Spanish Literature’s Generation of ’27: Poets and Key Works
Exceptional Promotion of Poets: The Second Golden Age of Spanish Literature
Generation of ’27: Key Characteristics
Dates: University education, fellowship, friendship, mutual influence, and progressive ideals.
Generation of ’27: The third centenary of the death of Góngora (pure poetry is praised).
Stages of Development
- Until 1929: Youth, avant-garde, tradition, and pure poetry.
- 1929-1936: Personal conflicts explored through surrealism; rehumanization, “committed or impure poetry.”
- 1939: Generational break-up (exile, poetry compromised in various ways).
Modernism and Tradition
- Neopopularism: Traditional poetry.
- Golden Age: Góngora, Garcilaso, Quevedo.
- Nineteenth Century: Darío, Unamuno, Machado, symbolist poetry.
- Twentieth Century: Gómez de la Serna (futurism, creationism, ultraism, surrealism).
Teachers
Ramón Jiménez and Ortega y Gasset.
Forms and Themes
Love, fate, the universe, death. Vision of the futuristic city, optimism, and negative aspects of breakthroughs.
Featured Authors
Pedro Salinas
- 1st Stage: Pure poetry, futurism, creation, love, search for what is beyond reality.
- 2nd Stage: La voz a ti debida (The Voice Due to You).
- 3rd Stage: Exile, reflection on the situation in Spain.
Jorge Guillén
Fundamental theme: Jubilant affirmation of being and existence.
Cántico (Canticle): Song of creation, the relationship between man and reality.
Gerardo Diego
Thematic and formal variety.
- 1st Stage, on poetry: Traditional lyrical influences of Bécquer, Juan Ramón, and modernism.
- 2nd Stage, absolute poetry: Avant-garde, elimination of the whole story, new poetic reality.
Federico García Lorca
A key figure, a synthesis of popular and cult. Lorca’s tragic and violent world.
Topics:
- Love and sex = energy and fullness, but doomed to failure = death (tragic destiny of man).
- Social and moral imposition.
Style: Evocative function of words, symbols, visionary image, impressionistic trend, musicianship, folk poetry, classical forms.
Works:
- Romancero Gitano (Gypsy Ballads) and Poema del cante jondo (Poem of the Deep Song): Traditional and avant-garde elements.
- Romancero Gitano: Andalusia’s tragic, stylized, and unreal gypsy world; the gypsy and primitive freedom; order and repression of the Civil Guard.
- Poeta en Nueva York (Poet in New York): Vanguard, dehumanization, loneliness and suffering, desire for love.
- Sonetos del amor oscuro (Sonnets of Dark Love).
Vicente Aleixandre (Nobel Prize in Literature, 1977)
Destruction and love as assimilation into the universe. Surrealism. Metrical regularity, repetition, short and long verses.
- 1st Stage: Loneliness and pain in a natural paradise. Surrealism. Espadas como labios (Swords as Lips).
- 2nd Stage: Historia del corazón (History of the Heart), idealistic humanism and solidarity with man.
- 3rd Stage: Reflection on aging and death. Poemas de la consumación (Poems of Consummation).
Luis Cernuda
Key works: La realidad y el deseo (Reality and Desire), conflict between the desire to live free and uprooted.
Other topics: Loneliness, love, nature, the influence of time, Bécquer, conversational tone, long lines, without rhyme.
- 1st Stage: Initial stage of classical influence and unfulfilled love.
- Surrealist phase: Los placeres prohibidos (Forbidden Pleasures): Attack on repressive society.
- Consolidation phase: Influence of Bécquer and other German Romantics. Donde habite el olvido (Where Oblivion Dwells).
- 2nd Stage: After exile, new themes are incorporated.
Rafael Alberti
- Neopopularism: Traditional poetry. Marinero en tierra (Sailor on Land): Nostalgia for Cádiz and childhood.
- Baroque: Cal y canto (Lime and Stone).
- Surrealism: Sobre los ángeles (About the Angels), personal crisis.
- Social Concern: Un fantasma recorre Europa (A Specter is Haunting Europe).
- Poetry of Exile: Social concern. Entre el clavel y la espada (Between the Carnation and the Sword).