Zenobia Camprubí Aymar (31 August 1887 – 25 October 1956) was a Spanish-born writer and poet; she was also a noted translator of the works of Rabindranath Tagore.
She was born in Malgrat de Mar (province of Barcelona, Catalonia) to a Puerto Rican mother and a Spanish father.
She later lived in the United States, studied at Columbia University, and spent the duration of the Spanish Civil War (18 July 1936 – 1 April 1939) writing her Diario ("Diary") in Cuba. Her brother, José Camprubí, was owner and publisher of La Prensa, New York's most important Spanish-language daily newspaper, from 1918 to 1942.
She eventually became a professor at the University of Maryland before her death from ovarian cancer, aged 69, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, two days after her husband Juan Ramón Jiménez received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Early life On August 31, 1887, Zenobia Salustiana Edith Camprubí y Aymar was born in Carrer del Mar 87, in Malgrat de Mar (Barcelona) in a wealthy Spanish-Puerto Rican family. She was registered with the names of Zenobia, Salustiana, and Edith. Zenobia Camprubí Aymar was the daughter of Isabel Aymar Lucca and Raimundo Camprubí Escudero. Her maternal grandfather, Augusto Aymar, was a well-off American merchant and her grandmother was a member of a family of Corsicans, settled in Puerto Rico.
Both her mother and grandmother had studied in the best schools in the United States and had many family ties in the United States. Her father, Raimundo Camprubí, was an engineer of roads, canals and ports, and belonged to a Catalan military family. Zenobia's parents married in Puerto Rico in 1879, where he had traveled to work for the construction of a highway between Ponce and Coamo. The couple had four children José (1879), Raimundo, Zenobia (1887) and Augusto (1890).
During the first two years of her life, when summer time arrived, the Camprubí family moved to ‘La Quinta’ in Malgrat to enjoy the pleasant Mediterranean climate in the summer season.
In the winter of 1890, her brother Augusto Camprubí Aymar was born in Barcelona. This would be the last year that Zenobia and her family enjoy the holidays in Malgrat, perhaps because of changes of post that her father had.
At the age of nine she traveled to the United States for the first time with her brother José and her mother. The reason was to enter his older brother in a high school in preparation for his subsequent entry into Harvard (Cambridge) and settle a matter of inheritance, due to the fact that her grandmother had died in 1895. After the appearance of Zenobia's health problems, the family was forced to move their residence to the municipality of Sarriá, Spain a year later. In this place, Zenobia met Maria Muntadas de Caparà, with whom she eventually established a great friendship.
In 1900, Zenobia founded a partnership, together with her friend Maria Muntadas, that was called "Las Abejas Industriosas" ("The working bees"). By that time she had not yet reached thirteen years of age, but she was already showing a spirit of restlessness and organization.
In 1901, her father, Raimundo Camprubí, was assigned to Tarragona as Head of Public Works. Zenobia travelled with her mother and younger brother Augusto to Switzerland in search of a remedy for a rare ear and eye disease that her brother had suffered after diphtheria.
In March of the same year, the New York youth magazine St. Nicholas published a short story of Zenobia called A Narrow Escape. Also published was her autobiographical work Malgrat, inspired by her stay in the coastal town. Zenobia's father was then transferred to Valencia. During their stay in this city, the family lived on Calle Navelos 14. Zenobia wrote and published several literary works, among them, "The Garret I have known". Zenobia took care of the operation of the family house in Valencia because her mother left for a season with her family in Barcelona. She received a literary award consisting of a Gold Badge from St. Nicholas Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls for her work "When Grandmother went to school".
As a result of a marriage separation, Isabel Aymar (mother of Zenobia) and Zenobia, her daughter, moved to live in the United States in 1905. They settled in Newburgh, New York, where many family members and family friends lived. The trip began with a visit to Canada in September, accompanied by her maternal uncle José, and her brother Raimundo. They went to Québec, where her aunt Lillian was awaiting them.
During these years, her life in the United States was totally different from the Spanish one. She travelled through Washington, Boston and New York. She attended dances, meetings, lunches, teas and all kinds of social events. Meanwhile, she continued reading and studying – Latin, literature, music, European and American history – writing, attending cultural events, preparing for the future, taking care of her education. She began to be courted by a lawyer, friend of the family, Henry Shattuck.
In 1908, Zenobia enrolled in the Teacher's College of the Columbia University (New York) to study English literature and composition.
After the marriage's reconciliation, Mrs. Isabel Aymar returned to Spain in 1909 in the company of Zenobia and her cousin Hannah. They called her "the Little American", since she began her university studies in Columbia; she attended cultural activities and women's clubs. She came into contact with American feminism, traveled alone, read the Spanish and English classics and followed a course on literature.
They settled in La Rábida (Huelva) where Mr. Raimundo Camprubí was the chief engineer of the port of Huelva. In a room of the house where they settled, Zenobia improvised a school to teach a group of nineteen children of the surroundings. In 1910, Zenobia's father was transferred to Madrid. The family residence was set in Paseo de la Castellana.
On the return from a short trip to Switzerland in March 1911, Zenobia and her mother went through Barcelona and visited Malgrat. This was the first time that Zenobia returned to her native house, which she found "sad and dark". In October, the third trip of Zenobia to the United States took place on the occasion of the birth of the first daughter of her brother José, Inés. The idea of exporting crafts, embroidery and books to North America arose.
In the first months of the year 1912, Zenobia returned to Madrid, she continued to publish articles in American magazines. She took advantage of all that Madrid offered and got involved in cultural and intellectual projects. There, she was related primarily concerned with Americans, she was distressed because she could not move freely alone until she met Susan Huntington, who ran the Instituto Internacional de Señoritas, where foreigners were staying, attending the summer courses they organized.
Juan Ramón Jiménez
In 1913, Zenobia kept an epistolary relationship with her North American suitor Henry Shattuck, who came to Spain in May to discuss details about a possible marriage. Through a letter, the relation split up, though they remained friends.
She attended many conferences, but she could only do so if she was accompanied by an American couple, the Bynes. This couple organized parties and in them, she heard about a fierce and strange poet hosted in the Residencia de Estudiantes, who complained about the noise but stuck his ear to the wall when he heard Zenobia's laugh, whom he didn't know yet. Zenobia met Juan Ramón Jiménez in 1913, in a conference imparted by Bartolomé Cossío, celebrated in the Residence where he worked.
In 1914, Zenobia translated some verses from The Crescent Moon by Tagore, including a prologue-poem by Juan Ramón. In June she visited Ávila and Segovia. By the end of the year, there were some disagreements between Juan Ramón and Zenobia. They couldn't deliver the translated La Luna Nueva by Tagore on time for its publication, and to compensate this problem they published the children edition of Platero y yo.
In December, Zenobia and her mother boarded in Cádiz on their way to New York, to avoid the relationship of her daughter with the poet. But, on 12 February 1916, the Jiménezes arrived in New York and on 2 March Zenobia and he married in the Catholic Church St. Stephen of New York. They traveled around the United States: Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington... On June 7 they boarded the ship "Montevideo", accompanied by Mrs. Isabel Aymar, destination Spain. After landing in Cádiz they arrived in Sevilla, where they spent a couple of days, on their way to La Palma del Condado, where they were expected by Juan Ramón's relatives, who wanted to meet his wife at last. On 1 July they arrived in Madrid. In 1917, Zenobia translated and published El Jardinero ("The Gardener"), El Cartero del Rey ("The Post Office"), Pájaros perdidos ("Stray Birds") and La Cosecha ("The Harvest") by Tagore. Jiménez added a prologue-poem to them. Also in collaboration with Juan Ramón, she translated El Asceta ("The Ascetic"), El rey y la reina ("King and Queen"), Malini, Ofrenda Lírica ("Gitanjali"), Las Piedras Hambrientas ("The Hungry Stones") and Ciclo de Primavera ("Cycle of Spring"), all of them by Tagore. Both Camprubí and Jiménez used a simplified Spanish orthography different from the RAE standard.
Like Katherine Bourland, María de Maeztu and Rafaela Ortega y Gasset, Zenobia founded in Madrid La Enfermera a Domicilio ("The Home Nurse") in 1918, an association whose purpose was taking care of ill children and adults from working families, providing them with food and medication and taking them to dispensaries and to prestigious doctors who attended them for free. In addition, she took control of a small business that compensated for the economical problems of the couple. She calmed her husband's mood, encouraging his quill and sorting out problems as important as abandoning Spain with dignity after the outbreak of the Civil War in Spain.
On 6 April 1920, the play El Cartero del Rey by Tagore was premiered, translated and adapted to theatres by Zenobia. There were three functions in several days. She made a partnership with her friend Inés Muñoz to continue with the labor of exportation of handicraft, embroidery, ceramic and books to America. They had already received and managed her brother José's products. In October, beside María Goyri de Menéndez Pidal and María de Maeztu, she founded the Comité para la Concesión de Becas a Mujeres Españolas en el Extranjero ("Committee for the Granting of Scholarships to Spanish Women Abroad"). She was its secretary since its foundation until 1936. Then, the idea of another business came up: sublet apartments that she would furnish. Her relatives and North American friends used to ask her to look for an apartment with certain characteristics to stay in Madrid, something that wasn't easy, so she decided to do it herself. Juan Ramón and Zenobia moved to 8, Lista St. in 1921. The representation of John M. Synge's play, Jinetes hacia el mar ("Riders to the Sea") and Zenobia's version and translation of La hermana mayor ("Elder Sister"), by Tagore was made in the Athenaeum of Madrid. In 1922, she did a short trip to Catalonia and Baleares with her friend Inés Muñoz. In Barcelona she would visit her paternal uncle José Camprubí and her childhood friends.
On 15 March 1924, her father died in Madrid, at the age of 78. By the end of June and starting of July, Zenobia and Juan Ramón, invited by Federico García Lorca and his family, enjoyed their holidays in Granada; this was not the first time she traveled to this city. In August they spent some days in Moguer and in October they traveled again to around Andalucía, across Málaga, Córdoba, Sevilla and Moguer.