Spanish Poetry: Civil War to Present Day

Posted on Jan 29, 2025 in Latin

**Spanish Poetry: Civil War to Present Day**

**1. Miguel Hernández (Civil War Lyric)**

This is not the generation of poets of ’27 and avant-garde poets.

Themes:

  • Love, woman, and son.
  • Pain and death: Personal experiences cause suffering and war, whose highest expression is death.
  • Life and a better future: Hope.

Stages:

  • 1st stage: The Lightning That Doesn’t Stop: The main theme is the inability to fully love. Written in sonnets, it contains Ramon Sijé Elegy (theme: friendship), uses composition and sonnet chains.
  • 2nd stage: Uses classic stanzas (quartets, tenths, broken-foot stanzas) and long verse (free hendecasyllable and Alexandrine). Play: The Lurking Man: The poet is shown sad to see war and famine convert man into a bloodthirsty animal.
  • 3rd stage: Last writings in jail, poems Songbook and Ballads of Absence: The absence of his first child who died, the second, and his wife whom he cannot see.

Symbols:

  • The moon (vitality, fertility)
  • Arms (pain)
  • Night (death)
  • Bull (virility, passion, freedom)
  • Lightning (passion)
  • The belly and the female (the very heart of life, the safe haven)

**2. Poetry in Exile**

  • Emilio Prados: Melancholy poetry. Work: Closed Garden.
  • Manuel Altolaguirre: In his loneliness, a feeling. Work: End of a Love.
  • León Felipe: Themes: The human condition, injustice, lawlessness, rebellion against history. Play: Spanish Exodus and Tears.

**3. Poetry of the 1940s**

  • Neoclassical poetry: There are no important literary magazines to spread it. Authors: Leopoldo Panero, Luis Rosales, Luis Felipe Vivanco.
  • Existentialist poetry:
    • Dámaso Alonso: Children of Wrath: Use of verse, poetic vocabulary. Themes: Man, God, death, loneliness, injustice.
    • Vicente Aleixandre: Shadow of Paradise: Uses free verse, his poetry is a revival of surrealist avant-garde poetry.

**4. Avant-Garde Poetry**

  • Postismo: Imaginative poetry, characterized by the search for surprise.
  • The Cántico Group: Combines poetry of the generation of ’27 and Bécquer’s poetry.

**5. Poetry of the 1950s: Social Poetry**

Characterized by a simple, conversational tone:

  • José Hierro: Works: Fifth of ’42 and The Know Me.
  • Gabriel Celaya:
    • Stages:
      1. Existential poetry.
      2. Social poetry (Peace and Concert and Iberian Songs).
      3. Avant-garde poetry: The Transparent Mirrors and Poetic Career.
  • Blas de Otero:
    • Stages:
      1. Existential poetry (Spiritual Canticle)
      2. Social poetry (I Pray for Peace and the Word)
      3. Last verse: Autobiographical and reflective.

**6. Poetry of the 1960s: Poetry of Knowledge**

Search for greater elaboration of poetic language and the collective shift toward the personal. Two cores: Barcelona Group and Madrid Group. They have the following common features:

  • Time: Evokes the transience of life and longs for childhood and adolescence.
  • Love: Poems addressed in intimate and full of eroticism.
  • Feeling of friendship.
  • The creation of poetry: In some poems, there are reflections on poetry: metapoetry poems. They are of a meditative or reflective nature, with colloquial language and free verse. Humor and irony are used to distance reality.

Authors:

  • José Ángel Valente: Memory and the Signs and In Memory Material.
  • Ángel González:
    • Stages:
      1. Harsh World and Treaty of Urbanism.
      2. Short Songs for a Biography.
  • Jaime Gil de Biedma: Prize on everyday life: People of the Verb in 3 books: Travel Companion, Morals, and Posthumous Poems.

**7. The 1970s: The *Novísimos***

Features: Preference for mass culture (TV, ads) together with the camp taste, culturalism, and the preference for European and Latin American literature and urban culture.

Themes: Exoticism, beauty, and reflection on literary creation. They incorporate collage and cinematic flash.

**8. Poetry Since 1975: Latest Poetic Trends**
  • Neosurrealism: Connects with the poets of the generation of ’27, with the surrealists of the postwar, and with the novísimos.
  • Neoromanticism: Themes: The night and death.
  • Poetry of silence, minimalist and conceptualist: Follow Valente, use short verse, suggest silence.
  • Epic poetry: Preference for nature and an idyllic past.
  • Sensualist poetry or the new eroticism: Themes: Eroticism, sea, body, night.
**9. Today**

Contemporary poets seek a broader audience. Their themes include everyday events, urban reality, intimacy, concern for the passage of time, and its influence on people or things. Authors: Luis García Montero and Miguel d’Ors.