de los desconsuelos."

ϸ Signed: JULIO HERRERA Y REISSIG, MARCH 21, 1904

* Original Handwritten Poem
* Dated & Signed by Julio Herrera Y Reissig
* early 20th-century postcard with a photographic image
* perfect for literary collectors, philatelists, and historians

A must-have for serious collectors of literary autographs and historic ephemera!

 
 
 
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Biography Julio Herrera y Reissig was born on January 9, 1875 in Montevideo into a large patrician family; He would have eight siblings. Regarding his family composition, his uncle Julio Herrera y Obes will become president of the Republic. The only material condition for Julio Herrera and Reissig was his precarious health. At the age of five he was diagnosed with arrhythmia, a fact that would mark his life. In 1890 and 1891 two events made him meditate about death: the loss of his grandfather and his brother. In 1892, at the age of seventeen, he had to abandon formal studies due to congenital heart disease, aggravated by contracting typhoid fever. This circumstance also prevents him from any type of travel, except for a brief stay in Buenos Aires and short visits to cities in the Uruguayan interior. A very important milestone in his artistic life is the publication of his first poem "Miraje" in 1898. This poem had an excellent reception, a prominent person encouraged him to continue with his work: Samuel Blixen, literary critic who praised and encouraged him. , a year later, in 1899, to found La Revista, a biweekly newspaper. Worldly experience is replaced by his condition as an avid reader and, starting in 1900, he leads literary meetings together with Roberto de las Carreras from the attic of the family mansion in Montevideo, known as Torre de los Panoramas; because of the important views of the Río de la Plata from there. There he began the evolution from romanticism to the modernist and surrealist avant-garde that would posthumously make him an obligatory reference in Latin American poetry of the time, along with Leopoldo Lugones, Ricardo Jaimes Freyre and Salvador Díaz Mirón. The main work of Julio Herrera y Reissig is the result of the last ten years of his life. His first poems, until 1900, follow the line of patriotic and romantic poetry, without traits of his poetic personality. He died in Montevideo at the early age of 35, while the publication of his works and the consequent literary recognition would occur years later. The Uruguayan writer and literary critic Ángel Rama (1926-1983) expressed the following: In a little less than ten years and even moving in the most noisy and superficial art nouveau bazaar, he created a lyric of subtle modern sensitivity, of impeccable linguistic precision. Jorge Luis Borges wrote about the work of Herrera and Reissig, in an article published in 1924, in Inicial, Buenos Aires, pp 31-34: The lyrics of Herrera and Reissig are the ascending path that goes from gongorism to conceptism: it is the writing that begins with the singular charm of the voices to finally achieve a very clear diction. In the same way that in the Mazdean cosmogony evil and good are bellicosely opposed, poetic reality and the simulacrum of that reality were armipotent in his ego. He was a possible outsider to literature, but in the end he entered it fully. Pablo Neruda, in Diorama de la cultura, Excelsior supplement, Mexico., November 16, 1969, p. 3, write: I brought the Herrera and Reissian passion to Madrid, to my generation. It is true that some brilliant scholar once worried about him: There was erudition, but not passion. Nothing more exciting than the poetry of this fundamental Uruguayan, this classic of all poetry. So it was that I read Vicente Aleixandre, and then Federico, Alberti, Altolaguirre, Cernuda, Miguel Hernández and some others, the gothic décimas of Herrera and Reissig... Herrera and Reissig sublimates the kitsch of an era, bursting it with volcanic figures... At the end of 2011, Prosas herrerianas was published, by the National Library in conjunction with Ediciones de la Banda Oriental.

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Item Location

Montevideo, Uruguay

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