Metaphorical Evolution in Miguel Hernández’s Poetry
I and S.
His face, loaded with sensory and primarily visual elements, reflects the strong imprint of his early poetic readings. In Expert Moons, Miguel Hernández (MH) assimilates the metaphorical perfection of neogongorismo and technique. While Góngora sublimates everything he touches, turning it into gold, silver, and other Renaissance materials, the shepherd poet elevates elements of the rural world, like the bull, palm, and gout.
The Whistle Violated
MH uses metaphor to embody feelings, emotions, and internal dramas. His experiences of love, drawn from pastoral life, provide authenticity.
The Ray That Never Ceases
Melancholy and aching love transform into irresistible, volcanic passion. MH refines everyday images to a high degree of perfection. Metaphors spring from visual sensations, like a carnivorous knife, lemon, and mud. With the advent of surrealism, any object can be elevated to poetic imagery. The ambivalent nature of the beloved is represented through metaphors. The wind, books, and people lead to MH’s personal metaphorical style. The imagery hardens, embodied in corporeal objects. Visionary and unreal elements tinge the metaphors.
In War
War awakens the fiercest instincts, dehumanizing man into beast. This dehumanization process extends throughout MH’s work. The evolution of the metaphor reveals a universal and deeply human image. The statement becomes more epic and less intimate, shedding rhetorical elements and reflecting a world view full of bitterness and drama. Poems like ”The Yuntero,” ”Child Soldier,” ”Husband’s Song” (in Wind from the People), ”The Train of Wounded,” and the final song (Man Approaches) showcase visionary imagery.
In Wind from the People
Wind embodies the voice of the people. The cowardly are identified with the ox, the lion with rebellion. Man Approaches features symbols like fangs and claws. In Songbook and Ballads of Absences, the poetic image reaches its artistic peak. Direct, bloody language, stripped of ornamental elements, and surreal, visionary metaphors give the book its irresistible strength. Images are fundamentally substantive and stripped bare of epithets. The more profound the idea and feeling, the more material the metaphor becomes. Within this process of concentration, the imaginative material is reduced to a minimum: the verb becomes the sole bearer of the metaphorical meaning. The surreal element is emphasized, comparing vastly different levels. The image-object, a primary expressive medium in MH’s work, reaches its maximum intensity here.
Tradition and Vanguard
MH’s poetry is characterized by his reading of the classics, leading to a pastoral accent. Expert Moons (1933) shows the influence of Góngora. This links MH to the purist poetry of the 1920s, citing Paul Valéry, Góngora, and Guillén. The word “expert” suggests a mastery of craft. It can also mean “expert shepherd.” The eighth moon and oven are key images, along with the drop of water, reading, and waterwheel. Knowledge of 16th-century Spanish lyric is evident in the taste for the abstract and conceptual. This results in a complex lexicon and syntax. The influence of the avant-garde is also present, such as Ramón Gómez de la Serna. MH adapts Góngora’s metaphors to his own life, not merely imitating him. The book’s merit lies in adapting these elements to his immediate reality.
The Ray That Never Ceases (1936) absorbs the influence of Quevedo and Garcilaso, expressing pain through sonnet imagery. Traditional stanzas are based on visual similarities. At times, MH’s style approaches that of Neruda and Vicente Aleixandre.
In Wind from the People, the poet interprets collective sentiment, driving it like the wind. The dedication reads: “Poets of the wind, who are the people who write, born to blow through your pores and lead your eyes and feelings toward the most beautiful summits.” Neruda and Aleixandre’s influence is evident in the surreal, visionary imagery.
Man Approaches has a tone that departs from Wind from the People, embracing intimacy. However, both books share similar aesthetic and metric forms.
Songbook and Ballads of Absences bases its metaphors on the material world. Metaphors undergo purification and fixation. MH departs from literary influences to penetrate the roots of his personal experiences. Alongside long poems, there are short songs and ballads. Love, war, and death are explored with the profound air of popular ballads. Brief pieces about family and familiar items stand alongside birds, olives, figs, sea, and land.