Miguel Hernández: Exploring Themes of Love, Life, and Death
Love, Life, and Death in Miguel Hernández’s Poetry
The poetry of Miguel Hernández is pure vitalism, present in his life, blood, passion, war, and love in all its intensity, while death is a constant presence throughout life.
“Perito en lunas”
“Perito en lunas” is an homage to Góngora and an exercise in style, reflecting the intellectual trends of the Generation of ’27. Love, life, and death do not appear with great intensity in this work.
“El rayo que no cesa” (The Ray That Does Not Stop)
The theme of love in “El rayo que no cesa” is complex and marked by symbols. The pain of absence and love become intertwined, transforming not only the journey but also the man in his solitude, fueling passion and desire. There is a duality between the purity of the beloved and poetic ‘dirt,’ a Catholic inheritance, as seen in poems like “I threw a lemon” (where blood stains the shirt, revealing a porous and golden chest) and “My name is mud but call me Michael.” Love and life become death and threat, giving a tragic tone to the work, embodied in the figure of the bull. The loving impulse is constant, aware of the imminence of death.
“Vientos del pueblo” (Winds of the People)
“Vientos del pueblo” is a war book, written during the Spanish Civil War to encourage the soldiers, where life and death are ever-present. War is presented in an absolute, epic sense, and death, a daily occurrence, comes in many forms, coinciding with the final exaltation of life and the struggle for freedom. Sometimes, death is a heroic act to be undertaken with ease and pride (If I die, I die with my head held high). The highlight is the integration of man with nature, and life is understood as something beyond individual subjectivity. Man is part of the cosmos, where sweat, blood, labor, and land are one and the same, now the subject of his love for life. Political vitalism becomes a vital and basic question, especially in “Hands” and “Sweat.”
“El hombre acecha” (The Man Lurking)
In “El hombre acecha,” the previous vitalist pantheism, optimistic and heroic, is overtaken by the defeat in the war, resulting in a dark pantheism of death that permeates everything and even separates man from nature (Today love is death, and the man is stalking the man). The themes associated with life and death remain. The enemies of the people are distanced from the vitality that characterizes the worker, as seen in “The Old Men.” The wounded are filled with darkness and gloom, obscuring vitalism, but life continues and is understood and justified, even in all of nature. The poet exalts the nation with the union of man and earthy land, a union of the living and the dead beyond life and death, as seen in “Mother Spain.”
“Cancionero y romancero de ausencias” (Songbook and Ballad of Absences)
In “Cancionero y romancero de ausencias,” life and poetry are definitively intertwined. After the war, locked in prison, Hernández uses poetry as a means by which life is transformed into words, a channel expressing his innermost feelings. Death is closer than ever, especially with the illness of his first child in prison. In some cases, death is associated with the poet’s “I” and the brevity of life. In others, the potential death of his son evokes dramatic emotion, expressing the poet’s feelings (in my house needed a body. Two abound in our house). Love becomes a physical vision and body, without sin, the meaning of life and death. It focuses on the figures of the wife and child in the womb, so that he is a part within the cosmos of love. The love is not a bull suffering from loneliness and rejection, but the poet who sings the womb of his wife’s poems whip deeper and excited. The cosmic dimension loving vision is clearly shown in the poem “Child of light and shadow” where flesh-cosmos joins the figure of the wife ends in the symbol of the child. There is a declaration of love for the concrete and carnal (Less your body, everything is confusing) and is a single element whose meaning lies in the love child.