Lorca, Hernández, and Greguerías: Poetic Analysis
Federico García Lorca
Federico García Lorca: A fusion of traditional and avant-garde styles, his tragic work stems from poetic inspiration and rigorous technique. Popular and worshipful elements intertwine in his work.
First Stage: Heterogeneity
This stage draws from earlier traditions. Works include: Book of Poems, Songs, and Poems and Romances of Flamenco Song Gitano.
Second Stage: Poet in New York
This stage is marked by a shift in style and themes.
Themes
- First Stage: Love (linked to death), death as an obstacle to love, landscapes, the marginalized (Gypsies and homosexuals), and Andalusian culture.
- Second Stage: Loneliness and death, angst expressed through the lives of the dead, awareness of imbalance, denunciation of the big city, lost childhood, societal projections, and love.
Style
Short meters, choruses of Andalusian popular songs, and compositions like Sevillanas, Seguidillas, and Soleás. Dominant imagery and ancient mythology. Key resources: personification, metaphor, and symbol.
Miguel Hernández
Miguel Hernández: A symbol of the poet born in the village. Married Josephine Tube in 1937 and had two children. He died of tuberculosis.
Themes
The tragic sense of life, love (sometimes expressing the pain of love, other times the full love for his wife, culminating in the child), and social and political commitment (expressing solidarity with the poor).
Poetic Path
- Early Work: Influenced by the avant-garde. Perito on Moons, The Ray That Never Ends.
- Committed Poetry: Poetry in service of the Republic. His style is simple and straightforward. Wind of the People.
- Last Poems: Written while in jail. Songbook and Ballads of Absences.
Greguerías
Greguerías: Short texts presenting surprising associations and situations from everyday items. They offer a humorous vision of reality.
Nanas of the Onion
This poem, written in prison, reveals sadness at the loss of freedom and loved ones. It expresses the pain of separation from his wife and his wish for her happiness. The tone is deeply emotional, and the style is seemingly simple, as if poured from the soul, yet carefully crafted.
The poem addresses a child, urging them to remain a child and be happy, as childhood is free from worries. The poet wishes to never awaken from childhood and to have the freedom and children he has lost. The freedom of the child and mother is paramount, especially since he lacks it in prison.
Key resources include keywords representing poverty, such as ‘onion’. Parallelism and anaphora are abundant, with repeated structures in verses 1 and 2, and 3 and 4. Anaphora is seen with words like ‘onion’, ‘laugh’, and ‘children’. Polysyndeton appears, for example: “No derrumbes. No you know what happens or what happens”. Enjambment is frequent, with short lines and simple rhyme. Metaphors like “black ice and frost” represent the rotten onion and poverty. Paradoxes, such as “black ice and frost,” juxtapose opposing terms.
The poem consists of 12 stanzas, each with 7 verses. In conclusion, this poem conveys the poet’s feelings about his lack of freedom and his love for his wife, expressing his desire for happiness.