THE BITTER OLEANDER PRESS LIBRARY OF POETRY
NEWEST SELECTED BOOK FOR 2026
ETERNIDADES / ETERNITIES
by Juan Ramón Jiménez
Translated from the Spanish and introduced with notes by A.F. Moritz
Written in 1916 and 1917, published in 1918, Juan Ramón Jiménez’s Eternities is one of the foundational and best books of modern Spanish literature and of the whole period in the European languages and arts termed “modernist” in Anglo-American usage; approximately 1900-1945. In being adventurously original yet perfected,in possessing a foundational potential within its literary tradition that was recognized and accorded such a role, in being among the most significant books of European poetry of its period, it is accompanied by three others of Jiménez’s works that appeared between 1917 and 1923: Diary of a Newlywed Poet, Stone and Sky, and Second Poetic Anthology.To these could be added at least two other books of this period, if they had not appeared well after their composition and the poet’s death. The Naked Work, long planned by Jiménez and often mentioned by him under shifting titles, was reconstructed with a high degree of probability by Arturo del Villar and published in 1976. The Invisible Reality, written 1917-1923 and left perfected, was discovered by Professor Antonio Sanchez Romeralo in the Zenobia and Juan Ramón Jiménez archives of the University of Puerto Rico, and was published in 1983 (2nd edition, 1999, ed. Diego Martínez Torres).
—A.F. Moritz, from his introduction