Major Spanish Poets: Works, Themes, and Literary Evolution
Pedro Salinas: Poetic Knowledge and Evolution
To Salinas, poetry is a form of knowledge, delving into the substance of things and life experiences. It aims to express not only beauty but also authenticity (the essential and intimate) and intelligence (conceptual and intellectual). His style follows the guidelines of pure poetry, dense and precise, utilizing paradoxical conceptist resources. He prefers short meters and rarely uses rhyme.
Salinas’s Poetic Phases
First Phase (until 1931): Pure Poetry and Avant-Garde
This aesthetic stage shows an important presence of avant-garde elements. Key works include Omens and Fable and Random Insurance Sign.
Second Stage (1932-1939): Humanized Love Poetry
This phase features conceptual, humanized love poetry, devoid of romantic sentimentality. It reflects a love that orders the world. Notable works are The Voice Due to You and Love’s Reason.
Third Stage (in exile): Commitment and Anguish
In exile, Salinas’s work shows a greater commitment to the world, becoming more contemplative and trustful. It addresses the anguish of modern man in a dehumanized society, as seen in All Clearer.
Luis Cernuda: Reality, Desire, and Poetic Form
All of Luis Cernuda’s work explores the romantic conflict between reality and desire—that is, between personal aspirations and the limitations of a petty world. This conflict generates feelings of loneliness, longing, and a desire for fulfillment in love. Formally, he rejects excessive ornamentation, preferring a more natural and colloquial language. The Reality and Desire is the comprehensive title under which all his poetry is collected.
Cernuda’s Poetic Stages
Initial Stage (until 1928): Search for Personal Tone
This stage reflects a search for his personal tone, influenced by pure and classical poetry. Works include Perfil del Aire and Eclogue, Elegy and Ode.
Surrealist Stage (1929-1936): Intimate Concerns
Books like The Forbidden Pleasures and Where Oblivion Dwells address his intimate concerns during this period.
Civil War Stage: Clouds
This stage is marked by the collection Clouds (1937-1940).
Exile Stage (after the Civil War): Loneliness and Nostalgia
Themes of loneliness, bitterness, nostalgia, and exile characterize this period. Key works are Desolation of the Chimera and Ocnos.
Jorge Guillén: Pure Poetry and Thematic Cycles
Jorge Guillén is the foremost exponent of pure, dehumanized, and intellectual poetry, prioritizing the conceptual and formal over the sentimental and emotional. His style is highly elaborate, seeking clarity by removing the superfluous. He uses classical metrics, such as tenths and sonnets. His collected poetry is considered a whole under the title Cántico (or Aire Nuestro). It differentiates into three major cycles:
Guillén’s Poetic Cycles
Cántico Cycle: Joy of Being Alive
This cycle sings to life and the world, expressing the joy of existence.
Clamor Cycle: Historical Grief and Injustice
This cycle involves the cry of a historical world undone by grief, war, injustice, and exile.
Homenaje Cycle: Optimistic Evocation
The Homenaje cycle regains a more optimistic evocation of historic and beloved places.
Federico García Lorca: Vitality, Death, and Social Conflict
García Lorca’s work profoundly expresses his personality: an intense vitality that contrasts with the harrowing shadow of death. His topics include: passion for life, love, and freedom in conflict with repressive society or tragic fate. His poetry frequently features themes of frustration, loneliness, and death, developing on both personal and social levels. In his drama, characters confront forces that suppress natural instincts, passions, hopes, and desires.
García Lorca’s Poetic Stages
First Stage: Training and Assimilation
This stage involves training and assimilation of different trends, including tradition, popular art, and religious influences. Early works include Songs and Poems of Cante Jondo. Gypsy Ballads explores the marginalization of those facing social and moral standards, beset by a tragic destiny of loneliness, frustration, and death.
Second Stage: Crisis and Surrealism
New social and ethical concerns reflect a personal and aesthetic crisis. The new form of expression becomes the visionary imagery of Surrealism, utilizing free verse and prose verse. Key works from this period include Poet in New York, Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, Divan del Tamarit, and Sonnets of Dark Love.