Generation of ’98: A Literary Renaissance
Generation of ’98
Features of the Generation of ’98:
- Intensified by the junction with European irrationalist currents.
- Focus on subjective themes of Spain.
- Precursors include Ángel Ganivet, Blasco Ibáñez, and Jacinto Benavente.
- Rejection of the rhetoric and prose of the previous generation.
- Mariano José de Larra is considered a precursor, along with admiration for Fray Luis de León and Miguel de Cervantes.
This manifests in a sense of sobriety, anti-rhetoric, and stylistic care. A common feature is the importance given to traditional and regional words.
Miguel de Unamuno
Born in Bilbao, Unamuno lived and taught in Salamanca. Exiled for four years to Fuerteventura and France for opposing Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship. He served as a deputy during the Republic, but his confrontation with Franco led to his confinement, where he died in 1936. A man of contradictions, his existential thought is deeply personal and non-systematic, spread across essays, novels, poems, and plays.
The Tragic Sense of Life formulates his ideas rooted in the individual’s struggle with mortality and the search for meaning. Immortality is the central question, driving his hunger for God. Similar themes appear in his poetry (Poems, Posthumous Songbook, The Christ of Velázquez) and plays (Phaedra, The Shadow of the Other, Sleep).
Starting with the historical novel Peace in War, he transitioned from “oviparous” to “viviparous” writing with Love and Pedagogy. Its metaphysical nature led critics to label his subsequent works “nivolas,” featuring agonistic characters like in Abel Sanchez and Aunt Tula, which exalts motherhood. San Manuel Bueno, Martyr is fundamental to understanding Unamuno.
His fluent style features descriptive parsimony, with importance given to monologues and “autodiálogos.” Contradictions are reflected in his use of paradox, antithesis, and giving new meanings to words.
Azorín (José Martínez Ruiz)
Born in Alicante, Azorín studied law but dedicated his life to journalism. His political and religious ideas evolved from anarchism to conservatism. Concerned with time and life’s transience, he lacked the patriotism of Unamuno and the anguish of Machado. A master essayist, his literary criticism and books explore the connection between land and people in Spain.
His early autobiographical novels (The Will, Antonio Azorín, Confessions of a Little Philosopher) gave him his pseudonym. Later works focused on historical or literary figures (Don Juan, Doña Inés). His concise style emphasizes clarity, using a miniaturist technique, a vast vocabulary, and forgotten words.
Pío Baroja
Born in San Sebastián, Baroja studied medicine but preferred writing. After working in journalism, he began publishing books and traveled extensively. The Spanish Civil War forced him to France, returning to Madrid afterward. His misogyny and independence led him to reject marriage. A pessimist and skeptic, he believed the world was meaningless and distrusted political ideologies.
Baroja viewed the novel as a flexible genre, prioritizing episodes and anecdotes over structure. He valued invention, imagination, and observation. His quick, nervous, and vivid prose, with a bitter tone, favored short sentences and paragraphs. He paid close attention to descriptions and dialogue authenticity.
His prolific output includes over sixty novels, many grouped into trilogies (Basque Country, The Fantastic Life, The Struggle for Life, Race, The Cities) and the extensive Memoirs of a Man of Action series. He also wrote short stories, novellas, essays, travel books, biographies, and dialogues. His poetry (Songs of the Suburb) is less significant.
Antonio Machado
Born in Seville, Machado studied in Madrid. He met Pilar Valderrama (Guiomar in his poems). The Civil War forced him to Valencia, Barcelona, and finally France, where he died in 1939. His early work, Solitudes (later Solitudes, Galleries and Other Poems), reflects intimate modernism influenced by Bécquer, focusing on time, death, and God.
Campos de Castilla reveals patriotic concerns and a love for nature, aligning him with the Generation of ’98. Later works include Proverbs and Songs, the lyrical and philosophical New Songs, and the apocryphal songbooks of fictional poets Abel Martín and Juan de Mairena (including Songs to Guiomar). His prose includes The Complementary and Juan de Mairena, a collection of articles, paragraphs, and dialogues.
Juan Ramón Jiménez
Born in Huelva, Jiménez studied with Jesuits before dedicating himself to poetry. A mental health crisis followed his father’s death. He convalesced in Madrid and Moguer (where he wrote Platero and I). He married Zenobia Camprubí in New York and lived in Madrid until the war, after which they lived in various American countries. He received the Nobel Prize shortly before his death.
Conception of Poetry: Jiménez’s poetry is driven by a thirst for beauty, knowledge, and eternity. He saw poetry as a path to understanding and expressing a longing for eternity, identifying God with nature, absolute beauty, or creative consciousness.
Stages of his Poetry:
- Pure Poetry: Characterized by spontaneity, simplicity, traditional forms, and themes of nature, time, sentimentality, and death. Influenced by Bécquer, Rubén Darío, and Villaespesa. Works include Violet Soul, Water Lilies, Sad Arias, Distant Gardens, Pastoral.
- Modernist: Focus on form, musicality, varied verse, and complex rhymes. Themes of love, sadness, flowers, birds, and gardens. Works include Elegies, The Sound Isolation, Magic and Suffering Poetry, Platero and I.
- Personal: Stripped-down, intellectual poetry, less anecdotal, with irregular verses, suppressed rhymes, precise language, brevity, and symbolism. Works include Diary of a Newly Married Poet, Eternity, Stone and Sky, Poetry, Beauty, Total Station.
- Concern for God: Hermetic and mystical, identifying with God and inner beauty. Works include Animal de Fondo, God Desired and Desiring.