ALFREDO ESPINO

(Edgardo Alfredo Espino Najarro; Abroad, 1900 - San Salvador, 1928) Salvadoran Poet
from the publication of his only book, Tristes Jícaras has been one of the most read lyrical
in his country and is considered one of the authors American literary classics.

Born into a large family (second of eight children), was son of the poet Alfredo Espino,
member of a prominent dynasty of professors, doctors and writers. The young Alfredo
received a thorough academic training ended in 1927 when a 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 to publish literary contributions in magazines and Opinion Lumen
student and newspapers La Prensa and El Salvador Journal. He lived a bohemian and
dissipated that led to frequent crises fall into alcohol, in one of which he took his life when
he was little more than twenty-eight years old. His remains, buried in the first instance at
the General Cemetery of San Salvador, were later transferred to the call Crypt of Poets, in
the graveyard of the Gardens of Remembrance.

His compositions, and loose papers scattered in various publications, were compiled by his
father in order to put them into print. 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, was born in 1936 in book form a collection more complete and
representative of his work that was titled Jícaras sad.

The poetry of Alfredo Espino is a balance of romance and measured speech, singing to
landscape with images of great descriptive power and plasticity, always tender perception
of beings and things of the land. Much of his work is a hymn to Cuzcatlán region. He
preferred simplicity and traditional metrics for its modest pretensions and wrote lyrical
ballads and sonnets, but not dismissed free verse. His poems evoke the trees, the fruits, the
scent of the night, the colors, the children and the maternal.

Since its publication, his poems were welcomed and enthusiastically disseminated by
readers Salvadorans, who immediately identified with his lyrical descriptions of landscape.
So sad Jícaras became one of the required readings in educational programs Salvadorans,
and promoted by governmental editing and dissemination.