José Manuel Recillas

José Manuel Recillas (born 1964) is a Mexican writer, poet, translator, publisher and literary critic.

Biography

Born in Mexico City, he studied architecture in National Polythecnic Institute (IPN), and later on studied Italian language and culture at Societá Dante Alighieri. He has collaborated with many magazines and cultural publications. He has been specialized in Gottfried Benn's lyrical work, and is consedered the only one specialist in his work into Spanish language. He has translated poets and writers from Italian, English and German for many reviews and literary magazines.

He has obtein Pepe Alameda scholarship in 1990 granted for Centro Mexicano de Escritores, for which he write an extended essay on Mexican poetry, that is still unedited.

Hew has been worked in "El Sol de México en la Cultura" literary review, from 1990 to 1994. After that, he went to literary magazine "Sábado," that was published by "Uno más uno", from 1994 to 1998. In both magazines he work as Literary critic, written general reviews on Mexican contemporary literature.

He published his first translations from Italian poets in early 1991. After discoverying German literature in 1992, he went to translate German poets and published his first translations on Gottfried Benn in 1996. After that, he went on, and make translations from German Expresionist poets, such as Georg Trakl and Georg Heym. He also made translations from poems by Paul Celan, Hermann Broch, Rainer Maria Rilke, Hermann Broch, Stefan George and Hölderlin.

He has been establish as one of the most important Mexican poets from late 1990, but at the same time he has been kept a very low profile into Mexican public life.

Publications

He has published two poetry books:

"La ventana y el balcón", written among 1990 and 1991, and published in 1992.

"El sueño del alquimista", written among 1992 and 1997, and published in 1998.

Both books including graphic material. First one includes special engravings made by Mexican painter José Luis Cuevas; second one includes 22 alchimical engravings taken form old manuscripts and books. Both books are now unavailable. Also has published "Aproximaciones al expresionismo", a series of 8 short essays on the subject of German Expressionism.

Both books has received good reviews, and for this he has acquired a very good literary name among his peers.

Due to his literary translations, in 2006 Mexican poet Eduardo Lizalde has consider him as one of the most important Mexican translators, and one that usually understand poetry in deep, and gives to his traslations a very deep and beautiful quality.

As a result of a public reading of his poetry, in 2006 literary critic Francisco Segovia compare his literary work with T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound for his radical multifunctional use of inner references from other writers and poets from all other languages and times.

Most of his poetry is still unpublished.

Translations

As a professional translator, he has devoted to German literature, with a special interest in lyrical work from German poet Gottfried Benn, from whom he has written several critical essays and translations, that has been received by Mexican critic acclaimingly, and by this he is consider the only one specialist in Gotfried Benn's work.

Walter Raleigh, "Robert Louis Stevenson" (Verdehalago, 2002)

Gottfried Benn, "Aforismos" (Verdehalago, 2002)

Gottfried Benn, "Trayectoria de un intelectualista" (Verdehalago, 2002)

Lafcadio Hearn, "Insectos y poesía griega" (Verdehalago, 2005)

Gottfried Benn, "Poesía" (UNAM, 2005)

Lafcadio Hearn, "Proverbios budistas japoneses" (Verdehalago, 2007)

He has also translated many other German writers into Spanish, such as Hermann Broch, Karl Kraus, Friedrich Hölderlin, Stefan George, Georg Trakl, Gertrud Kolmar, among a very wide number of them. From some of them he has prepared a brief choice of his most important poems for several reviews.

External links

Personal pages:
* [http://jmrecillas.blogspot.com]
* [http://www.myspace.com/josemanuelrecillas]