The Generation of ’27: Spanish Avant-Garde
The Generation of ’27
Avant-Garde: The Generation of 27
In 1927, a meeting was held at the Ateneo de Sevilla to commemorate the tercentenary of the death of Góngora. The meeting was attended by a group of authors who admired him for the development of his poetic language. This date is used to name them as a group or Generation of ’27.
Everyone had a great intellectual formation; several were university professors. They held a cordial relationship and often collaborated on the same literary magazines, such as The Gazelle, Literary Magazine Coast, or The West.
Traditionally included in the group of poets are Federico García Lorca, Vicente Aleixandre, Jorge Guillén, Gerardo Diego, Pedro Salinas, Dámaso Alonso, Luis Cernuda, Rafael Alberti, Emilio Prados, and Manuel Altolaguirre. Besides poetry, some, like Lorca and Alberti, also cultivated drama.
Characteristics of the Generation of ’27:
- They sought the aesthetic renovation of Spanish poetry. To do this, they took the innovations that the avant-garde brought, but without forgetting the importance of the Spanish literary tradition.
- In their poems, they took care of and renewed the language through the use of religious vocabulary, slang, and terms so far away from poetry.
- The metaphor became the most important literary resource. This is a figure well handled enough to contain surreal content.
- As for the metric, they used classical verses such as the sonnet, the romance, or the carol, but also innovated with the use of blank verse, free verse, and the verse. In any case, freedom of measure is one of the characteristic features of this group.
- They evolved from a thematic point of view. Initially, the main concern was the form of the poem, art for art’s sake, but little by little (under the influence of Surrealism), the authors of ’27 developed a humanized poetry, more concerned about pain, joy, and memories. The Civil War emphasizes the humane vision of poetry, to the point that many authors chose involved topics. We note that an author like Alberti, for example, will range from pure and aseptic poetry in Marinero en tierra (1924) to deeper engagement in The Poet on the Street (1936).
Features:
- The avant-garde poet is dissatisfied, and the past does not serve him; you have to find an art that responds to this new inner man who is living, based on the original novel that takes him in.
- It must abandon new issues since they lack substance and do not respond to the new man.
- In some movements, there is a tendency to make plastic collaboration of words.
- In poetry, it constantly plays with the symbol.
- The poets react against the traditional rules of versification; they need more freedom to adequately express their inner world.
- It reacts against modernism and the imitators of the masters of this movement; there is a social consciousness that leads them to take positions against man and his destiny.
- New themes, poetic language, formal revolution, the disappearance of the story, suggesting topics such as anti-patriotism.
- The narrator’s point of view is manifold.
- There is a close link between the environment and the tastes of the character.
- Delve into the inner world of characters, as presented to them through their most hidden states of the soul.
- The chronological time is not important, but the time encourages and takes into account the presentational aspect, as it merely suggests to readers completed; the author requires the presence of an attentive reader that unravels the facts presented and intelligently assembling the pieces go from the novel of our time.
Influences:
- Futurism did not have too much influence on the members of the Generation of ’27, although we can highlight some of them, such as Pedro Salinas and Rafael Alberti.
- Creationism, an avant-garde literary movement developed by Huidobro, whose main representative in this group is Gerardo Diego. In some of his poems (“Picture”, 1922), there is a need to create a new reality that has nothing to complete the sensory world. The words become the center of attention, not their meaning.
- The Ultraism proposed to capture the world through fragmented images and illogical perceptions. The magazine Greece welcomes this ism after the publication of the Ultra Manifesto in 1919.
- Surrealism influenced virtually all members of the Generation. It arrived in the late 1920s and was greeted by many poets. The expression of the subconscious world, dream elements, and visions appears frequently in the work of Lorca, Alberti, Aleixandre, and Cernuda. Poetry gains freedom, both thematic and formal, and human content returns. Thanks to Surrealism, the poetry of the 30s flourishes.
- Among the influences on the authors of ’27, we mention two poets who by then were completely consecrated: Juan Ramón Jiménez and Antonio Machado. Both are taken as models and are admired and respected, despite the different aesthetic conception reflected in their works. Moreover, the French Valéry and Mallarmé, the great introducer of the avant-garde in Spain, Ramón Gómez de la Serna, the leader of the Generation of 98, Miguel de Unamuno, the great essayist and philosopher José Ortega y Gasset.
- Although the avant-garde advocated a complete break with all the art before them, the authors of ’27, even taking advantage of the innovations that the isms gave, preferred to look at the best of Spanish literature. So they admired Jorge Manrique, Garcilaso de la Vega, San Juan de la Cruz, Lope de Vega, and Quevedo. From Darío, they took the artistic value of language, and from Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, the seemingly simple treatment of themes and poetic forms. In addition, authors such as Alberti and Lorca’s poetry is inspired by popular Spanish romances and short ditties, although it was given a religious treatment, called neopopularismo.
The Avant-Garde:
Between the two world wars in Europe, there were several movements of aesthetic revolution and artistic transgression, the avant-garde movements. Some of them were short-lived. Others, such as Cubism, affected painting. In literature, the most important avant-garde stream was Surrealism. It emerged in France where, in 1924, André Breton published a “manifesto” of the movement. It acquired great importance in cinema, painting, and poetry.
With the desire for a true liberation of man’s life, Surrealism dove into looking beyond reality and logic. Seeking in this way to release and express the repressed impulses, the background of the human unconscious.
In poetry, surrealist writers could use the technique of automatic writing. Thus emerges the claim that “surrealism” is a true free expression of speech that leads them to unusual lexical associations and irrational, dreamlike images.
In Castilian, two poetic avant-garde currents became relevant: Ultraism and Creationism. The latter’s father was the Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro.
The Avant-Garde Movements, Futurism
Promoted by the Italian Marinetti, it called for breaking with the aesthetics and themes of the past and celebrating art, mechanical civilization, sports, etc.
Dada
It was born thanks to the Romanian Tristan Tzara. His ideas, which opened the way to Surrealism, advocated fantasy, irrationality, the rejection of logic, and inconsistency. Like Futurism, it was short-lived.
Creationism
The poet does not seek to imitate reality but rather to create in the poem.
Ultraism
It includes part of the futurist and Dadaist influence. In the last two movements, a certain visual poetry is sometimes used, especially in the verses, which provides a unique form.