Modernism and the Generation of ’98 in Spanish Literature
Modernist Poetry
Modernism is an aesthetic renovation of poetic language, which arises from a synthesis of Parnassianism and Symbolism, two French aesthetic trends. From Parnassianism, it adopts a taste for refinement and perfection; from Symbolism, it inherits a taste for music and the tendency to incorporate symbols, synesthesia, and sensory images.
Introduced in Spain around 1900 by Rubén Darío, Modernism is characterized by the pursuit of absolute beauty as a means to escape everyday reality.
1.1.1 Topics
Among the prominent topics in Modernist poetry are the escape from reality, exoticism (particularly India and China), and inner and existential problems, such as the fear of death.
1.1.2 Style
- The creator feels discomfort with society, is inclined to solitude, explores intimacy, and seeks distance from everyday reality.
- The writer maintains an anti-bourgeois, anti-vulgar, and anti-realist position, while attempting an aristocratic, elegant, cosmopolitan, and exotic art.
- Favored external environments include classical antiquity, the legendary medieval world, and the spaces and environments of eastern Paris. The inner world reveals nostalgia and anxieties.
- The creator maintains the formal cult of beauty through the idealization of reality.
- Symbolism is prominent in attitudes, vision, and the interpretation of reality.
- Modernist poetry is a sensual explosion where colors, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile impressions permeate the evocation of landscapes, people, animals, and things, all with extreme stylization and idealization.
- Modernist language is lush and open, like the Romantic style, embracing all types of expression that approach its ideal of literary beauty. Its rhetoric is varied in origin, especially Baroque and contemporary European currents, and its lexicon is characterized by archaisms, neologisms, or words recovered from earlier times.
Poetry of the Generation of ’98
The Generation of ’98, a recognized period in contemporary literature, is one of the most controversial classifications because its boundaries with Modernism are unclear. Both movements are born from the same attitude—dissatisfaction with the prevailing literature—and Modernism is the generational language of many writers of ’98. The writers of ’98 have a progressive ideology and are concerned about the state of political and social crisis in Spain.
The Generation of ’98 reflects two trends: hereditary French Modernism (as seen in Antonio Machado) and the German ideological heritage (as seen in Miguel de Unamuno). Its language progressively moved away from the brilliance and rhetoric of Modernism, while maintaining the impressionistic character of descriptions or the idealization of nature and the Castilian landscape.
In a second stage, the spirit of ’98 is welcomed, both in the subject matter (reflection on national problems and a painful existential vision of Castile) and in the writing style (more reflective, judgmental, and analytical).
Features
- Analytical thinking and a self-absorbed view of Spain and Castile.
- A vision focused on the authentically Spanish, expressed through landscape, history, and literature.
- The proposal of idealistic solutions to regenerate the country.
- The mix of Romantic and subjective attitudes with existentialist ones, through which they intend to renew national awareness.
- The examination of conscience that emerges in literature after the colonial disaster of 1898.
Linguistic Features
- The rejection of Baroque style and rhetoricity.
- The trend toward natural, precise, and clear language in the service of thought.
- The recovery of localism and archaisms.
The Eighteenth Century
The eighteenth century is marked by the Enlightenment, an intellectual movement of renewal that reviewed prevailing ideas and values. Also called the Age of Reason, it aimed to end the dark ages.
Origins of the European Enlightenment
The Enlightenment was based on the thoughts of the previous century, such as Rationalism and Empiricism.
- Rationalism, initiated by Descartes, considered reason as the basis of human knowledge, rather than tradition or divine revelation. Rationalists distanced themselves from church culture, subjecting it to critical review.
- Empiricism argues that knowledge must be based on observation and experimentation, inducing laws that allow for verification.
The French Enlightenment and the Encyclopedia
Originating in France, the ideas of reform soon spread to the rest of Europe. The most important theorists were Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. The French Enlightenment gathered all knowledge in the Encyclopedia, consisting of 16 volumes, making it an excellent vehicle for the spread of enlightened ideas.
Enlightened Despotism
The Enlightenment believed that carrying out reforms would lead the people to progress in all fields: agriculture, health, etc. The idea of progress held great prestige. With this social, economic, and cultural prestige, the Enlightenment aimed to create a society that fostered happiness.
Scholars sought to implement reforms in government from a paternalistic perspective. The spirit of enlightened despotism is evident in the phrase “all for the people, but without the people.”
Society and Culture
- Absolutist monarchy. Separation of Church and State.
- Growth of the bourgeoisie.
- Search for happiness and welfare. Scientific advances.
- Criticism of the religious aspect and the power of the Church, defending deism (the idea of a deity or supreme being that can manifest itself in any religion).
- Utilitarian purpose of teaching art.
Aesthetics: Neoclassicism
- Neoclassicism adopts the Aristotelian conception of art: the artwork must reflect generic characters and motives (not individual or national) and must obey classical rules.
- Neoclassical art aspires to simplicity, naturalness, and reason, rejecting sentimentality.
- Pre-Romanticism, in the last decades of the century, brings a new sensitivity, more sentimental and emotional. It rejects the rules of Neoclassicism and claims the primacy of feeling over reason.