Antonio Machado and the Generation of ’27
Antonio Machado: Life and Career
Life
Born in Seville in 1875, Antonio Machado belonged to a cultured and liberal family. They moved to Madrid, where he studied at the Free Institution of Teaching, which profoundly influenced his thinking. He traveled to Paris, meeting Oscar Wilde and Rubén Darío. Machado resided in Madrid until 1936, supporting the Republican government. He evacuated to Valencia and then Barcelona in 1936, eventually exiling to France in 1939, where he died the same year.
Poetic Career
First Stage
Machado published his first book of poems, Solitudes, in 1903. Influenced by modernism, he explored themes of loneliness, time, and love.
Second Stage
Castile significantly influenced Machado’s poetic conception, leading to a shift in his style. This change culminated in his masterpiece, Campos de Castilla (1912), which reflects his interest in Castilian essence and the eternal human condition.
Third Stage
Spanning from 1924 until his death, this period includes several works. New Songs (1924) marked the beginning, showcasing a growing interest in popular themes and metrics. In 1936, he published the prose work Juan de Mairena, a collection of essays on society and culture. The War (1937), containing both prose and verse, includes the poignant piece “The crime was in Granada; they chose death for F.G. Lorca.”
Language and Style
While Machado’s literary work began under the influence of modernism, his style remained distinctly personal. Sound and musicality were secondary to his focus on expression. His themes—love, loneliness, time, death, and eroticism—were common among poets of his time, but his preference for simplicity distinguished his language. Symbolic imagery is characteristic of his work: the road and river symbolize life, the sea represents death, and time is depicted by the clock. The most crucial symbol, the “key” to Solitudes, is the well, identified by its changing moods. Metrically, he employed Alexandrine, dodecasyllabic, hexasyllabic, and minor art verses, utilizing both assonance and rhyme.
The Generation of ’27
The Generation of ’27 comprises the most significant group of poets in the first third of the 20th century, a period known as the Silver Age of Spanish literature. This group included Pedro Salinas, Jorge Guillén, Gerardo Diego, Dámaso Alonso, Vicente Aleixandre, Federico García Lorca, Rafael Alberti, Luis Cernuda, Emilio Prados, and Manuel Altolaguirre.
Birth of the Group
These poets were united by friendship, originating at the Residencia de Estudiantes. The group’s name commemorates various events honoring Luis de Góngora, marking the 300th anniversary of his death in 1927.
Ideas and Aesthetic Education
. Acceptance of many literary influences, ranging from early Spanish poetry, to the avant-garde, through the Old Ballads, Manrique classical poets such as Gongora … Romantics like Becquer and Rosalia and modernists, Machado and Juan Ramón. In its first stage, interested in the future by the Ultraism, Creationism and Surrealism. The 27 have in common besides other features, such as the desire to move away from sentimentality, but the feelings disappear from their works. In the poetry of the 27 are the major poetic themes: love, death, justice, human destiny, nature, the pursuit of beauty and formal perfection.
Lorca. His first work was a book of prose entitled “Impressions and Landscapes”. In 1921 appeared the “Book of Poems” (modernist influence of Juan Ramón and Machado). Perception of the landscape, which appears in all his work, is already in this book. He wrote three books of poems that are still part of the first stage: “Songs”, “Poema de Cante Jondo” and “Suites”. In these works appear as the subject of death and the tragic vision of reality. 2l In 1928 he published “Gypsy Ballads”, which synthesizes the cultured and the popular, using a language full of images and gives a tragic view of Gypsies. The underlying theme of this work is worthwhile. Since its publication initiated a new direction in his poetry, “Poet in New York.”
Rafael Alberti. In her poetry there are two main lines: one subjective and intimate, and one objective or social and political issues. The 1st stage is formed by Sailor on land, “whose theme is the nostalgia of Cadiz and the sea,” The Lover “, inspired by a trip he took to Castile, and” Dawn of Wallflower “, which again Andalusia is the protagonist. His poems are short, agile and music in ways they are used metrics lyric taken from traditional Castilian. The 2nd stage began with “Cal y canto” in which the influence of Góngora is very strong. One of the poems is entitled “Soledad third” as if it were a continuation of the work of Gongora.