The Spanish Generation of ’27: Poets, Styles, and Themes
The Generation of ’27: An Introduction
The Generation of ’27 emerged around 1927, a group of poets who shared friendships, cultural influences, and similar education. They were influenced by Juan Ramón Jiménez and, to a lesser extent, Góngora.
Characteristics of the Generation of ’27
This group synthesized avant-garde movements with traditional forms, paying attention to Góngora, Garcilaso, San Juan, Lope de Vega, and Quevedo. They were also influenced by Romantic writers like Bécquer and Darío, and established contact with the avant-garde. Key figures included Juan Ramón Jiménez, Ortega y Gasset. They published in various literary magazines, which served as a platform for their poetry. Their work focused on the human experience, presenting individuals within their cities as both positive and negative aspects of their artistic environment. They cultivated the image and the visionary. This group went through different stages: postmodernist initiations, pure poetry, avant-garde, surrealism, neopopularism, classical tradition, and poetic re-humanization.
Key Poets and Their Contributions
Pedro Salinas, a poet and professor, promoted literature through journals and developed a deep critical approach. His work focused on three basic elements: authenticity, beauty, and poetic ingenuity. For Salinas, poetry was a way of accessing the essence of things. His main themes were love and life, characterized by expressive restraint and lexical selection. He used contrast, images, and symbols. He preferred short verses. Jorge Guillén, a professor with a PhD thesis on exile and Góngora, taught in the USA and was a literary critic. His work is organized around the numbers 3 and 5. He sought to suppress sentiment and communicate the essence of ideas. His main themes were contemplation and the recovery of reality, being, love, time, randomness, chaos, pain, memory, and plenitude. He used concentrated language, simple syntactic structures, and numerous exclamations. His metrics included hendecasyllables, free verse, sestinas, sonnets, and tercets. His poetic production was grouped into titles under Aire Nuestro, including songs, clamors, and homages. Cántico is a song to creation. Gerardo Diego, a professor of literature and language, won the National Prize of Literature in 1925. His main characteristic was his wide range, combining traditional forms. His themes included love, landscape, memories, bullfighting, and music. His work is classified into pure poetry or poetry of expression (Romancero de la Novia) and absolute creation of poetry (Manuel de Espumas). Vicente Aleixandre, based in Madrid, initially studied law and business. He won the National Literature Prize in 1933 and the Critics Award in 1969. His initial work had a pantheistic character, referencing a past era. His themes included erotic love, life, destruction, and nature. His style was surreal, with dreamlike and irrational images. His metrics were varied. His work is divided into stages, such as Espadas como labios, Destrucción o el amor, and Sombra del Paraíso. Dámaso Alonso, a professor and director of the RAE, won the Cervantes Prize in 1978. His work is marked by long periods between phases of creation. His pre-war poetry includes Poemas puros. His importance as a poet is in Hijos de la Ira, which belongs to post-war poetry.
Other Notable Poets
Federico García Lorca, from Granada, connected with the marginalized and rural people. He was part of the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, which brought writers and artists together. He traveled to New York in 1929. He composed poems and theatrical works. The university theater group, La Barraca, performed his plays. At the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, he was shot in Granada. His themes included the tragic destiny of impossible love, sex, death, childhood, and social impositions. His neopopularist works include Canciones, Poema del Cante Jondo, and Romancero Gitano. Rafael Alberti, from Puerto de Santa María, was marked by the sea. He was exiled in Argentina and Rome. He won the Cervantes Prize in 1983. His work includes prose and theater. His themes include nostalgia for his homeland, anguish, and social policy. His style is characterized by plastic images, musicality, and connotative language. His works are divided into stages: neopopularism (Marinero en tierra), gongorism and avant-garde (Yo era un tonto y lo que he visto me ha hecho dos tontos), surrealism (Sobre los ángeles), and exile poems (Roma, peligro para caminantes). Luis Cernuda, from Seville, was a student of Salinas. His friendship with members of the Generation of ’27 grew in Madrid. He supported the Republican cause and was exiled in Mexico in 1938. He had a painful and lonely personality. His themes include the opposition between his desire for personal fulfillment and the world around him, solitude, longing for beauty, and love. His poetic language is marked by a rejection of rhyme and a rich use of imagery. Miguel Hernández, from Orihuela, was considered a brilliant epigone of the Generation of ’27. He was an exceptional poet who combined rigorous art with inspiration. His themes included love, women, children, life, death, and hope. His symbols included the wind, female sex, weapons, bulls, darkness, the moon, and vitality. His works are divided into stages: influence of Góngora (Perito en lunas), influence of Neruda (Viento del pueblo), and poems written in prison (Cancionero y romancero de ausencias).