Alfredo Valenzuela I Sevilla, (EFE).- The writer, translator and linguist Zenobia Camprubí (1887-1956) “felt free at all times” throughout her life, most of which she spent with her husband , the Nobel Prize winner Juan Ramón Jiménez, according to what his biographer and editor of his “Epistolario”, Professor Emilia Cortes Ibáñez, told EFE.
She dedicated herself to Juan Ramón Jiménez and his work. Because she always understood that she was a genius and “he never pushed her” in that sense. As can be deduced from the diaries and letters of Zenobia Camprubí, whose third volume, which exceeds a thousand pages, with the title “Epistolario III. 1936-1951”, published by the Student Residence, the Diputación and the University of Huelva and the Sevillian Fundación Cajasol.
“He was an enormously generous person with everyone, very active and with enormous willpower; She was always immersed in business and activities, but the most gratifying thing for her was working alongside Juan Ramón Jiménez”, pointed out the editor of this third installment of the Epistolario that brings together, from this first period of exile, 572 letters with 125 correspondents from Europe and America.
“Zenobia arranged for Juan Ramón to dedicate himself solely to creation and for her to take care of everything else”, tasks that would become more demanding in the circumstances of exile, when they lived in Cuba, Miami, Washington and Maryland, a time that became corresponds with these letters addressed to relatives, friends, poets, translators and scholars of the Huelva poet’s work, among others.
love and genius
“She was more of a collaborator than a secretary, because not only did she type what he wrote daily, but she also took care of the file, to which she dedicated a room in each house they lived in; and to work they sat on each side of the same table, as she herself recounts in these letters”, according to Cortés Ibáñez.
“Today everything is criticized from parameters that are not those of that time; It has been said of Zenobia that she was his ‘nurse’ or her ‘secretary’ in a dismissive way, which does not correspond to reality because she loved him and because she was aware that he was a genius, ”he added he.
In this third volume of the “Epistolario” -there will be a fourth, with which they will exceed 4,000 pages in total- they deal with the years of the Second World War and the first period of exile in America when, according to its editor, “they feel that they have He came out of hell, from Spain at War, a suffering that is aggravated by having left family and friends behind.
These reflect reflect how they then embarked on a new life that was “somewhat floating, because they are outside their usual life, for a while they lived in a hotel with the consequent lack of privacy; upon arriving in Havana their situation improved and the arrival in Miami was like a balm for the soul of Juan Ramón, due to a climate and light that were close to those of Andalusia”.
A testimonial jewel
Zenobia’s letters -described as “a jewel” from the testimonial point of view by Cortés Ibáñez- also record that “Washington was the happiest period of exile for her, the most peaceful and in which she reunited with youth friends; she was very sociable and there she was able to be again; she also felt happy because Juan Ramón restarted her work with more force.
Since Zenobia Camprubí “was always clear and direct and said everything clearly”, her letters are also “a first-hand social chronicle, in which she details everything she experiences and everything she feels, what happens around her and her relationship and that of Juan Ramón Jiménez with Spain and its people.
She was a woman “of a special, peculiar personality, who never went unnoticed and left her mark” and who faced the enormous loneliness characteristic of exile and made decisions for herself and for her husband who, sick, in addition to his physical ailments, fell into depression newspapers, and that she worked as a translator and at the University, to which she traveled driving her own car. EFE