Miguel Hernández: Themes of Life, Love, and Death in Poetry
Life, Love, and Death in Miguel Hernández’s Poetry
In the work of Miguel Hernández, the central themes are life, love, and death. Love is often presented as a positive value, though it also reveals great suffering. Critics distinguish several facets of love in his poetry: “love-pain,” “love-hate,” and “hope-love.” His early compositions, particularly those in Primeras composiciones (Primroses), often appear poetic and vacillating. He treats love with a tender and platonic form, lamenting love, and understanding its sexual connotations, yet often embracing illusion. He delves into the artifice of “inhospitable love.” His sources include courtly love and bucolic poetry. The theme of blood, a driving force, prolongs his gaze towards posterity. Blood holds both a biological and a deeper, vital sense. Its presence increases as the needs of the first poems, representing spring, approach. The “Erid” (likely a misinterpretation of “Eros” or “Ardor”), a metaphor for the author’s passionate language, draws from medieval songbooks, becoming a particular symbol of all existence.
The Gongorine Stage: “Perito en Lunas”
With Perito en lunas (Expert in Moons), Hernández began his Gongorine stage. The moon is a representation of fecundity. This work often presents a confrontation of opposing forces, frequently manifesting as a conflict between the sexes.
“El Rayo que no Cesa”: Love, Pain, and Destiny
In El rayo que no cesa (The Unceasing Lightning Bolt), the poet consolidates the themes of love, pain, death, and life. The central theme is often rejected love, which presents all its destined suffering and intensity. All these elements lead to the wound of sexual love. Love is presented as both a negative and positive force simultaneously. He exalts love for soldiers and the PNA (Popular National Army, likely referring to the Republican army during the Spanish Civil War).
“Cancionero y Romancero de Ausencias”: A Shift in Tone
In Cancionero y romancero de ausencias (Songbook and Ballad Book of Absences), a significant change is evident. Here, love is intertwined with joy, hope, pain, and fraternity. Imagery and metaphor become sacred. His work, particularly the early poems, contains a certain lightheartedness. Death, initially, is a literary pain—fictitious yet legitimate—distinct from real life, contemplated from afar. After the exaltation of nature, melancholy arrives: a death that brings sadness, flooding the landscape and filling the poet with sorrow. Miguel Hernández continually incorporated novelties into his poetic stance. Filled with the possibility of death, all becomes life and death, positioning him on the margins.
Concluding Themes and Evolution
Life is always under threat from uncontrollable forces. This dualism between life and death is an existential discussion that leads to a final solution in his work. His own amorous experience often contains a destructive palpitation. Death, for Hernández, represents an indomitable inner strength. Blood symbolizes life, as it flows from the heart, complementing the land as sacred, pure matter. The poet sings of the beauty of life, often synonymous with pain. The pain, despite many wounds of love and death, still allowed for a last breath of poetic expression. The poet’s struggle for the fullness of living consumes him in a restless search, filled with discontent, doubt, and pessimism. Deep wounds are inherent to all who live. When the poet is denied love, death arrives. When war occurs, his poems become darker, imbued with disillusionment and sadness. The strength and defiance of Miguel Hernández began to crack, and he foresaw an inevitable end, singing to the life that departs along the way. His latest poems are more tender and melancholy. He ultimately fulfilled his presentiment of death.