Spanish and European 20th Century Literature: Key Authors
**Lírica: Gender Literary in the 20th Century**
**Cultivators**
- a) Those who seek the essence of poetry (pure poets).
- b) Those who use poetry to express their inner turmoil (existentialists) or feelings of the collective.
- c) Those who break sharply with tradition (Vanguard).
**In Europe**
- a) Pure poets such as Mallarmé and Paul Valéry.
- b) Poets with social anxiety such as Rilke and Yeats.
- c) Those who seek a total liberation of man, like Paul Éluard and Neruda.
**Spanish Poetry: Second Phase**
**Generation of ’27**
Noucentists, Modernist poets Antonio Machado and Juan Ramón Jiménez join them. These poets, from the hands of Modernism, which is the political movement based on Symbolism and released by Rubén Darío.
**Antonio Machado**
He will concentrate his writing around three themes:
- a) The concern for what is human.
- b) Expression of feelings and dreams of memories.
- c) The Castilian landscape.
Machado enters into his world of shadows, joy, and sadness in his world of Solitudes. In Campos de Castilla, he speaks of the reality of Spain. Other works include Proverbs and Songs and Poems of Remembrance.
**Juan Ramón Jiménez**
He exemplifies the poetic path from Modernism to Vanguardism. He died in exile in 1958 and won the Nobel Prize in ’56. He had three poetic stages:
- a) Sensitive, intimate, and romantic poetry, as in Sad Arias.
- b) Intellectual, known as pure or naked poetry, as in Diary of a Newly Married Poet.
- c) Sufficient, the search for transcendence, the arrival of death as a transit and as a reflection, as in Eternities and Total Station.
His world-famous work is Platero and I.
**Generation of ’27**
A group of friends who share some artistic and intellectual concerns, like Salinas, Jorge Guillén, and Gerardo Diego, who are extremely knowledgeable of our whole poetic tradition. They will be joined by García Lorca and Alberti, and later appear Cernuda, Altolaguirre, Emilio Prados, Vicente Aleixandre, Dámaso Alonso, etc. They called themselves “New Poetry”. Each will be attached to the other. All speak of:
- a) Love
- b) Death
- c) Intimate concerns
- d) Worries
**Pedro Salinas**
He talks about the future as a concern for new inventions in Candle. He had a great sense of life and poetry in exile, anguish, and pain, as seen in Voice to You.
**Jorge Guillén**
He sees his work as a whole, Air of Ours, composed of three books: Chant, Cry, and Homage. He looks at the influence of San Juan de la Cruz in Spiritual Songs and A Clamor.
**Vicente Aleixandre**
For him, poetry is communication. It is divided into three stages:
- Communication with nature.
- Communication with loved ones.
- Communication with myself.
**Federico García Lorca**
He is the most universal. His poetry is also structured around a single theme: the tragic destiny of human beings. We divide it into two periods:
- a) Until 1928: Popular and traditional poetry, with the influence of Juan Ramón and Machado. He is concerned with Andalusian folklore, as seen in Gypsy Ballads and Poems of Cante Hondo.
- b) From 1929 until his death (1936): He travels to America and writes Poet in New York, which gives us the negative vision of a dehumanized world. When he dies, he returns to the world of friends and culture. Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías and The Divan of Tamarit are intimate poems in which he reflects his personal frustration.
**Rafael Alberti**
This long-lived poet develops a poetic trajectory:
- Between the traditional and the avant-garde, as in Rating Ground.
- Cultured poetry, as in Stone and Mortar and On the Angels.
- Exile will mark its third phase, in which, together with memories, his committed poetry appears, as in Rome, Danger to Walkers and Between the Carnation and the Sword.
**Luis Cernuda**
His poems reflect pain. His most representative works are Where Oblivion Dwells and The Desolation of the Chimera. All the poets mentioned above suffer exile and estrangement from their poetic evolution in Spain.
**Gerardo Diego**
He develops his writing between the traditional and the avant-garde.
**Dámaso Alonso**
He develops a major academic life and is still the director of the RAE. His work is Sons of Rage.