Generation of ’27: Key Authors and Their Poetic Styles
Generation of ’27: Key Features
The characteristics of the Generation of ’27 include similar ages among its members. For instance, Pedro Salinas was born in 1891, and Luis Cernuda in 1902. They possessed a strong literary culture and intellectual curiosity, and their wealthy family backgrounds allowed them to dedicate themselves to poetry. They maintained liberal political attitudes during the Spanish Civil War and supported the Republic. They primarily worked in Madrid at the Residencia de Estudiantes, which fostered friendship and cultural formation by offering numerous conferences and concerts. Figures like Juan Ramón Jiménez and Salvador Dalí participated in cultural events, such as the celebration of the tercentenary of Luis de Góngora‘s death. They also collaborated on the same literary magazines. All members shared a desire to modernize poetry, as reflected in the anthology compiled by Gerardo Diego. They recognized José Ortega y Gasset as a teacher of language and created a generational style. Thus, they all attached importance to style, metaphor, and aesthetics in their poetry. They shared an admiration for both classical and modern literature, and the balance between the new and the old is the most original feature of the group, giving it a compact tone.
Pedro Salinas: A Dialogue with the World
Pedro Salinas was an intellectual who wrote poems conceived as a dialogue between the poet and the world or with the beloved. This dialogue allows access to the essence of things, beyond external accidents. His style is anti-rhetorical, with familiar language, modern images, and simple rhyme or light assonance.
Three stages are distinguished in Salinas’s career:
- The first stage shows avant-garde influence with Presagios, Seguro azar, and Fábula y signo.
- The second stage is dominated by the theme of love, with La voz a ti debida, Razón de amor, and Largo lamento, which make him the great love poet of the group. Love appears as a prodigious force that orders and gives meaning to the world. It is a correspondence between the most essential and authentic aspects of the lovers, beyond the superficial or anecdotal in social life. The conceptual language is dense and therefore qualifies through paradoxes and conceptual wordplay.
- The third stage corresponds to the works written in exile. El contemplado is a dialogue with the sea of Puerto Rico. It shows his dislike for a dehumanized society and combines tragic and humorous tones.
Federico García Lorca: Poetry and Drama
Federico García Lorca was a poet and playwright. His constant themes are love, frustration, and tragic destiny. Death and marginalized beings abound. His style is personal and brilliant. His work is dramatic in the double sense of the word: it is both tragic and dramatic. The poet expresses himself through characters and reflects fatalism, which is present in the human struggle against adverse fate. Frustration and impossible desire also appear in his writing. His theater presents a truly stylized reality. It poses a single theme: the confrontation between the individual and their surroundings, and embodies the desire for freedom, dreams, fantasy, and love. The conflict between the social and the individual gives rise to drama. Noteworthy works include: Así que pasen cinco años, El público, Bodas de sangre, Yerma, and La casa de Bernarda Alba.
Two stages are distinguished in his career:
- The first stage is characterized by the fusion of popular and high culture, tradition and modernity, in books like Libro de poemas, Canciones, Poema del cante jondo, and Romancero gitano. In the latter, Lorca exalts the dignity of the marginalized Gypsy. He offers a tragic and mythical vision of Andalusia, combining tradition and renovation.
- The second stage includes surrealist influence, manifested in bold, irrational images, an attitude of rebellion, and the predominance of free verse and the versicle. Poeta en Nueva York reflects Lorca’s experience during the 1929-1930 academic year. The book combines evidence of the enslavement of man by machines with the full intimacy of the poet’s frustration.