Alfonso Reyes

Alfonso Reyes (Monterrey, 1889 - Mexico City, 1959) was a Mexican writer, essayist, philologist, jurist and diplomat, and one of the most important literary figures in the Spanish language in the twentieth century. His work spans poetry, the essay, literary criticism and philology, and belongs to the humanist current that emerged in Mexico at the start of the last century.

The son of General Bernardo Reyes, governor of Nuevo León and a major figure of the Porfiriato, he was educated in Monterrey and Mexico City, where he earned his law degree in 1913. In 1909 he helped found the Ateneo de la Juventud, a circle where he and Pedro Henríquez Ureña, José Vasconcelos and others read the Greek classics and challenged the positivism that had shaped intellectual life under Porfirio Díaz. His first book, Cuestiones estéticas, appeared in 1911. His father's death during the Decena Trágica marked his life, and soon afterwards he entered the diplomatic service and left for Europe.

From 1914 to 1924 he lived in Madrid, a period often seen as the most productive of his career. He worked at the Centro de Estudios Históricos under Ramón Menéndez Pidal, studied the Spanish Golden Age and the poet Góngora, and wrote prose essays such as Visión de Anáhuac, which views the Valley of Mexico through the eyes of the conqueror and blends historical reflection with poetic intuition. His thinking moved between Benedetto Croce's aesthetics and the vitalist philosophy of Bergson, without committing rigidly to any single school.

He served as ambassador to Argentina, Brazil, France and Spain. In 1939 he left the foreign service and returned to Mexico, where he promoted the creation of El Colegio de México, which he presided over from 1940 to 1958. His legacy endures in his complete works, published in twenty-six volumes, and in the admiration of writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, who called him the greatest prose writer in the Spanish language of any age.