Raimundo Lida

Raimundo Lida (19081979) was an Argentine philologist, philosopher of language, literary critic and essayist. He specialised in Romance philology, aesthetics, the
literature of the Spanish Golden Age and modernist literature. He taught at Harvard University from 1953,
where he was chair of the department of Romance Languages. The second of three children, his siblings were
the hematologist Emilio Lida and Mara Rosa Lida de
Malkiel, also a philologist.

In 1953, Lida succeeded his former professor Amado

Alonso, who had been teaching at Harvard University
since 1946. Lida became chair of the department of Romance Languages and held the Smith Chair. In addition to his own work, he published translations in Spanish
of a range of scientic, philosophical and literary works,
by such authors as Moritz Geiger, Karl Vossler, Helmut
Hatzfeld, George Santayana, W. Dilthey and Leo Spitzer.

2 Marriage and family

In 1958 he became a naturalized US citizen.

Life

Lida married Leonor Garca (19081999) in 1935. They

had two children: Fernando (b. 1936) and Clara Lida (b.
1941), both born in Buenos Aires. They divorced after
moving to the United States.

Lida was born to a Jewish family in Lemberg, the AustroHungarian Empire (now Ukraine). His parents took the
family to Buenos Aires when he was a few months old.
The family spoke Yiddish as a rst language, but the children became assimilated. There he grew up and received
a wholly secular education. His older brother Emilio became a hematologist and his younger sister Maria Rosa
Lida also became a philologist.

He married a second time, to Denah Levy (19232007),

a Spanish scholar at Brandeis University. She wrote important works on B. Prez Galds and a collection of
Sephardic proverbs.

In 1930 Lida became an Argentine citizen, after study- Raimundo Lida died in Cambridge, Massachusetts in
ing his high school at the Colegio Nacional Manuel Bel- 1979.
grano. He obtained a university degree in the Department
of Philosophy and Literature at the University of Buenos
Aires, where he graduated in 1931. He became a philol- 3 Legacy and honors
ogist under the inuence of Amado Alonso, his teacher
and mentor. His interest in philosophy was inuenced by
1939 and 1960, Guggenheim fellowships
Alejandro Korn and Francisco Romero. He gained his
doctorate at the University of Buenos Aires with a dis 1954, honorary MA by Harvard University
sertation on aesthetics and language of Santayana, pub 1968, Smith Professor, Smith Chair, Harvard Unilished in book form in 1943, by the University of Tuversity
cumn Press.
1970, elected to the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences

In 1931 he began working with Alonso and Pedro Henrquez Urea at the Instituto de Filologa, and was Assistant Editor of the Revista de Filologa Hiispnica. He
also collaborated with Victoria Ocampo in Sur, and in
other literary reviews. Lida taught aesthetics and literature at the National University of La Plata, and Literature
at the Instituto Superior del Profesorado Secundario and
at the Colegio Libre de Estudios Superiores, in Buenos
Aires.

1975, elected to the Academia Argentina de Letras

4 Works
Introduccin a la estilstica romance, Buenos Aires,
1932.

In 1947, to escape the conditions under Juan Peron, he

took his family into exile in Mexico. He was invited
by Alfonso Reyes to El Colegio de Mxico, where he
founded the foremost scholarly journal, Nueva Revista
de Filologa Hispnica, and the Center for Linguistic and
Literary Studies.

With Amado Alonso, El impresionismo en el

lenguaje, Buenos Aires, 1936.
El concepto lingstico del impresionismo, Buenos
Aires, 1936.
1

4 WORKS
With Amado Alonso, El espaol en Chile, Buenos
Aires, 1940.
Belleza, arte y poesa en la esttica de Santayana,
Tucumn, 1943.
Letras hispnicas, Mxico, 1958 [reed.: 1981].
Condicin del poeta, Lima, 1961.
Prosas de Quevedo, Barcelona,1980.
Rubn Daro. Modernismo, Caracas, 1984.
Estudios Hispnicos, Mxico, 1988.

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

5.1

Text

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5.3

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