Boucquey Thierry (General Editor). Encyclopedia Of World Writers. 3 volumes
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Living in Hope and History: Notes from Our Century.
New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000.
My Son’s Story. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
1990.
The Pick Up. New York: Penguin, 2002.
Writing and Being. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1995.
Works about Nadine Gordimer
Clingman, Stephen. The Novels of Nadine Gordimer:
History from the Inside. Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 1992 (1986).
Cooke, John. The Novels of Nadine Gordimer: Private
Lives/Public Landscapes. Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press, 1985.
Kamanga, Brighton J. Uledi. Nadine Gordimer’s Fic-
tion and the Irony of Apartheid. Lawrenceville, N.J.:
Africa World Press, 2002.
Newman, Judie, ed. Nadine Gordimer’s Berger’s
Daughter: A Casebook (Casebooks in Criticism).
New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Smith, Rowland, ed. Critical Essays on Nadine
Gordimer. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1990.
Gorenko, Anna Andreyevna
See AKHMATOVA
, ANNA
.
Gorky, Maxim (Aleksei Maksimovich
Peshkov)
(1868–1936) novelist, playwright,
short-story writer
Maxim Gorky was born in Nizhnii Novgorod, Rus-
sia, to an extremely poor family. His father, a boat-
yard carpenter, died of cholera when Gorky was
only three years old. Gorky’s mother died of tuber-
culosis in 1879. At eight, Gorky began a series of
menial jobs in terrible conditions, working as an
icon painter, a baker, a watchman, a clerk, and a
cabin boy on a Volga steamer—where luckily a
kind cook taught him to read. Reading soon took
up all his spare time. The pseudonym Gorky (Russ-
ian for “bitter”), with which he signed his first
published short story, “Makar Chudra,” in 1892,
seems to reflect the pain of his childhood.
The death of his grandmother had a devastating
effect on Gorky, and at 21, he attempted suicide.
When he recovered from the gunshot wound, he
took up wandering, in a period of two years walk-
ing all the way to the southern Caucasus and back
again to his native city, associating with tramps,
prostitutes, and thieves, who became the subjects
of his fiction.
At 24, Gorky settled into a job as a reporter for
a provincial newspaper and began to publish his
stories, which became extremely popular. He was
arrested a number of times in this period for his
involvement in radical politics. His politics surface
in his work as
SOCIALIST REALISM.
Gorky admired and was influenced by Leo TOL-
STOY and Anton CHEKHOV, although whereas Tolstoy
and Chekhov focused their works on the upper and
middle classes, Gorky concentrated almost exclu-
sively on depicting the social injustices faced by the
millions of Russia’s workers and peasants. Chekhov
also admired Gorky and introduced him to col-
leagues at the Moscow Art Theater, who persuaded
Gorky to write a play for them. Two plays, The Smug
Citizen and The Lower Depths, were produced by the
Moscow Art Theater in 1902. Both were very suc-
cessful with the public, and both brought Gorky
negative attention from the czarist authorities. An
outcry against inhumanity, The Lower Depths is
based on outcasts Gorky had met on his travels.
In 1905, Gorky was imprisoned for his in-
volvement in the events of Bloody Sunday (a
peaceful demonstration of workers asking the
czar for democratic reforms, which ended with
dozens dead from gunfire from government
troops). He wrote one of his most famous plays,
Children of the Sun—a satirical look at the inef-
fective middle classes—while imprisoned. After
his release, Gorky traveled to the United States
and tried to raise support for the Marxist cause.
He lived in exile in Italy until 1913, when he was
granted an amnesty by the government. While
in Italy, Gorky was visited by Lenin and other
radical revolutionaries.
Gorky’s My Childhood (1913–14) is considered
one of the best autobiographical works of Russian
178 Gorenko, Anna Andreyevna
literature. In it, Gorky juxtaposes his grandfather’s
brutality against his grandmother’s tender love, skill-
fully creating individual portraits and demonstrat-
ing his great descriptive power. My Childhood was
followed by two other autobiographical volumes, In
the World (1915–16) and My Universities (1923).
After the Russian Revolution, Gorky often
found himself as odds with the hard-line Bolshe-
viks. Gorky maintained an oscillating position on
the Bolshevik policy: He was a spokesman for the
Soviet view of art and literature and also worked to
preserve Russia’s cultural heritage. In 1922, he
went back to Italy to live for several years but re-
turned to Russia in 1928 in response to the appeals
of his public. There is a question as to whether his
death eight years later was from the tuberculosis
that had plagued him since his youth or whether
Stalin may have been behind it. His funeral in Red
Square was a state event.
Gorky achieved tremendous respect and recog-
nition during his lifetime. He not only described
social injustice but also acted against it. He did not
simply contribute to socialist realism but also left
a literary legacy to support it.
Other Works by Maxim Gorky
The Lower Depths and Other Plays. Translated by
Alexander Bakshy. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1973.
Untimely Thoughts: Essays on Revolution, Culture and
the Bolsheviks, 1917–1918. New Haven, Conn.:
Yale University Press, 1995.
Yarmolinsky, Avram, and Baroness Moura Budberg,
eds. The Collected Short Stories of Maxim Gorky.
Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1988.
Works about Maxim Gorky
Levin, Dan. Stormy Petrel: The Life and Work of
Maxim Gorky. New York: Schocken Books, 1986.
Yedlin, Tova. Maxim Gorky: A Political Biography.
New York: Praeger, 1999.
Graham, Peter
See ABRAHAMS, PETER HENRY.
Grass, Günter (1927– ) novelist, poet,
playwright
Günter Grass was born in Danzig, Germany (now
Gdansk, Poland). His father, a descendent of Ger-
man Protestants, owned a grocery store, and his
mother was of Slavic origin. Grass entered Conrad-
inum High School in 1937 but was never able to fin-
ish his education because of the outbreak of World
War II. When the Nazis came to power, Grass joined
the Hitler Youth Movement. At 16, he was drafted
into the German army as a tank gunner. After being
wounded, he was interned by the U.S. forces sta-
tioned in Bavaria. The reeducation program pro-
vided by the U.S.Army had a profound influence on
Grass: He was taken on a tour of a Nazi concentra-
tion camp at Dachau, near Munich, where he wit-
nessed the horrors of the Holocaust that had been
inflicted by the Nazi regime. This experience would
be reflected later in Grass’s fiction.
After his release, Grass worked as a stonemason,
a farmworker, and a potash miner. In 1948, he en-
rolled in the Düsseldorf Academy of the Arts to
study sculpture. He worked as a sculptor for several
years, but his interests shifted, and he began to write
poetry. In 1955, he officially entered the literary
world by winning the third prize in poetry compe-
tition sponsored by a German radio station. The
prize included the right to attend the meetings of
GRUPPE
47
, Germany’s most important literary circle
at the time. Grass then lived in Spain and Paris,
where he developed a friendship with Paul
CELAN.
He published a volume of poems in 1956, followed
by several plays and another book of verse, and he
had an exhibition of his art works. His work was
well known to a small group of connoisseurs.
With Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum, 1959),
the first book of what has came to be known as the
Danzig trilogy, Grass was suddenly famous. The
novel instantly made Grass into one of the most
prominent figures of the German and interna-
tional literary scenes. The second book of the tril-
ogy, Katz und Maus (Cat and Mouse), appeared in
1961, and the third, Hundejahre (Dog Years), in
1963. All the novels in the trilogy achieved critical
and popular success. Between 1960 and 1965,
Grass, Günter 179
Grass received the prestigious Berlin Critics’ Prize
and the Georg Büchner Prize and was elected into
the German Academy of the Arts. In the 10 years
following its publication, The Tin Drum was trans-
lated into more than 15 languages. The book
caused offense, too: It was publicly burned in Düs-
seldorf by an organization of religious youth.
Grass faced more than 40 civil lawsuits—all even-
tually unsuccessful—against the Danzig trilogy.
The charges ranged from blasphemy to obscenity.
The books, however, remained major best-sellers
in Germany and around the world.
In the mid-1960s, Grass spent less time writing
as he used his acclaim and recognition to campaign
for the Social Democratic Party of Germany. The
party supported moderate reform, normalization
of relations with East Germany, and easing of ten-
sions with the Communist states. Ortlich Betaubt
(Local Anesthetic) was published in 1969, but Grass
did not produce another major novel until 1977,
when Das Butt (The Flounder) appeared. It aroused
more excitement than any of Grass’s works since
The Tin Drum. Grass’s international fame was in-
creased by the appearance of Volker Schlöndorff’s
film of The Tin Drum, which won the Academy
Award for Best Foreign Picture in 1979, but, like the
novel, it offended some people: The film was
banned in Oklahoma, in a decision that was subse-
quently overturned by a higher court.
Die Rättin (The Rat, 1986) is perhaps even
more ambitious than The Flounder, but Grass con-
tinues to be politically involved. In the late 1980s,
he was among the few Germans in the political
sphere to oppose the reunification of East and
West Germany, claiming irreconcilable political,
social, and economic differences. Grass also loudly
campaigned against the neo-Nazi groups in Ger-
many and actively supported the defense of
Salman
RUSHDIE when Rushdie’s book The Satanic
Ve rs es made him the subject of a death threat.
Critical Analysis
The Tin Drum presents an irreverent and colorful
account of 20th-century German history through
the eyes of a mental patient, Oskar Matzerath. A
midget, Oskar refuses to grow as a protest against
the cruelties of German people, and he communi-
cates with other characters through his drum.
Cat and Mouse, a much shorter work, relates the
story of Joachim Mahlke through the voice of
Pilenz, a 32-year-old social worker. The story takes
place between 1939 and 1944 and essentially re-
counts the relationship between the life of a self-
conscious teenager (the mouse of the title is
Mahlke’s enormous Adam’s apple) and the fearful
historical events unfolding around him. Guilt, with
its attendant psychological implications, is the pre-
dominant theme running throughout the novel.
Dog Years, a novel with similar thematic con-
cerns, examines the crimes of the Nazis and their
acceptance by the German society after the World
War II. The story is presented in terms of an am-
biguous friendship between Amsel, a son of pros-
perous Jewish merchant who becomes a Protestant
to escape persecution, and Walter Matern, the son
of a Catholic miller. In the trilogy, Grass forced his
readers to confront the truth about the Nazi past.
By using blasphemous Christian imagery,
grotesque sexuality, and ribald scatological humor,
he made it impossible to subsume the unspeakable
in a featureless tragic view.
Die Plebejer Proben den Aufstand (The Plebeians
Rehearse the Uprising, 1966) is Grass’s fifth play. It
is set in Berlin in 1953 in Bertolt BRECHT’s theater.
Brecht is directing a rehearsal of his adaptation of
Shakespeare’s Coriolanus; outside, workers are
protesting unfair government labor practices.
When the workers appeal to Brecht to help their
cause, he lets them down by failing to respond: He
chooses to perfect the artistic representation of
revolution rather than involve himself in real life.
The play is both an homage to and a critique of the
artist Grass acknowledges as his master.
The Flounder is written on an epic scale, en-
compassing 4,000 years of European history, with
an elaborate narrative technique that has room for
poems, recipes, historical documents, autobio-
graphical accounts of Grass’s political campaigns
and a version of the GRIMM brothers’ “Tale of the
Fisherman and His Wife.”
180 Grass, Günter
The Rat is another massive work, this time
looking toward the future, examining what hope
there is for a world threatened by nuclear disaster
and ecological devastation. There are two narra-
tors: a rat who has already witnessed and survived,
with her family, the nuclear winter that has oblit-
erated humanity; and a human “I” who still hopes,
against the evidence, that people can escape the
final catastrophe. The characters, of whom there
are many, include some familiar to Grass’s readers,
among them Oskar Matzerath, 30 years older, and
the talking flounder of The Flounder.
Günter Grass has received innumerable awards
for his contribution to world literature from gov-
ernments and organizations in Germany, the
United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, France,
and Russia, including the Nobel Prize in literature
in 1999. He is recognized today as perhaps the
most important German writer of the second half
of the 20th century. His works have been translated
into more than 20 languages and still enjoy inter-
national status as best-sellers. Grass continues his
productive career as a writer and a public figure. As
the American novelist John Irving said in a 1982
review of Headbirths, or the Germans Are Dying
Out, “You can’t be called well-read today if you
haven’t read him. Günter Grass is simply the most
original and versatile writer alive.”
Other Works by Günter Grass
The Call of the Toad. Translated by Ralph Manheim.
New York: Harvest Books, 1993.
The Flounder. Translated by Ralph Manheim. New
York: Harcourt Brace, 1989.
Four Plays. Translated by Ralph Manheim and A.
Leslie Wilson. New York: Harvest Books, 1968.
My Century. Translated by Michael Henry Heim. New
York: Harvest Books, 2000.
Novemberland: Selected Poems 1956–1993. Translated
by Michael Hamburger. New York: Harvest Books,
1996.
On Writing and Politics 1967–1983. Translated by
Ralph Manheim. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1985.
Too Far Afield. Translated by Krishna Winston. New
York: Harcourt Brace, 2000.
Works about Günter Grass
Irving, John. “Günter Grass: King of the Toy Mer-
chants.” In Patrick O’Neill, ed., Critical Essays on
Günter Grass. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987.
O’Neill, Patrick. Günter Grass Revisited. Boston:
Twayne, 1999.
Preece, Julian. The Life and Work of Günter Grass: Lit-
erature, History, Politics. New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 2001.
Grimm, Jacob (1785–1863) and
Wilhelm (1786–1859) collectors of
folklore and writers of folktales
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were born in Hanau,
Germany, to Philipp Wilhelm Grimm, an adminis-
trative court official and lawyer, and Dorothea
Grimm. After the untimely death of their father in
1796, the Grimm brothers lived with their aunt in
Kassel, their mother’s hometown, and entered sec-
ondary school. Jacob and Wilhelm shared many in-
terests, including reading and listening to German
folktales. They entered the University of Marburg
within a year of each other to study law. There, the
Grimm brothers became interested in folklore,
linguistics, and the history of medieval Germany.
Influenced by the sweeping force of German
ROMANTICISM, the Grimm brothers began to com-
pile a collection of folktales, many of which existed
only as oral accounts passed from generation to
generation. They listened carefully to the stories
and transcribed them in their journals. They
sometimes altered the plots and changed the lan-
guage of the tales, transforming them into cau-
tionary tales for a new bourgeois readership. In
1812, the Grimm brothers published their first col-
lection of stories, known simply as Children’s and
Household Tales. This collection of 86 stories and
went virtually unnoticed by the critics. The
second volume, published in 1814, added 70 sto-
ries to the original 86 and was far more successful.
This two-volume work went through several edi-
tions during the Grimms’ lifetime. The final ver-
sion of the work contained more than 200 stories
and became one of the best-known works in Ger-
Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm 181
man and world literature. Unfortunately, writing
did not provide a steady income for the brothers,
so both worked as librarians in Kassel until 1830.
Today, the brothers Grimm are primarily re-
membered for their versions of classic fairy tales,
such as “Cinderella,” the story of a downtrodden
young girl who marries a prince; “The Frog
Prince,” the story of a girl whose kiss turns a frog
into a prince; “Snow White,” the tale of a girl who
eats a poisoned apple and is saved by a prince; and
“Rapunzel,” the tale of a girl who is rescued from a
tower by a prince. Their tales not only capture the
innocent magic of folklore, but they also reflect the
realistic political and social concerns of German
society in the period in which the brothers were
writing. In fact, their tales were actually intended
for adults. The brothers were in favor of a unified,
democratically ruled Germany and were on the
side of the emerging middle class against oppres-
sive princes who ruled a loosely knit confederation
of states. By capturing the folklore of the German
people, the brothers hoped to create a sense of a
common past and pride in a German heritage. As
they began to realize that many of their readers
were children, they changed some of the stories to
emphasize many of the domestic values of the
emerging middle class; for example, the Grimms
changed the original version of “Rapunzel” to
eliminate any suggestion of premarital sex.
In 1819, the Grimm brothers were awarded
honorary doctorates from the University of Mar-
burg for their influential work in German folklore.
In 1830, they resigned from the library and ac-
cepted positions as professors at the University of
Göttingen. They lost their positions in 1841, how-
ever, when they joined a protest against King Ernst
August II, who had revoked the constitution and
dissolved parliament on his ascension to the throne
of Hannover. Fortunately, their scholarly reputa-
tions were such that they immediately received of-
fers from other universities in Germany. The two
brothers finally settled at the University of Berlin,
where they worked as professors and librarians.
The works of Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm are
still widely read today by children and adults alike.
Their contribution to German literature as writers
and scholars is simply immeasurable; not only did
they collect folklore that might otherwise have
been lost, but they also made lasting contributions
to studies of the German language and linguistics
in general. Even more impressive, however, is the
successful collaborative effort that existed for three
decades. Their tales are known all over the world
and have been translated into more than 20 lan-
guages. The Grimm brothers influenced entire
generations of writers as well as modern poetry in
Germany, England, France, and Russia.
Another Work by Wilhelm and Jacob
Grimm
The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm.
Translated by Jack Zipes. New York: Bantam,
1992.
Works about Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm
Hettinga, Donald. The Brothers Grimm: Two Lives,
One Legacy. London: Clarion Books, 2001.
Zipes, Jack. The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted
Forests to the Modern World. New York: Routledge,
1988.
Grünbein, Durs (1962– ) poet, essayist
Durs Grünbein was born in Dresden and lived in
East Germany prior to reunification. In the 1990s,
he became a professional poet and traveled
throughout the world. He also worked as an essay-
ist and translator. Grünbein is considered one of
the most innovative and intellectual of contempo-
rary German poets. The collection of poems
Schädelbasislektion: Gedichte (Basal Skull Lesson:
Poems, 1991) is one of his best-known works. He
has received many literary awards, including
the Marburger Literature Prize (1992) and the
prestigious Georg Büchner prize (1995). Grün-
bein’s verse reveals an influence from the German
poets Gottfried BENN and Gerhard FALKNER.
Science is the prevailing theme in Grünbein’s
poems and essays. His specific topics include
human biology, laboratories, formaldehyde, X-rays,
182 Grünbein, Durs
and radioactive decay. Many of his poems portray
the exposure of human organs through sonar im-
aging or autopsies. Although Grünbein views mod-
ern science as the dominant power of the present
era, he presents it as a threat that diminishes the
worth of human beings and reveals the meaning-
lessness of life. German literary scholar Ruth J.
Owen observed that Grünbein portrays the poet as
a scientist and successfully challenges “the assump-
tion that science could be an area of human knowl-
edge cordoned off from the poem.”
Another Work by Durs Grünbein
Falten und Fallen: Gedichte. Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp Verlag, 1994.
A Work about Durs Grünbein
Winkler, Ron. Dichtung Zwischen Grossstadt und
Grosshirm: Annaherungen an das lyrische werk
Durs Grünbeins. Hamburg: Kovac, 2000.
Grünzweig, Dorothea (1952– ) poet
Dorothea Grünzweig was born in Stuttgart, Ger-
many. She attended colleges in Tübingen, Ger-
many, and Bangor, Wales, where she majored in
German studies and English studies. After a re-
search stay at Oxford, she was a lecturer for the
University of Dundee in Scotland. Grünzweig later
taught at a German boarding school and a German
school in Helsinki, Finland. She also wrote reviews
and translated Finnish and English literature.
Grünzweig’s first collection of poetry, Mittsom-
merschnitt (Midsummer Cut, 1997), won the poetry
prize of the Neidersachsen/Wolfenbüttel founda-
tion. The next year she contributed poems to Das
verlorene Alphabet (The Lost Alphabet, 1998) anthol-
ogy. In 2000, Grünzweig gained international expo-
sure after her poems appeared in the English
language journals The Massachusetts Review and
Arc. Her other honors include Finland’s P.E.N. Club
prize (1999) and the Heinrich Heine stipend (2000).
Grünzweig, who divides her time between Ger-
many and Helsinki, frequently writes poems that
have a geographical frame of reference. Inspired by
her own experience, she often covers the concepts
of original homeland and adopted country. The
poems “Spell,”“Beginning,” and “Insel Seili” (“The
Island of Seili”) address her other recurring
themes of language and speechlessness, and the
freezing cold. Her poetry is syntactically complex
but creates clear pictures to help illuminate the
meaning of her words.
Another Work by Dorothea Grünzweig
Vom Eisgebreit: Gedichte. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2000.
Gruppe 47 (Group 47) (1947–1967)
Following World War II the German writers Hans
Werner Richter (1908–93) and Alfred Andersch
(1914–80) edited a left-wing journal Der Ruf (The
Call). In 1947, the American military government
banned the magazine and upset many German
literati. In September, these writers joined Richter
and Anderson at Bannwaldsee, Bavaria, to discuss
plans for another journal. This became the first
meeting of Gruppe 47, a loose association of au-
thors whose regular attendees came to include
Wolfgang Weyrauch (1904–80), Ilse AICHINGER,
Heinrich BÖLL, Günter EICH, and Günter GRASS.
Gruppe 47 met in the autumn of each year
through 1967 to discuss and read new literary
works. Its only official function was to award the
Gruppe 47 Prize, one of Germany’s most coveted
literary awards at the time.
The German literary scholar Siegfried Mandel
described Gruppe 47 as a paradox: “It is one man,
Hans Werner Richter, and at the same time an ex-
panding and contracting constellation identifiable
by several constant stars.” The group avoided an
inflexible ideology. Although right-wing writers
did not join the group, it had no official social or
political program and usually did not initiate new
trends. Gruppe 47 was instead more like a barom-
eter of changing literary tastes and social condi-
tions. In general, its members were critical of the
values of the West German “economic miracle”
and of East German socialism. The 1968 meeting
scheduled for Prague was cancelled after Soviet
Gruppe 47 183
troops invaded Czechoslovakia. Although Richter
hosted an informal meeting in 1972, Gruppe 47
never again held a full conference after 1967.
A Work about Gruppe 47
Mandel, Siegfried. Group 47: The Reflected Intellect.
Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press,
1973.
Guan Moye
See MO YAN.
Guillén, Jorge (1893–1984) poet
Jorge Guillén was born in Valladolid in the Spanish
province of Castile. His poetry reflects the auster-
ity of the region, known for its harsh winters and
gray landscape. He was a teacher of Spanish his en-
tire life, on the faculty of such institutions as the
Sorbonne, Oxford University, Wellesley College,
and Harvard University.
Guillén is generally considered the most intel-
lectual and classic of modern Spanish poets. His
poems are terse and lyrical; his work is sober, and
he employs more nouns than adjectives. He has
been compared to the French poet Paul VALÉRY,
whose works he translated. Guillén tries to de-
scribe objects through their “poetic presence”
rather than through metaphor, making his work
difficult for many to comprehend.
In 1976, the Spanish government honored Guil-
lén with the Cervantes Prize, the highest literary
honor of the Spanish-speaking world.
Other Works by Jorge Guillén
Affirmation: A Bilingual Anthology 1919–1966. Trans-
lated by Julian Palley. Norman: University of Ok-
lahoma Press, 1971.
Guillén on Guillén: The Poetry and the Poet. Translated
by Reginald Gibbons. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1979.
Horses in the Air and Other Poems. Translated by Cola
Franzen. San Francisco, Calif.: City Lights Books,
1999.
Our Air/Nuestro Aire: Canticle/Cántico. Translated by
Carl W. Cobb. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press,
1997.
Guillén, Nicolás (1902–1989) poet, novelist,
editor
Nicolás Guillén was born and educated in Cam-
agüey, Cuba, and later studied law at the University
of Havana. In 1919, the magazine Camagüey Grá-
fico published Guillén’s first poems. After meeting
the American writer Langston Hughes (1902–67)
in January 1930, Guillén published “en negro de
verdad” (in an authentic African voice) for the first
time when his eight Motivos de son (Sound motifs)
poems appeared in the Diario de la Marina news-
paper in April. Later, Guillén dedicated his power-
ful poem “Sabás” to Hughes.
The publication of Sóngoro cosongo (1931)
marks what Amilcar Cabral calls the Revitaliza-
tion Phase. In the prologue, Guillén names his
“born again” poetry “versos mulatos,” filled with
“color cubano.” West Indies, Ltd. (1934) marks
Guillén’s shift into the “Radicalization Phase,” or
fighting phase, during which he wrote Cantos
para soldados y sones para turistas (Songs for
soldiers and sounds for tourists, 1937). In 1938,
Guillén joined the National Committee of the
Cuban Communist Party and worked on its jour-
nal, Hoy, until authorities closed it in 1950. He
received the International Lenin Peace Prize in
1954 and the Cuban National Prize for Literature
in 1983.
Although Guillén used literature for political
ends, he argued that writers should also make “art”
when striving to express revolutionary ideas. In Un
poeta en la historia (n.d.), Alfred Melon, a Univer-
sidad de Sorbonne–Nouvelle literature professor,
describes Guillén as “one of the major contempo-
rary poets of the world.” His work has been trans-
lated into more than 30 languages, and it couples
experimental aesthetics, such as a conversational
tone and free verse, with distinctively Afro-
Caribbean experiences.
184 Guan Moye
Other Works by Nicolás Guillén
The Great Zoo and Other Poems. Translated by
Robert Marquez. New York: Monthly Review
Press, 1981.
New Love Poetry: In Some Springtime Place: Elegy.
Edited and translated by Keith Ellis. Toronto: Uni-
versity of Toronto Press, 1994.
The Daily Daily. Translated by Vera M. Kutzinski.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.
Works about Nicolás Guillén
Smart, Ian Isadore. Nicolás Guillén, Popular Poet of the
Caribbean. Columbia: University of Missouri
Press, 1990.
White, Clement A. Decoding the Word: Nicolás Guillén
as Maker and Debunker of Myth. Miami, Fla.: Edi-
ciones Universal, 1993.
Gumilev, Nikolay (1886–1921) poet
Nikolay Stepanovich Gumilev was born in Ekater-
inburg, Russia, to Stephan Gumilev, a navy doctor,
and Anna Lvova, a sister of a navy admiral. The
family soon moved to Tsarskoe Selo, where Gu-
milev would later meet his future wife, Anna
AKHMATOVA. Gumilev grew up playing with his
brothers in the countryside. He was sent away to a
boarding school in 1900: Academically, he per-
formed very poorly—instead of studying, Gumilev
avidly read adventure stories and books about
travels to exotic lands. In 1902, Gumilev published
his first poem in a small provincial newspaper. He
felt triumphant, despite the fact that the publica-
tion misspelled his name. After Gumilev gradu-
ated, he traveled to Paris where he met several
Symbolist poets, and where he also published Ro-
mantic Poems, his first collection of lyric poetry.
In 1909, Gumilev founded a literary journal,
Apollon, which eventually published some of the
best poetry of the period and was the main organ
of the
ACMEIST movement. In 1910, he and Anna
Akhmatova were married. The marriage was
stormy from the start; soon afterward, Gumilev left
for an extended journey to Africa. By the time he
returned, Akhmatova had published many of the
poems that went into her first collection, and her
fame had begun to exceed her husband’s.
Gumilev resumed his position as one of the
leaders of the acmeists. Gumilev supported and
wrote lyrical poetry that relied on concrete images
and opposed the mysticism of
SYMBOLISM. In many
ways, acmeist poetry, including Gumilev’s, was
conservative because it relied on rhyme, meter, and
traditional poetic devices. Gumilev strove to up-
hold and advance the literary tradition of Russia,
rather than replace it.
In 1913, Gumilev returned to Africa. He ex-
plored exotic places, visited local mystics and heal-
ers, and was even attacked by a crocodile. The trip to
Africa provided Gumilev with vivid images and ex-
otic metaphors that appear throughout his poetry.
At the outbreak of World War I, Gumilev returned
to Russia and joined the army; he was decorated
twice for bravery in combat. After the war, Gumilev
returned to St. Petersburg and divorced Akhmatova
in 1918. The association of the acmeists was dis-
solved. Akhmatova’s and Gumilev’s son, Lev Gu-
milev, was raised mainly by Gumilev’s mother.
Gumilev was recruited by Maxim GORKY to help
with a project in world literature, working with an
editor to select important works from other litera-
tures, to write introductory essays for them, and
to translate them for publication in Russian. But he
was in trouble politically: After the Russian Revo-
lution of 1917, Gumilev had supported the provi-
sional government against the Bolsheviks. When in
1921 the sailors at the Kronstadt naval base, who
had helped sweep the Bolsheviks to power,
protested against the loss of political freedoms
under the Bolshevik government, Gumilev sup-
ported their uprising, which was brutally put
down. A short time afterward, he was arrested and
executed, despite Lenin’s intervention. His grave
was never found.
Although Gumilev produced a number of no-
table collections throughout his career, his last
work, The Pillar of Fire (1921), is considered by
most to be his best. The Pillar of Fire is marked by
exotic and foreign elements. The poems in the col-
lection are explorations of personal experiences of
Gumilev, Nikolay 185
the poet during his travels, as well as the emotional
dramas of his personal life. “The Streetcar Gone
Astray”imagines a derailed streetcar careering past
the landmarks of Russian history and Gumilev’s
life. This is an example of its imagery (in Carl Prof-
fer’s translation):
A sign...letters poured from blood
Announce—“Vegetables.” I know this is
where,
Instead of cabbages, instead of rutabagas,
Corpses’ heads are being sold.
Gumilev left a profound and long-lasting influ-
ence on Russian poetry. His images were as unique
as they were strange and refreshing. Gumilev’s per-
sonal life, filled with tragedy, despair, and, at the
same time, love and adventure, in many ways re-
flected the passion of his verse.
Other Works by Nikolay Gumilev
Lapeza, David, ed. Nikolai Gumilev on Russian Po-
etry. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1977.
Selections in Proffer, Carl R., and Elledea Proffer, eds.
The Silver Age of Russian Culture (anthology). Ann
Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1975.
Selected Works of Nikolai Gumilev. Translated by
Burton Raffel and Alla Burago. Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1972.
The Pillar of Fire: And Selected Poems. Translated
by Richard McKane. Chester, Pa.: Dufour Edi-
tions, 1999.
Works about Nikolay Gumilev
Eshelman, Ralph. Nikolaj Gumilev and Neoclassical
Modernism: The Metaphysics of Style. New York:
Peter Lang, 1993.
Sampson, Earl. Nikolai Gumilev. Boston: Twayne,
1979.
Gunesekera, Romesh (1954– ) poet,
novelist, short-story writer
Romesh Gunesekera was born in Sri Lanka and
moved to the Philippines with his family in the
1960s. When he was 17, he went to England,
which became his adopted home, but the spirit
of travel has not left him, and he continues to
visit both Asia and Europe as a writer-in-resi-
dence. Gunesekera’s poetry is especially popular
in Europe, where it has been translated into al-
most every major European language. His poems
are widely anthologized and are a recurring fa-
vorite on BBC radio.
Constantly traveling from a young age, Gune-
sekera’s fiction privileges the role of exile. During
his years in the Philippines, for example, he was ex-
posed to writers of the 1960s U.S. Beat Generation,
such as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, whom he
would not have met otherwise.
Gunesekera started writing when he was 14, be-
ginning with short stories and poetry. Poetry, in
fact, is a medium he continues to write in and ex-
plore, even when he is working on a novel. His first
novel Reef (1994), set in the Sri Lanka of the 1950s
and 1960s, is an exploration into the memories of
the protagonist who leaves Sri Lanka for England
to stay with his master, a marine biologist. Their
story of relationships, cooking, and domesticity is
set against the rise of rebel terrorism between the
Sinhalese and the Tamils in Sri Lanka during this
time. The other essential character is the reef it-
self: Its precarious existence serves as a metaphor
for the fragile political condition of the nation.
In addition to his novels, a collection of short
fiction, and poetry, Gunesekera also writes chil-
dren’s poems. His novel Sandglass (1998) won the
BBC Asia Award for Achievement in Writing and
Literature, and in 1997 he won the Premio Mon-
dello Five Continents Award, Italy’s highest literary
prize.
Another Work by Romesh Gunesekera
Monkfish Moon. New York: New Press, 1992.
Gunnarsson, Gunnar (1889–1975)
novelist, dramatist, poet, playwright
A son of a farmer, Gunnar Gunnarsson was born
in Fljotsdalur, Iceland. The death of his mother
186 Gunesekera, Romesh
when he was nine years old was a deeply traumatic
experience that he remembered for the rest of his
life. Gunnarsson grew up in Vopnafjorour, where
his family moved while he was still a boy. Until the
age of 18, he was educated at various country
schools. In 1907, he moved to Denmark, where he
studied at Askov Folk High School for two years.
Gunnarsson started his career as a writer at the
age of 17, and by 1910 he was devoting all his time
to writing. Many of Gunnarsson’s early works were
written in Danish because Denmark provided a
wider audience for his poetry and fiction; however,
his works were always set in his native Iceland.
During his career as a writer, Gunnarsson pub-
lished more than 40 novels, as well as short sto-
ries, articles, and translations. Although he is very
well known in the Scandinavian countries, only a
small margin of his works were ever translated into
English. Unfortunately, currently no work of Gun-
nar Gunnarsson is in print in the United States.
Gunnar Gunnarsson’s works depict the courage
of the common people of Iceland. His first impor-
tant work, Guest the One-Eyed, a four-volume fam-
ily saga about three generations of an Icelandic
family, was published in 1912 and instantly became
a best-seller throughout Scandinavia. Recalling the
biblical Cain and Abel story, the work describes the
parallel lives of a virtuous son, torn between his art
and familial obligations to the farm, and an evil
son. The work received critical praise in virtually
every publication that reviewed it.
World War I deeply affected Gunnarsson’s sen-
sibility, and for many years after the war, his fic-
tion reflected a deep, oppositional tension. Seven
Days Darkness (1920), for example, is about war
and the conflicts that it creates within a person,
particularly the conflict between national identity
and the self.
Between 1920 and 1940, Gunnarsson dedicated
his writing to history and culture of the Nordic
countries. He gave lectures throughout Scandi-
navia and Germany and wrote numerous articles
on social and cultural problems of unification of
the Nordic countries. In many respects, Gunnars-
son recognized certain common cultural attributes
throughout Scandinavia, but he also insisted on
the singularity of particular regions. In 1939, he re-
turned to Iceland, and from then on he only wrote
in Icelandic.
Many critics consider Church on the Mountain
(1923–1928), a five-volume semiautobiographical
novel, to be Gunnarsson’s masterpiece. The work
describes the various twists in the life of an Ice-
landic farming family. It truly demonstrates Gun-
narsson’s skill as a storyteller, as well as his rich use
of poetic language to portray everyday life. The
work has only been partially translated into Eng-
lish, appearing in 1938 as two volumes, Ships in the
Sky and The Night and the Dream.
Gunnar Gunnarsson remains one of the most
popular and respected writers not only in Iceland
but throughout Europe. He was given honorary
degrees by the University of Iceland and the Uni-
versity of Heidelberg. Gunnarsson was instru-
mental in the formation of Icelandic national
identity and was a giant cultural figure in his
beloved country.
Other Works by Gunnar Gunnarsson
“A Legend.” In Sven Hakon Rossel et al., eds., Christ-
mas in Scandinavia. Translated by David W. Col-
bert. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996.
The Black Cliffs. Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1967.
The Good Shepherd. New York: The Bobbs-Merrill
Company, 1940.
Günter, Erich
See EICH, GÜNTER.
Günter, Erich 187