Andreu, Blanca 1959–

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Andreu, Blanca 1959–

PERSONAL: Born 1959, in La Coruña, Spain; married Juan Benet (a writer; died 1993). Education: Attended Madrid University.

ADDRESSES: Home—Madrid, Spain. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Visor Libros, Isaac Peral 18, 28015 Madrid, Spain. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Poet. Occasionally presents poetry readings.

AWARDS, HONORS: Premio Adonáis, 1980, for De una niña de provincias que se vino a vivir en un Chagall; Premio de Cuentos Gabriel Miró, 1981; Fernando Rielo prize for mystic poetry, 1982, for Báculo de Babel; Ícaro de Literatura, 1982; Premio Laureá Melá, 2001, for La tierra transparente.

WRITINGS:

POETRY

De una niña de provincias que se vino a vivir en un Chagall (title means "From a Provincial Girl"), RIALP/Adonáis (Madrid, Spain), 1981, 3rd edition, Hiperión (Madrid, Spain), 1983.

Báculo de Babel (title means "Babel's Wand"), Hiperión (Madrid, Spain), 1982.

Libro de las bestias: primer fisiólogo, privately printed, El Crotalón (Madrid, Spain), 1984.

Capitán Elphistone, Visor (Madrid, Spain), 1988.

El sueño oscuro: poesía reunida, 1980–1989 (contains De una niña de provincias que se vino a vivir en un Chagall, Báculo de Babel, and Capitán Elphistone), Hiperión (Madrid, Spain), 1994.

Dedicatoria a Manuel Álvarez Ortega, edited by Juan Pastor, Torrejón de la Calzado (Denevir, Spain), 1998.

La tierra transparente (title means "The Transparent Earth"), [Madrid, Spain], 2002.

SIDELIGHTS: Blanca Andreu is a Spanish poet known for her intense, sometimes mystical verse of jarring imagery and impressive technical sophistication. Sylvia R. Sherno, writing in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, called Andreu "a key figure" among Spanish poets of the 1980s, and noted her "provocative themes and daring imagery." Sherno added: "The emotional nakedness and intensity of [Andreu's] voice signal a new intimacy in Spanish poetry." While Andreu's first three major verse collections were reprinted in the 1994 volume El sueño oscuro: poesía reunida, 1980–1989, she withdrew from the public eye and published little after the 1993 death of her husband, fellow poet Jean Benet. Andreu marked her return to the Spanish literary world several years later with her 2002 volume La tierra transparente. This volume, like her earlier works, was quickly awarded a literary honor.

Andreu's first poetry collection, 1981's De una niña de provincias que se vino a vivir en un Chagall, is a harrowing account of female adolescence and includes depictions of alcohol consumption, drug use, and sexual activity. In these poems, penned when Andreu was twenty-one and which Sherno described as "autobiographical," an adolescent girl who is both exhilarated and repulsed by her own sexuality expresses identification with various figures, including a sacrificial virgin, while enduring what Sherno called "the claustrophobic atmosphere" of provincial life. As a diversion from this unfulfilling environment, the girl turns to alcohol and drugs as a means of realizing self-awareness and artistic inspiration. Sherno noted as much when she wrote that De una niña de provincias que se vino a vivir en un Chagall "charts a young woman's liberation from oppressive reality by means of fantasy and the imagination." Sherno further noted the "stunning imagery" of the work and observed that the book recalls works of French masters Arthur Rim-baud and Charles Baudelaire, two poets who exhibited the same interest in decadence and extremist behavior. In addition, Sherno related that Andreu's poems are "evocative of the dreamlike lyricism of … two other poets Andreu has singled out as influential: [Federico García] Lorca and Pablo Neruda."

Andreu realized critical success with De una niña de provincias que se vino a vivir en un Chagall, which secured Spain's highly regarded Adonais prize. The poet followed her debut publication with Báculo de Babel, another collection that contains strange and disturbing images. Báculo de Babel is divided into three parts: the initial portion features poems bears similarities to the obscurer and fantastical portions of De una niña de provincias que se vino a vivir en un Chagall; the central section contains disjointed, barely fathomable prose poems with Andreu's characteristically unsettling imagery; and the concluding part reflects on the nature of artistic purpose and mysticism. This final portion, according to Sherno, proved sufficiently impressive to earn Andreu the Fernando Rielo prize for mystical poetry.

Andreu's third collection, Capitán Elphistone, takes its name from a misspelling of Elphinstone, the name of a prominent British admiral of the eighteenth century. In Andreu's volume the admiral is presented as a pirate and slave trader who is capable of extraordinary spiritual insights. Sherno, who deemed Capitán Elphistone "perhaps Andreu's most tightly woven unit of poems," affirmed that the protagonist "possesses the power and knowledge of superior beings." The critic observed that "Capitán Elphistone represents a radical departure from Andreu's earlier poetry," particularly in its emphasis on narrative and its relatively accessible syntax, but she added that the work nonetheless exhibits the same ambiguity—and the same sense of poetry as an illuminating force—that marked Andreu's earlier publications. This movement away from the surrealism of the poet's early work would transcend Andreu's subsequent hiatus, and continue into her work of the twenty-first century.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 134: Twentieth-Century Spanish Poets, Second Series, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1994.

López de Martílnez, Adelaida, editor, Discurso feminino actual, Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico (San Juan, PR), 1995.

Ugalde, Sharon Keefe, Conversaciones y poemas: la nueva poes'a feminina española en castellano, Siglio XXI de España (Madrid, Spain), 1991.

PERIODICALS

Letras Peninsulares, fall, 1989, Candelas Newton, "La reflexión sobre en la poesía de Blanca Andreu," pp. 193-209.

Revista Hispanica Moderna, December, 1994, A. Rubén Benítez, "Between Water and Fire: Blanca Andreu's Dream Landscapes," pp. 533-542.

Siglio XX/Twentieth Century, Volume 7, 1989–90, John C. Wilcox, "Blanca Andreu: A 'poeta maldita' of the 1980s," pp. 29-34.

Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature, Sharon Keefe Ugalde, "The Feminization of Female Figures in Spanish Women's Poetry of the 1980s," pp. 164-184.