CABAÑERO, Eladio 1930-2000

PERSONAL: Born December 6, 1930, in Tomelloso, Spain; missing and presumed dead, 2000; son of Felix Cabañero Jareño (a teacher and lawyer) and Justa López de Cabañero; married Eduarda Moro (a writer), 1992.

CAREER: Writer. Worked as a mason until 1955; worked in National Library, Madrid, Spain, 1956-68; member of staff at Editorial Taurus, Madrid, Spain, 1968-78, and Publications Division, Ministry of Culture, Madrid, Spain. Member of editorial staff, then editor-in-chief, Estafeta Literaria.

AWARDS, HONORS: Juventud prize, 1955, for "El pan"; Adonais poetry prize honorable mention, 1958, for Una señal de amor; Premio Nacional de Poesía, 1963, for Marisa Sabia y otros poemas; Premio de la Crítica for Poesía (1956-1970).

WRITINGS:

POETRY

Desde el sol y la anchura (title means "From the Sun and the Open Space"), Sánchez (Madrid, Spain), 1956.

Una señal de amor (title means "A Signal of Love"), Rialp (Madrid, Spain), 1958.

Recordatorio (title means "Reminder"), Taurus (Madrid, Spain), 1961.

Marisa sabia y otros poemas (title means "Wise Maria, and Other Poems"), [Madrid, Spain], 1963.

Poesía (1956-1970), Plaza y Janés (Barcelona, Spain), 1970.

Señal de amor: Antología poética 1956-1991, Libertarias (Madrid, Spain), 1992.

SIDELIGHTS: Eladio Cabañero was a notable Spanish poet who came to prominence in the 1950s. Cabañero was born in 1930 in Tomelloso, where his father worked as a teacher and lawyer and served as secretary of the local socialist party. The elder Cabañero served in the Republican Army during the final months of the Spanish Civil War; when that conflict ended he was imprisoned, tried, and executed. Cabañero's mother also received a lengthy prison sentence, and she ultimately endured three years of incarceration. During his mother's imprisonment, Cabañero lived with various relatives, including his maternal grandfather, who gave him a volume of evangelical hymns that proved immensely appealing. Despite a lack of formal schooling, Cabañero became a proficient writer and an enthusiastic reader, and in his teens, while he trained as a mason, he consumed the works of Spanish masters such as Francisco Queveda and Miguel de Cervantes. By the mid-1950s he had read works by Felix Grande, a poet who also hailed from Tomelloso. Grande's writings sufficiently inspired Cabañero to begin producing his own verses.

Upon the death of his mother in 1956, Cabañero relocated to Madrid, where he found work in the National Library and subsequently befriended various literary figures, including Jorge Camos and Luis Rosales. That same year Cabañero published his first poetry collection, Desde el sol y la anchura, which reveals the influence of writers ranging from Queveda to Antonio Machado. Cabañero's debut volume shows him to be a master of poetic structure and a sympathetic delineator of the human condition. "He demonstrates an exceptional mastery of form and linguistic creativity," declared Susan Rivera in the Dictionary of Literary Biography. "Pain, poverty, ignorance and the ability to work hard are some of the human traits that Cabañero describes." Rivera added, however, that Cabañero's poetry scarcely qualifies as social criticism. "As opposed to writing social protest poems," wrote Rivera, "Cabañero almost always tends to justify or rationalize the situation of the peasants." Rivera called Desde el sol y la anchura "an example of profoundly religious poetry, the result of a sincere and emotional sentiment, not of rebellion or protest but rather of pity and understanding."

In Una señal de amor Cabañero abandoned the formal poetics of his first collection and assumed the realistic speech and freer verse that marked his later work. "The poetic meter is liberated from the rigidity of classical forms, and it tends toward a freer, more open form that gives Cabañero's diction an air of spontaneity," wrote Rivera. "This structure reinforces the realism that . . . characterizes his writing from 1958 on." Notable poems in Una señal de amor include a five-part sequence in which Cabañero contemplates lost love and perseverance in the wake of that disappointment. Other key poems disclose Cabañero's Christian sensibility, which he expresses in naturalistic language and nostalgic reflection. "The settings, situations, and characters are no longer presented in archetypal or idealized versions," Rivera explained. "This book is an example of 'poetry of experience,' in which the retelling of what was experienced surpasses any sentimental evocation and results in a meditative evaluation . . . of the meaning of human existence."

Cabañero followed Una señal de amor with Recordatorio, in which he demonstrates a greater range of expression and perspective. "The title of the book seems to indicate that it is a prolongation of the nostalgic attitude that characterized his previous poetry," observed Rivera, "and such is the case in the most intense, beautiful, and lucid parts of the book." But Recordatorio also shows indications of Cabañero responding to life's hardships with emotions other than reluctant acceptance. Rivera conceded that "religious allusions are not lacking in this book," but she added that "Cabañero no longer reacts precisely with Christian resignation in view of the injustices of this world." Rivera was especially impressed with "Desde esta habitación," a poem wherein Cabañero proclaims that he is producing verse that he describes—in Rivera's translation—as poetry "of profound protest and pain."

Cabañero's fourth collection, Marisa sabia y otros poemas, constitutes an extended consideration of love. "Although the topic is present in his previous writings, it is never as relevant as it is in Marisa sabia," Rivera declared. "Love replaces all Cabañero's old obsessions, and he is engrossed in personal reactions toward his feelings and in the constant elaboration of the image of the beloved." The volume includes a sequence of poems in which Cabañero revels in the joys of a romantic relationship, and it continues with a selection of verses in which the poet laments the decline of that same affair. The collection ends with more characteristically nostalgic verses in which the poet longs for his childhood.

After completing Marisa sabia y otros poemas in 1963, Cabañero drastically reduced his poetic output. Both Poesía (1956-1970) and the anthology Señal de amor: Antología poética 1956-1991 are largely comprised of poems from his first four collections. Missing for several years, Cabañero was declared dead in 2000.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Debicki, Andrew P., Poetry of Discovery: The Spanish Generation of 1956-1971, University Press of Kentucky (Lexington, KY), 1982.

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

PERIODICALS

Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, April, 1972, Manuel Ríos Ruiz, "La poesía de Eladio Cabañero," pp. 151-167; March, 1982, Lalia Adib Abdul Wahed, "Eladio Cabañero: Poeta de la realidad," pp. 660-666.*