Love, Life, and Death in the Poetry of Miguel Hernández
Love in the Poetry of Miguel Hernández
The theme of love in the poetry of Miguel Hernández is linked to eroticism experienced through nature. His early work, influenced by Góngora, Jorge Guillén, and Federico García Lorca, shows the emergence of this theme. Hernández’s images are powerful, following the path of the Generation of ’27. He was struck by García Lorca’s lecture in Murcia on Góngora’s poetry, the power of metaphor, and the inscrutability of this Baroque poet. The influence of the United States on intellectuals also resonated with Hernández (García Lorca’s return from New York in 1930 is a notable example). The avant-garde, mainly Surrealism, impacted Hernández’s poetry. In rural areas, it was uncommon to dedicate sensual poems to elements of nature: figs, pomegranates, lemons… vibrant Levantine nature and human sensuality are depicted through suggestive images to be deciphered.
The experience of love and, specifically, the external dependency on a needed being, produces a profound identity crisis in Hernández. He fell from divine love to human love with all its implications. This sentiment is explicitly developed in El rayo que no cesa (1936), published around the same time as works by Pedro Salinas and Jorge Guillén. The crisis is already evident in the preceding sonnets. The poem “My name is mud though Michael they call me” defines the poet as devoid of identity due to the absence of the beloved. Because of love, he has lost his name and his trade, reduced to the elemental and primitive state of being: mud. This brings us to the primordial matter intended to be trampled by the loved woman, becoming her imprint.
Life and Death in the Poetry of Miguel Hernández
There is a close relationship between Hernández’s poetry and his biography; all his life events shaped his lyrical creation. His works reveal a process that reflects reality, a dramatic discourse linked to death, ending in tragedy. Hernández lived for poetry, for his obsession with aesthetics.
He was quiet, withdrawn, unpredictable, yet also spontaneous, witty, and capable of encouraging his fellow prisoners. Juan Cano Conesa noted Hernández’s special lyrical message, relevant to people today. His artistic sensibility remains timeless, and his poetry breathes honesty and sincerity.
Born in Orihuela, Hernández lived in contact with nature, marveling at its mysteries: the moon and stars, rain, the properties of herbs, and animal fertilization rites. He studied grammar, arithmetic, geography, and religion, recognized for his talent. At fifteen, he herded goats near Orihuela, finding solace in books by Gabriel y Galán, Zorrilla, Miró, and Rubén Darío. He played, attended mass, and was initially very religious (like García Lorca), influenced by his friendship with the Sijé brothers, especially Ramón. His early poetic experiments were simple verses written in the shade of a tree, permeated with vitalism, natural optimism, dreams of poetic dedication, and a tribute to nature, life, and joy. His life was devoted to reading and writing, experiencing life, reading the classics, and feeling the harmony of nature. In this period, he identified death with the arrival of evening and expressed his affection by exalting the trivial. This punishment is now worth more; literary fiction and poetry are beautiful, feigned lies. His arguments are bucolic, literary, and Virgilian. Life is contemplative, with a purely literary sense. Death is also fictitious until the death of those close to him. He wrote a poem to a friend, a soccer player, who died (fictionally) from an injury during a match; it seems that after the match, reality caught up with him in jail.
Reading his poems alongside his biography reveals how Hernández’s experiences shaped his poetry. Melancholy and sadness are intertwined with the formal complexity displayed in Perito en lunas. From this point, his poetry becomes vivid, and his life dramatically poetic. His poetry obscures or illuminates, showing the lights and shadows of his reality. Despite experiencing pain early on, he enjoyed singing and telling jokes. Each poem contains a shred of life and death: his neck a sounding gale, failure a loving cry, a bellow, a harbinger of destruction, all bloody, a fatal sign.
During the Civil War, Hernández took sides, living with historical intensity. He wrote, recited, spoke, and cried for his ideals, his poetry becoming combative. Enthusiasm disappeared, and pain dominated his life. In prison, his poetry became a diary of despair, lack, loneliness, illness, and rebellion. He spoke to his wife and son in “Hijo de la luz“. In these last poems, we find tenderness and love again because there is no salvation or redemption without it. Love gives wings to the poet, even as he faces death. The idea of coexisting with death is confirmed, thus closing the circle (Commentary on the poem “I know you see and hear an angry sad“).