Image, Symbol, and Theme in the Poetry of Miguel Hernández
Image and Symbol in the Poetry of Miguel Hernández
Early Poems
Images of his surroundings are prominent in his early poems, such as:
- The lemon
- The fig
- The patio
The image of the shepherd: “Squat milking / a goat and a dream”
Erotic desire in the guise of pastoral composition (“Where to find the nymph who has been warning my sex?”)
Perito en lunas
In “Perito en lunas”, images and symbols complicate the understanding of the poems, becoming authentic “lyrical riddles,” as the poet Gerardo Diego noted. Góngora and the Baroque period are behind the symbols.
- The bull: sacrifice and death (and what is associated with bullfighting: horns, bullfighters, blood, holding…)
- The palm: landscape / stream at the top / spirit
- Veleta: dancer, a widow (single) / dancer Josephine Baker, black widow…
- Higuera: figs / oar demanding / perpendicular brunette / Snake: male
- Assault: rape
- Shell: hostile female body
- North: Whites
- South: blacks
The Lightning that Never Stops
In “The lightning that never stops,” the theme of love is promoted and filled with symbolic language and images:
- Ray: Blood, desire, sexual desire
- Roll a lemon: Fever, sexual desire, sexual arousal
- The shirt: male – Lemon: female breast
- The belly / oasis: female – the beloved, is not for the love thistle, bramble…
- Water: Life – Luna: death
Winds of the People
“Winds of the People” is a social poetry book, where images and metaphors are in the service of commitment:
- Wind: Voice of the People
- Ox: village, cowardly and resigned, submissive…
- León: rebellion, strength, nonconformity…
- Hands / sweat: work
The Man Lurking
The title “The man lurking” recalls the Latin maxim translated by man is a wolf to man. We are man and beast (and appear associated with words like “fangs”, “claws”, “tiger”, “wolves”, “jackal”, “beast”…). The blood now means sorrow and death symbolized by the train arrives…
Song and Ballad of Absence
“Song and Ballad of absence” is a collection of poems written in prison, expressing sadness and loneliness. The joy of the birth of her second child (“Your laughter frees me / gives me wings.”) and the certainty of imminent death (“Wife, about your husband / sound the steps of the Sea”) are also present.
Tradition and Avant-Garde in Miguel Hernández
Miguel Hernández read the classics of Spanish literature and was influenced by them without ever leaving his own voice. In his early poems, he imitates Bécquer, Gabriel y Galán, and even the poet Vicente Medina from Murcia.
In “Perito en lunas,” he demonstrates the assimilation of knowledge and learned poetry of Góngora. He had read the Generation of ’27 poets like García Lorca, Gerardo Diego, and the pure poetry of Jorge Guillén. “Perito en lunas” is written in octaves and was an amazing start and a youthful prodigy of self-improvement. This book is perceived as the authentic poet in search of self-expression…
In “El Rayo,” he beats all the classical tradition of courtly love put to the authenticity of personal feeling. Death still provides serenity and stoicism. But in the RS Elegy, we find a rebellion. Here, Miguel Hernández refers to the whole tradition of classical poets, from Manrique to Antonio Machado.
Miguel Hernández debuted as a literary critic with an enthusiastic singing “Residencia en la tierra.” He realizes that not everything he thought was poetry. In their enthusiasm, poems like Neruda’s “Oda between blood and wine,” “Neighbor of death,” and “My blood is a way” are released.
Surrealism arrives disguised as Neruda. Neruda’s work arouses more fascination than the manifestos of French surrealism.
It is curious that a study of “Residence on Earth” by Miguel Hernández does not once use the word surreal. In Miguel Hernández, certain elements of the environment are reflected, as they advanced to the thirties were charged in a more palpable and intense scents of French surrealists.
Both Neruda and Aleixandre oriented Miguel Hernández at the time of the crisis to arise aesthetics; it is clear that the echoes of Neruda are strongest. Miguel Hernández will always be essentially simple, naive, and deeply rooted in the earth. The spread of impure Nerudian elements was an episode, meaningful and intense, to the encounter with his own poetic pure and vigorous.
Life, Love, and Death in the Poetry of Miguel Hernández
Love
Love is one of the main themes of the poetry of Miguel Hernández. His work, written in a period of just 10 years, is always linked to his life experience.
In the poem Ballad Songbook and absences, “came with three wounds: that of love, that of death, that of life.” The metaphor of the “wound” becomes a symbolic vehicle of all existence.
In “Perito en lunas,” the theme of love appears with passionate sensuality, even brutal. In “The lightning that never stops,” the subject is almost exclusively love: burning and exalted love, and the tragic destiny of man. Violence and doom, black omens are revealed in the recurring presence of the bull. Virility and nobility. Sexual desire leads to “pointed and glaring off.” The snake, the male sexual organ, is used repeatedly as a symbol of sin, the dark instincts of man, showing the influence of Quevedo.
“Winds of the People” is a social book of poetry, where the “I” of the poet gives way to a lyrical subject group: the people. We can find some love poems within it.
“Song and Ballad of absence” consists of poems written in prison, expressing sadness and loneliness. It is a diary of desolation. Illness and the tremendous conditions in which they live are reflected in his verses. Despite the near certainty of death, he shows love and freedom, and the joy of the birth of their second child. The last poems are perhaps the most tender of his work.
Life and Death
Miguel Hernández’s poetry is a poetry of experience. Indeed, the poetic world of Miguel Hernández is defined as love and death, intertwined with life. In his work, all stages of growth of the individual happen, from the babble and the naivety of childhood crushes, to the awakening of consciousness and sex. Poetically, life and death are joined in two ways:
- In the Heideggerian existentialist sense.
- In the tangible expression of death-seed, as Walt Whitman sang.
Elegies
Symbols of Life and Death
Bones, a Symbol of Life and Love
Bones are mentioned in the four stages of evolution of his poetry. The meaning has evolved and is also providing depth.
Rain, the Myth of Death that Blooms
The first use of the word rain in the “oriolano” period of his poetry of nature, as is customary in Hernandez, designates a natural reality.