Amado Nervo

AMADO NERVO (August 27, 1870 – May 24, 1919) also known as Juan Crisóstomo Ruiz de Nervo, was born and raised in the town of Tepic in Nayarit, Mexico.  As a teenager, Nervo studied philosophy, science and religion and completed the first year of law in a Roman Catholic Seminary.  His interest in the mystical and spiritual led him to want to become a priest, but due to economic struggles he withdrew from his studies and began working for a lawyer and as a journalist.  He then moved to Mexico City where he worked for the modernist literary magazine Revista Azul with the Mexican poet Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera.  He was also an important and prolific writer for the newspapers El Universal, El Mundo and El Nacional.  It was in Mexico City where he became known and respected not only as a journalist, but also as a poet.  After spending some time at the turn of the 20th century in Paris, where he met and married his greatest love Ana Cecilia Luisa Dailliez, and in Madrid, where he acted as secretary at the Mexican embassy, he returned to Mexico and was appointed ambassador to Argentina and Uruguay.  Within his lifetime Nervo published more than 12 books of poems and several novels, essays, a zarzuela (traditional Spanish opera) and a biography of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.  He died in Montevideo and by the order of the Uruguayan president Baltasar Brum, was returned to Mexico City to be buried.  Much of Nervo’s poetry reflects his interest in mysticism and the spiritual experience.