20th-Century Spanish Literature: From Noucentisme to the Generation of ’27
1. The Noucentisme Movement (Early 20th Century)
The Noucentista movement in Spain was deeply concerned with the subject of Europe. These rationalists emphasized order, formal perfection, and beauty, seeking an escape from the ordinary. Their work showcased conceptual precision, reflecting a solid intellectual foundation. They believed in creating literature for discerning audiences, valuing art for its intrinsic beauty.
The Influence of José Ortega y Gasset
Philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, considered the father of Noucentisme, significantly impacted the movement with his essays addressing Spain’s issues. In The Revolt of the Masses, he argued for a ruling class to guide the country, distinct from the masses. Invertebrate Spain explored the struggles of different regions, advocating for unity. Ortega y Gasset championed dehumanized art, devoid of sentimentality, paving the way for modernism.
Key Figures of Noucentisme
Ramón Gómez de la Serna
Known for his lyricism and complex novels, Ramón Gómez de la Serna’s poetry held significant importance. He hosted the renowned “Café Pombo” gatherings. His most notable contribution was the greguería, a short, witty sentence combining humor and metaphor to offer social critique.
Juan Ramón Jiménez
Juan Ramón Jiménez viewed poetry as beauty, knowledge, and a means of understanding nature and humanity. His style blended learned, popular, and avant-garde elements, characterized by a constant search for precise expression. Nature served as a recurring theme, reflecting his evolving moods across three stages:
- Sensory Stage (Influenced by Modernism): Marked by melancholy and sadness, with descriptive portrayals of nature.
- Intellectual Stage (Pure Poetry): Emphasizing simplicity and purity, expressing profound ideas with few words, using nature to illustrate his moods.
- Spiritual Stage: A stage of creative fusion with nature, where Jiménez becomes the “God” of his poems, expressing concentrated, unadorned philosophical reflections on life.
2. The Avant-Garde Movement
The avant-garde embraced the dehumanization of art, emphasizing art for art’s sake. Several key movements emerged:
- Futurism: Celebrating science, progress, and war.
- Cubism: Combining disparate elements, using graphic arrangements of words, replacing sentimentality with humor and joy, and depicting reality through geometric figures.
- Calligrams: Visual poems.
Futurism and Cubism combined to form Ultraism, which gained traction in Spain through figures like Guillermo de la Torre.
Other Avant-Garde Movements
- Creationism: Similar to Ultraism, it emphasized metaphor and free association, creating poems from nothing.
- Surrealism: Exploring the dream world and the subconscious, prominent in the works of Lorca, Neruda, and Alberti.
- Existential Poetry: Reflecting the existential angst of the poets, marking a return to humanism.
3. The Generation of ’27
The Generation of ’27 consisted of highly educated writers who skillfully blended traditional and avant-garde poetry. They shared common influences but evolved individually, progressing through three stages:
- Up to 1927/1928: Experimentation with neo-popularism (Lorca, Alberti), classical forms (Gerardo Diego), pure poetry (Salinas, Guillén), and avant-garde styles like Ultraism and Futurism.
- 1927/29-1936 (Humanization): A shift towards humanized poetry, embracing Surrealism (Lorca, Cernuda, Alberti, Aleixandre) and social protest.
- Post-1936: Marked by exile poetry, longing for homeland, and existential themes (Dámaso Alonso) and social commentary (Aleixandre).
Themes and Style
The Generation of ’27 explored themes of freedom, fulfillment, yearning, and the avant-garde. Their style encompassed both classical verse forms (sonnets) and popular stanzas (romance), alongside free verse and diverse metrical patterns. They employed literary devices like imagery, personification, parallelism, and hyperbaton.