Luis Cernuda and Rafael Alberti: Spanish Poets
Luis Cernuda
Luis Cernuda was born in Seville in 1902. A pupil of Pedro Salinas, he lived in Madrid and was a Reader at the University of Toulouse in 1928-29. During the Spanish Civil War, he actively supported the Republican cause. In 1938, he went into exile, and lived in Mexico from 1953, where he died in 1963. His personality was characterized by being solitary, sensitive, and vulnerable, feeling like a marginal creature, and by his mismatch with the world, his rebellion, and his concealed homosexuality.
Themes and Style of His Poetry
His poetry’s central, painful theme is the divorce between his desire for personal fulfillment and the limits imposed by the world around him. His themes are therefore dominated by loneliness, the longing for a habitable world, the longing for perfect beauty, and a triple rejection of love. He discarded overly marked rhythms, grew long verses, rejected rhyme, and fled from bright and rich language to stick to spoken language and a colloquial tone. He was influenced by poets like Eliot and Baudelaire.
Work
- 1st Production: His “Profile of the Air” (1924-27) with short lines and adolescent tone.
- Eclogue, Elegy, and Ode (1927-28): Assimilations of classical meters such as Garcilaso’s.
- His stay in France influenced his book “A River, a Love” (1929): Alexandrian unrhymed poems, surrealism mixed with intimate problems.
- “Forbidden Pleasures” (1931).
- “Invocations”: His pre-war poetry, including several long poems, e.g., “Young Sailor”.
- During the War and the First Years of His Exile: “The Clouds” (1937-40) inspired by the time, including a poem on Lorca’s death and two Spanish elegies.
- “He Hopes the Dawn” (1941-44).
- “Living Without Being Alive” (1944-49).
These titles tell of his incurable bitterness, seldom broken by moments of serenity. The exaltation of the motherland or the theme of loss and despair increases with uprooting. Stylistic purification started before the war and reached full maturity in a poetic language and beautiful prose. He published a book, “Ocnos” (1942), his evocation of distant Andalusia, and completed his prose with “Variations on a Mexican Theme” (1952) and several books of essays, “Poetry and Literature.”
Rafael Alberti
Born in Puerto de Santa María in 1902, where he studied at the Jesuit College. In 1917, he moved to Madrid, leaving high school and dedicating himself to painting. In 1925, he shared with Gerardo Diego the National Prize for Literature for his work “Sailor on Land.” A deep crisis in 1927 made him lose faith. Four years later, he joined the Communist Party. After some months in Argentina, he moved to Paris, where he lived until 1962. He then moved to Rome, and in 1977, he returned to Spain, where he received the Cervantes Prize in 1993. He died in his hometown in 1999.
Stages of His Poetry
First Stage
Alberti’s first books. In 1924, he wrote Sailor on Land. Its basic inspiration was nostalgia for his homeland of Cadiz, his sea. It is a lyrical, graceful work with light, whiteness, and lively Andalusian color. A pure tone is in “The Lover” of 1925, with popular rhythms and graceful and baroque stylistic traits.
Second Stage
Between 1926 and 1927, “Cal y Canto” represents a significant shift toward the hidden baroque.