Generation of ’27 Authors: Literary Styles and Themes
Authors of the Generation of ’27
Pedro Salinas
His poetry blends Spanish classical poetry, French poetry, and Mediterranean elements. Salinas uses traditional forms with a focus on contrast and dialogue with the beloved, making love the central theme. Stages include:
- First Stage: Pre-emption and self-expression search, influenced by pure poetry, creationism, and futurism. Notable works: Omens, Second Chance, and Fable and Sign.
- Second Stage: A love trilogy, akin to love songs. The Voice Due to You, Love, and Long Sorry Reason stand out.
- Third Stage: Exile, shifting from love to the surrounding world, with a focus on contemplation and clarity.
Jorge Guillén
Guillén’s work is concentrated in Cántico, Clamor, and Tribute, later adding Our Air. Themes and styles:
- Poetry: Captures and expresses the world.
- Love: Vital embodiment.
- Being true to form.
- Time’s concern in old age, as seen in Final.
His poetry is condensed and precise.
Gerardo Diego
Diego’s work spans various themes: love, landscape, religion, with both avant-garde and traditional forms. Stages:
- Initial Poetry: Known for simplicity. Notable works: The Romance of the Bride, Initials, and Chopin Nocturne.
- Poetry On: Poetry of circumstances. Human Verses, Truth and Alondra Angeles.
- Poetry of Compostela: Absolute within creationism, with works like Evasion, Image, Manual Foams, Fable of Equis and Zeda, and Poems on Purpose.
Federico García Lorca
A celebrated figure in poetry and drama. Themes and styles:
- Love: With a tilt towards erotica, seeing sex as a source of energy.
- Death: The failure of love leads to inevitable death.
- Childhood: Reflects innocence.
- Social: Society’s moral impositions create frustrated lives.
Stages:
- First Stage: Mixing pure art and poetry. Includes Book of Poems, Poem of the Deep Song, and Gypsy Ballads.
- Second Stage: More complex and universal works. Includes Poet in New York, Divan of Tamarit, Lament for the Death of Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, Six Galician Poems, and Sonnets of Dark Love.
Rafael Alberti
Poetry as a form to transmit life experiences. Themes: nostalgia for paradise lost, anguish of loss, social concern. Stages:
- Neopopularista: Nostalgia for paradise lost. Sailor on Land, The Lover, The Dawn of Wallflowers.
- Neo-Gongorism and Avant-garde: Influenced by Góngora and the avant-garde. Lime and Chant.
- Surreal: Concerning the Angels and Sermons and Purples.
- Social or Political Poetry: Joining the Communist Party and discussing the poet’s role in society.
- Poetry of Exile: Social concern kept alive in exile. Includes Between Carnation and the Sword, High Tide, and Return of the Living Far Away.
Luis Cernuda
His work reflects his biography, focusing on the opposition between reality and desire. Themes:
- Reality preventing desire.
- Love as freedom and rebellion.
- Loneliness saved only through love.
- Unstoppable time.
- Nature as recall or search.
Stages:
- First Stage: Until 1936, searching for style in Profile of the Air and Forbidden Pleasures, then consolation in Where Oblivion Dwells and Reality and Desire.
- Second Stage: Poetry of exile after 1936.
Vicente Aleixandre
Themes and Style:
- Love: Erotic life leads to destruction.
- Nature: Man seen as imperfection, pain, and anguish.
Style: Uses eleven-syllable verse. Stages:
- First Stage: Surrealist works like Swords Like Lips, Destruction or Love, and Shadow of Paradise.
- Second Stage: Idealistic humanism and solidarity. Notable work: In a Vast Domain.
- Third Stage: Metaphysical poetry. Includes Poems of Consummation and Dialogues of Knowledge.