Juan Ramón Jiménez and Antonio Machado: Works and Style
Juan Ramón Jiménez: Works and Style
Juan Ramón Jiménez himself proposed two classifications of his work:
In Eternidades, production is divided into four stages:
- Pure poetry
- Modernist stage
- Stage of progressive simplification
- Naked poetry
Subsequently, he classified his work into three stages, although Juan Ramón’s production is characterized by a distinct unit, the result of a non-revisionist approach:
Sensitive Stage (until 1916)
This stage is further divided into two periods:
- First books: Works influenced by Bécquer and the French Symbolists. Titles include Arias tristes, Jardines lejanos, and others.
- Second stage: Modernist themes appear, but treated personally: beauty, love, birds, flowers. La Soledad sonora, Poemas mágicos y dolientes, Sonetos espirituales, and Estío, show features of greater refinement. He then wrote the prose work Platero y yo, a harmonious vision in which the author recounts his experiences in Moguer.
Intellectual Stage (1916-1936)
More conceptual and complex poetry than before, dedicated to the ‘immense minority’. The most significant titles are Diario de un poeta recién casado, Eternidades, and Piedra y cielo. The poet feels like renaming things to discover their original purity. He emphasizes the metaphor of the sea, which points to life, loneliness, and joy.
Sufficient Stage
Consisting of Animal de fondo and Dios deseado y deseante. The poet is obsessed with the theme of poetic life, eternity, and the desire for transcendence in his work. The writer-poet turns to poetry, establishing that to write is to be a god because one creates; he is also a god from what Juan Ramón has created.
Style
For Jiménez, poetry is beauty, knowledge, and a thirst for beauty and eternity. The search for beauty and expression makes him a refined poet. His dedication of his works ‘to the immense minority’ has become famous.
- Knowledge: Implies a desire to deepen things in their intimate essence. He uses the metaphor itself.
- Longing for eternity: The poem survives death; it is an eternity to write because it lives in memory.
Antonio Machado: Works and Style
The best of Antonio Machado’s lyrical work is in his first two books:
Soledades, Galerías y Otros Poemas (1907)
This work belongs to Symbolist Modernism. It addresses issues of time, melancholy, God, and, above all, death. It highlights symbols like the afternoon or the fountain, which encapsulate his concept of time.
Campos de Castilla (1912)
To the previous themes, he adds the Castilian landscape. There are subjective descriptions of landscapes and a critical attitude. Beautiful compositions dedicated to his wife, Leonor, are also appreciated, in which, through the landscape, he shows the sensitivity and mood of the poet. In later poems, he added social criticism, a fact that earned him the admiration of post-war poets. Machado also wrote plays and prose. Belonging to the theater is La Lola se va a los puertos, written with his brother Manuel. In prose, Juan de Mairena stands out, a set of reflections that the teacher gives to his students, including his comments on poetic language for expressive simplicity and living language.
Style
Machado’s style is characterized by the presence of key symbols such as the afternoon, the clock, and water. Formal simplicity and essentiality provide metrics and sobriety characteristic of Generation of ’98. Poems abound in Alexandrian silva and romance.
Themes
Time is perhaps Machado’s main concern. The poet creates different symbols to signify it: the fountain, the clock, water, the road. He is concerned about time flowing, passing, but is always equal to itself: children, fountains, streams, wells. Machado defined poetry as “the essential word in time.”