Ibáñez, Roberto (1902–1978)

Roberto Ibáñez (b. 1902; d. 1978), Uruguayan poet, writer, literary critic, politician, educator, and husband of Sara de Ibáñez. Among his important positions were director of the National Institute of Literary Investigations and Archives and editor of Anden. Although his poetry was published as early as 1925, in the work Olas, it is his 1939 collection, Mitología de la sangre, that is the most memorable, with its controlled technical virtuosity and vivid representation of psychological suffering, nostalgia for infancy, and horror of existence. In other collections Ibáñez treats the creative process and the sense of his own totality: "La poesía es el testimonio de mi ser" (Poetry is the testimony of my being). La frontera (1966) won the prestigious prize of Cuba's Casa de las Américas.

Other major works by Ibáñez are La danza de los horizontes (1927), La leyenda patria y su contorno histórico (1959), and Americanismo y modernismo (1968). With Esther de Cáceres and Fernando de Pereda, Ibáñez is a major representative of the Ultraist school of literature.

See alsoLiterature: Spanish America .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Francisco Aguilera and Georgette Magassy Dorn, The Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape: A Descriptive Guide (1974); Diccionario de autores iberoamericanos (1982).

Additional Bibliography

Fitts, Dudley, ed. An Anthology of Contemporary Latin American Poetry. New York: New Directions, 1947.

Ibáñez, Roberto. Introducción. Canto póstumo: Diario de la muerte, Baladas y Canciones, Gavilla. De Sara de Ibáñez. Buenos Aires: Losada, 1973.

Ibáñez, Roberto. La frontera y otras moradas. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1966.

San Román, Gustavo F. "Emir Rodríguez Monegal versus Roberto Ibáñez: Las rivalidades de la crítica y las andanzas del Diario de viaje a París de Horacio Quiroga." Boletín de la Academia Nacional de Letras 3a. Epoca, No. 5 (January-June 1999), 15-42.

                                             William H. Katra