Jaime Gil de Biedma - English Influence

English Influence

Among Spanish readers, he is considered one of the most consummate Anglophiles in the field of contemporary peninsular literature. This Anglophilia was initiated when he first read T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets (translated in 1952).

He was also a considerable Francophile as befitted a young Spaniard of his elevated social class, bearing in mind that Spanish society had always been notoriously 'afrancesado' until well into the 20th century. This state of affairs begin to change under the influence of poets like Gil de Biedma and Luis Cernuda. His lifelong adherence to and assimilation of Anglo-American culture was consolidated by his studies in Oxford in 1953 where he read T. S. Eliot for the first time in English (along with W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender), thus beginning a lifelong fascination with the work of the Anglo-American poet. Moreover, the long periods spent in the largely Anglophone circles of Manila would also contribute to his Anglophile literary sensibility and on numerous occasions he would declare England to be his 'segunda patria', his second country, and would also say that he was 'in great measure, a product of the Anglo-Saxon literary tradition. Even though, also shows conscious relations with Spanish and French tradition.