Poetry. A LONGING FOR THE LIGHT is the only available bilingual Spanish-English translation of the poetry of Nobel Laureate Vicente Aleixandre. The collection spans the entirety of Aleixandre's career--from early surrealist work to his complex and fascinating "dialogues." It also contains prose interludes, an introduction by editor Lewis Hyde, and a descriptive bibliography. Aleixandre was a member of Spain's "Generation of 27" and was one of the few writers to remain in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. His passive but staunch political independence kept his writings banned for a decade, but his vivid poems of harmony and commonality would eventually symbolize much of what post-Civil War Spain aspired toward.

Vicente Aleixandre studied and taught law before chronic tuberculosis ended that career. An invalid for the rest of his life, he wrote dozens of books of Spanish-language poems. He said he was influenced by the writings of Sigmund Freud, and his work has been described as metaphysical, surrealist, and existentialist. Unable to flee the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39, he made it clear in several published poems that he opposed the right-wing dictator Francisco Franco, and for this his writings were banned by Franco. Aleixandre won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1977, but was too ill with kidney and heart ailments to attend the ceremonies. After receiving his Nobel honors, several collections of his poems were translated and published in English. He never married, rarely left his home, and lingered for months in a coma before his death in 1984. Of his sickness, he said, "Hours of solitude, hours of creation, hours of meditation. Solitude and meditation gave me an awareness, a perspective which I have never lost: that of solidarity with the rest of mankind."