Platero and I

Juan Ramón JiménezProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

4.6

Word count: 194K words
Chapters: 20

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Platero y yo by Juan Ramón JiménezAuthor: Jiménez, Juan Ramón, 1881-1958,Language: Spanish, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Feb 1, 2006

Editor's review

Platero y yo is a classic collection of prose poems by the Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez. Told in the first person, it follows the narrator's companionship with a small silver-grey donkey, Platero, weaving together everyday scenes, seasonal landscapes and portraits of people in the author's hometown of Moguer. The prose is clear and musical, and the short pieces stand alone: the book suits both careful reading piece by piece to savour the rhythm and imagery of the language, and reading as a literary window onto rural life in early twentieth-century Andalusia. This is a public-domain Spanish-language e-book edition; it is short but dense, its emotional tone swinging between tenderness and a faint melancholy, and it is often regarded as one of the finest examples of modern Spanish prose poetry, useful both for learning the literary language of Spanish and for appreciating how poetic prose is written. There is no need to read for plot; it is better dipped into in quiet moments, letting the visual quality of the writing surface gradually.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Spanish learners who want to build literary feel through short prose poems
Readers who enjoy prose poetry and lyrical short pieces
Readers interested in the people and places of Andalusia, Spain
Those who want short pieces to read in spare moments, without needing plot momentum

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting a full plot and dramatic conflict
Those with no Spanish who do not wish to use a translation

Reading tips

Read two or three short pieces a day, then retell the scene in your own words to train language feel and comprehension.
Follow along with Spanish audio, paying attention to sentence rhythm and stress to appreciate the musicality of the prose poems.
Keep a notebook of recurring images and seasonal changes, then review the overall structure after finishing.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book a novel? Do I need to read it in order?

It is not a novel with a continuous plot but a collection of prose poems made up of many independent short pieces, with the narrator and the donkey running through them. You can read in order to feel the shift of seasons and moods, or dip into individual pieces at random without losing comprehension.

Can I read it if my Spanish is not strong?

The original pieces are short and the sentences relatively simple, but the writing is highly literary and dense with imagery, so beginners will find it difficult on their own. It is best attempted once you have some grounding in Spanish, or read a reliable translation first to understand the content, then return to the original to appreciate the language.

What should I know about this e-book edition?

This is a public-domain Spanish e-book from Project Gutenberg, a free electronic text laid out mainly as plain text, and it may lack the notes and introduction of a print edition. Keep a Spanish dictionary or a translation at hand for support.

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About the author

Juan Ramón Jiménez Author · Spanish · 1881–1958

Juan Ramón Jiménez (1881–1958) was a Spanish poet and the winner of the 1956 Nobel Prize in Literature. He devoted his life to poetry, writing in a refined and pure language and drawing quiet, far-reaching lyricism from everyday scenes and inner feeling; he is regarded as a major representative of modern Spanish lyric poetry. His best-known work, Platero y yo, is written in prose poetry and depicts country life shared with a small donkey; gentle and plain in style, sincere in feeling, it is widely read in the Spanish-speaking world and loved by readers elsewhere. This library holds two of his works. Public information on his early life and the periods of his writing is limited, so those matters are not discussed here; readers may discover the clarity and restraint of his poetry through his works.