20th-Century Spanish Literature: Poetry and Theater
The Poetry of War
The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) plunged Spain into a period of profound economic and cultural crisis. The problems the country faced created a literary vacuum that contributed to several factors:
- The deaths of representative poets of previous generations.
- Censorship and repression of the Franco regime.
- Exile of poets such as Juan Ramón Jiménez and a large part of the Generation of ’27.
One of the poets who exerted greater influence in the post-war lyric was Miguel Hernández. Although part of the postwar generation, he is considered the link between the pre-war and post-war poetic movements. The predominant themes of this era are full of human feeling: love, life, and the complaint of duress and lack of freedom.
Existential Poetry
The situation in Spain during the 1940s was one of extreme hardship: famine, international isolation, and political and cultural repression. This gave rise to an existential tone in poetry, characterized by the search for answers to the questions of human existence in the harsh reality facing the country. This existential poetry can be viewed from two different perspectives:
Rooted Poetry
Poets of this trend questioned the pain of existence but found comfort in God, family, and land. Their vision of the world was harmonious, highlighting the confidence in the capabilities of human beings to overcome difficulties with the help of faith and love.
Style: Simple, using plain and conversational language.
Metrics: Classical, tending to use traditional verses.
Themes: Everyday life, reflecting daily experiences and a constant search for God.
An example of this trend is the Garcilaso group, who advocated for a formalist and classical poetry of evasion that aimed to connect with the Generation of ’27. The characteristics of the group include:
- Positive vision: A coherent and optimistic vision of reality.
- Escapism: Ignoring the historical moment.
- Formal care: Seeking musicality and vivid imagery in their poetry.
Poetry Uprooted
The publication of Hijos de la ira (Children of Wrath) by Dámaso Alonso in 1944 represented a break with the lyric of the moment, both in form and theme. Alonso used free verse and simple, direct, and brutal language. The foundation of the journal Espadaña became the vehicle of expression for uprooted poetry. These poets did not share the positive vision of rooted poetry; instead, they faced reality with a violent tone, expressing their upset with life, the anguish of being human, and the consequences of the civil war and poverty.
Themes: Religious sentiment prevails.
Style: Classical poetry, but less entrenched in tradition.
Metrics: The sonnet is predominant in most compositions.
Social Poetry
Poetry uprooted evolved during the 1950s into social poetry. This new trend involved a return to social realism, a literary tradition that had been truncated by the civil war. Writers of social poetry believed that the poet must reflect the reality of the country, taking sides with the most neglected members of society and denouncing the ills affecting the nation. Most of the social poets evolved over time to different poetic styles, but they all shared some common characteristics:
- Use of free verse.
- Dominance of content over form.
- Use of simple and colloquial language to reach a wider audience.
- Focus on social injustice.
Contemporary Poetry
From the 1970s onward, Spanish society began a process of transformation that culminated with the return of democracy in 1978. Contemporary poets openly rejected the social realism of postwar poetry and explored new lines of experimentation.
The Decade of the Seventies: Novísimos
The poets of this decade pursued an innovative and experimental aesthetic ideal that positioned them as distant heirs of the avant-garde. Due to their novel poetic conception, aesthetics, and themes, they are also known as the Novísimos. Their characteristics include:
- Metrics: Use of free verse.
- Style: Incorporation of surreal elements, such as the adoption of visionary and dreamy images.
- Ambiance: Introduction of exotic elements from diverse races and cultures.
- Culturalism: The text is laden with cultural references that lead to a certain secrecy and difficulty of understanding.
The Decade of the Eighties: The Poetry of Experience
The poets of this decade showed a taste for intimate poetry, focusing on a return to subjectivism and a revaluation of the poetry of the everyday. The lyric becomes human and avoids the artificiality of the previous decade. The poet is presented as a being of the present, experiencing similar systems as the reader.
- Metrics: Use of both classical and free verse.
- Language and Style: Tendency towards naturalness, adopting simple and colloquial language.
- Techniques: Rejection of avant-garde aesthetics.
- Themes: The sense of time and personal experience.
Latest Poetic Trends
The 1990s and early 21st century are marked by a typically postmodern feature: the coexistence of various poetic sensibilities without any one taking precedence over the others. The poet is free from adherence to a dominant aesthetic. One of the movements with more contemporary relevance is the “poetry of difference.”
The Theater in the Early Twentieth Century
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the consolidation of the bourgeoisie as the ruling class brought about a change in mentality. Romantic theater took a second place to the realist novel, which was seen as a more adequate genre to describe this new society. At the end of the century, theater became a commercial spectacle designed to entertain a conservative bourgeois audience. However, a number of authors attempted to renovate the theater, but these efforts did not fully succeed until the arrival of the avant-garde.
Traditional Theater
This was a commercial genre accepted by the predominantly bourgeois audiences of the time. Its aim was to distract the public without criticism or moral purpose, following the theatrical style of earlier times: simple language, familiar surroundings, and characters of the same social class as the audience. There were two different trends within traditional theater:
- Theater of Manners: Comedies reflecting popular characters, often using coarse and colloquial language.
- Bourgeois Comedy: A dramatic chronicle of the defects and virtues of the bourgeoisie, characterized by its ironic tone and characters who engage in long conversations and monologues in elegant and witty language.
The Theater After the War
The Civil War marked a break with some cultural traits of the pre-war period. Theater in the early postwar years was of low artistic quality and mediocre, constrained by several factors:
- Death or exile of the great dramatists.
- The public, overwhelmingly bourgeois and wealthy, favored simple and traditional theater.
- Censorship implemented by the Franco regime, which determined the content of plays or prevented their staging.
The postwar period, spanning four decades, saw several theatrical trends coexisting, with a predominance of one over the other at different times. Postwar Spanish drama can be grouped into four trends:
- Bourgeois Theater: This trend adopted the traditional forms of theater from before the war, falling within the tradition of bourgeois comedy. Many of the works staged in this period belonged to playwrights from previous decades.
- Poetic Drama: Playwrights in this trend wrote poetic prose comedies with features drawn from various sources. The thematic focus was on the conflict between reality and fantasy, defending love, understanding, and freedom as methods to overcome conflict.
- Theater of Humor: Many playwrights turned to humor as a way to cope with the harsh living conditions of the postwar period. Unlike bourgeois comedy, this humor was characterized by improbable situations and absurd dialogue, offering a very ironic critique of the society of the time.