BIOGRAPHY OF ALFREDO ESPINO

(Edgardo Alfredo Espino Najarro; Ahuachapn, 1900 - San Salvador, 1928)

Salvadoran poet that since the publication of his only book, Jcaras Tristes,
has been one of the most read in your country lyrical and is considered one of
the authors Central classical literature.
He was born into a large family (second of eight siblings), was son of the poet
Alfredo Espino, member of a prominent dynasty teachers, doctors and
writers. The young Alfredo received a thorough academic training ended in
1927 when he received his doctorate at the Faculty of Law and Social
Sciences of the University of El Salvador with a thesis on Aesthetics Sociology.
At an early age he began publishing literary contributions in journals and
student Lumen view and in newspapers The Press and Journal of El Salvador.
He lived a bohemian life and dissipated that led him to fall into frequent
alcoholic crisis, in one of which took his life when he was little more than
twenty-eight years old. His remains, buried in the first instance in the General
Cemetery of San Salvador, were later transferred to the call Crypt of Poets, in
the cemetery of the Gardens of Remembrance.
His compositions, scattered loose papers and other publications, were
compiled by his father to take them to the press. A part of this collection,
prefaced by an illuminating text by the poet Alberto Masferrer, was published
in 1932 in the journal Social Reform. Because of its impact, in 1936 came out
in book form a more complete and representative collection of his work was
titled Jcaras sad.
The poetry of Alfredo Espino is a balance of romance and measured speech,
singing the landscape with images of great descriptive power and plasticity
provided from an early perception of beings and things from their land. Much
of his work is a hymn to Cuzcatln region. He preferred the simplicity and
traditional metrics for their modest pretensions and wrote lyrical ballads and
sonnets, though not scrapped free verse. His poems evoke the trees, the
fruits, the scent of the night, colors, children and maternal.
Since its publication, his poems were received and disseminated with
enthusiasm by the Salvadoran readers, who immediately identified with his
lyrical landscape descriptions. So sad Jcaras became one of the required

readings in the Salvadoran educational programs, and from government

agencies editing and dissemination promoted.