Generation of ’27: Spanish Literary Renaissance
Generation of ’27
Generational Traits
They appreciated the past and rescued authors and styles, making a true synthesis of art and tradition.
Teachers
Juan Ramón Jiménez
Pure poetry.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
Dehumanization and autonomy of the artistic work, minority art, intranscendencia, play, irony and predominance of the metaphor.
Themes and Forms of the Generation of ’27
- Love, the universe, fate, death. Freedom as a principle that covers all individual experiences.
- The city. Coupled with the futuristic vision imbued with optimism. They also noted the downside of urban development.
- Love. It is presented as the fulfillment of the individual and supports all possible manifestations, with a sense of freedom: the clash between this attitude and the reality often led to pain.
- The Arts. They became the subject of poetic creation.
- Nature. Part of the poetic, which in some cases led to a pantheistic view.
Poets of the Generation of ’27 cultivated the image and the visionary image, which relates the objects to the emotions aroused. These combined traditional metric forms with free verse and the achievement of rhythm.
Pedro Salinas
Themes and Style
- Love, finding the central facts of existence, a form of knowledge and what gives meaning to life.
- The eagerness of all, understanding and knowledge, is seeking permanence and the integration between the self and the world.
The most common procedure is the contrast, which manifests itself in opposition. Also important is the dialogue. The pace is achieved through the use of parallelism, bimembraciones, and other repetition resources. Preference for short verse.
Stages
- First Stage: Influence of pure poetry, of creationism and Futurism.
- Second Stage: Love trilogy. They form a kind of love song.
- Third Stage: Developed in exile.
Jorge Guillén
His poetry is the result of a rigorous selection process which suppresses the accessory to communicate the essential idea or feeling.
Themes and Style
Joyous affirmation of being, existing in the reality of which it forms part. Love is a form of execution and perfection of life, and fulfillment is possible if humans are able to enjoy their surroundings. Time, which conditioned man. Chance creates insecurity, chaos, causes suffering. Using a very condensed and precise language, simple sentence structures, of a nominal style of monosyllables, and questions and exclamations that highlight the vital sensations.
Metrics varied: hendecasyllable free, romance, silva, the sestina, the sonnet…
“Song”
Song of Creation: the reality is presented in its different aspects: objective and subjective, material and spiritual, small everyday things, and the major concerns.
Reality and its relation to man. Positive and negative forces.
Gerardo Diego
Thematic Variety and Shape
At its creation coexist different styles and trends: from traditional forms to the most audacious avant-garde experimentation.
Themes and Style
Love, landscapes, experiences and memories, the world of bullfighting, religion, or music.
It combines cutting edge features with other literary traditions, free verse, the visual layout and use of the image, the recovery of the metric of sonnets, stanzas or romances.
Poetry Relative and Absolute Poetry
- Poetry on: Link to the traditional lyric and corresponds to the first stage of production.
- Poetry absolute: Poetry of creation, including its most avant-garde books.
“Picture” and “Manual of Foam”
- Image: It seeks to transpose to literature resources pictorial cubism. Connotative value of words. The musical, and graphic layout.
- Manual of foams: Cubism produces imitate the juxtaposition of phrases. Presence and distribution of elements.
Federico García Lorca & Rafael Alberti
Themes and Style
He conceived of poetry as a special form of communication that allowed him to pass on life experiences.
- The nostalgia for the past and what was lost.
- The distress caused by these losses.
- The concern for the social.
There are certain constants: the plastic images and musicality.
“Marinero en tierra”
The nostalgia for the Sea of Cadiz, the lost paradise of childhood and adolescence. In contrast it appears the city, representing the exile in a world of indifference. The pace is achieved through resources and traditional forms of poetry.
“About Angels”
The dark forces that inhabit it, good and bad angels, determine their fate, and sinks into the mystery, solitude and pain. The self moves through the world from nothing and goes into distress.
Constant dichotomy between positive and negative, harmony and disharmony.
Luis Cernuda
Themes and Style
The main theme is the constant opposition between reality and desire.
Attitude contradicts the reality: he hates it and yet he loves her.
Other constants:
- Love: It represents a way of being in the other. Love, which is inconceivable without eroticism, also pain, because it ends. While it lasts, is suffering because it involves uncertainty about the other.
- La soledad: Life is a constant fight against loneliness, only love can save him.
- The weather: Time does not allow things to last but produces his change, his transformation to the end.
- Nature: Remember or search, it means perfection.
- 1st stage: “The reality and desire”
- 2nd stage: exile.
Vicente Aleixandre
Themes and Style
Clamor, erotic and vital impulse that leads men to destruction.
Nature.
Surrealism is present in the work.
Using verses (verses without rhyme or fixed meters), interspersed with free verse or other more extensive.
Stages:
- 1st stage: Surrealism; transit existentialist poetry.
- 2nd stage: Humanism, idealistic and solidarity.
- 3rd stage: Poetry metaphysical inner reflection.