Modernism and the Generation of ’98 in Spain

Posted on Feb 21, 2025 in Latin

The Generation of ’98 and Modernism in Spain

The Disaster of ’98

The Disaster of ’98 refers to the serious confrontations between politicians (conservatives, liberals, Carlists, republicans, socialists, and anarchists), and the great social and economic backwardness and crisis in Spain.

Regenerationism

Regenerationism, led by figures like Joaquin Costa and Angel Ganivet, proposed agrarian reforms, hydraulic works, and general and vocational education for the population.

The Generation of ’98

The Generation of ’98 was a group of writers who believed that these measures would lead to profound changes in Spanish society. They sought renovation in the aesthetics of literature. Key members included Miguel de Unamuno, Azorín, Pío Baroja, Antonio Machado, Ramón María del Valle-Inclán, and others.

Topics of the Generation of ’98:

  • Spain: A new Spain, free from its scourges; Spanish lands, forgotten values.
  • Intrahistory: The history of all the people who don’t speak, baptized as “intrahistory” by Unamuno.
  • Europeanization: A longing for Europeanization.
  • Existential Issues and Religion: Characterized by their heterodox youth.
  • Politics.

Literary Characteristics of the Generation of ’98:

  • Anti-rhetoric: They preferred simplicity and personal expression.
  • Traditional and Typical Words.
  • Subjectivism: Lyricism in their descriptions.
  • Genres: Essay, novel, and drama.

Modernism

Modernism emerged in Hispanic America with José Martí (Cuban poet) and Rubén Darío (Nicaraguan author).

French Literary Movements:

  • Parnassianism (Théophile Gautier): Formal perfection, Greek myths, exotic oriental atmospheres, and remote eras and civilizations.
  • Symbolism: The continued use of symbols (Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Rimbaud).

Hispanic Modernism:

Combined Parnassianism (formal perfection, exotic themes, values, and senses) and Symbolism (symbols and varied musicality).

Modernist Literature:

  • Theme: Sensory beauty (classical world, medieval, Renaissance universe, exotic and distant lands, 18th-century France, cosmopolitan and refined worlds, lush interior palaces).
  • Style: Beauty and sensuality through alliteration, onomatopoeia, anaphora, parallelism, suggestive words, exotic and cultured language, ornamental adjectives, metaphors, symbols, synesthesia; use of endecasyllable, Alexandrian, dodecasyllabic, and octosyllabic verses; identical distribution of accented syllables in groups; recovery of disused stanzas and modification or construction of new ones.

Modernist Writers:

Key figures include Rubén Darío, José Martí, Amado Nervo, Leopoldo Lugones, and José Santos Chocano. In Spain: Manuel Machado, Antonio Machado, Juan Ramón Jiménez, and Ramón María del Valle-Inclán.

Rubén Darío

Rubén Darío (Félix Rubén García Sarmiento), born in 1867, was a journalist and diplomat who died in Nicaragua in 1916. He unified and synthesized various poetic strands. His themes included the exotic, legendary, mythological, and cosmopolitan, and he was an innovator of intimate Hispanic poetry. He used evocative vocabulary, free verse, and created many variations of sonnets and romances.

  • Azul (1888): A great book composed of prose poems.
  • Prosas Profanas (1896): A book of poems dealing with beauty and historical issues.
  • Cantos de vida y esperanza (1905): Explores anxiety and restlessness regarding societal problems, religion, the passage of time, love, and a critical attitude towards US politics.
  • Other works: El canto errante, Poema del otoño y otros poemas.

Antonio Machado

  • Style: Modernism, French Symbolism, sober, dense, anti-rhetorical.
  • Work:
    • First Poetic Cycle: Soledades (1907): Intimate modernism with a romantic vein; themes of time, death, God, childhood memories, landscape evocations, and love. Uses dodecasyllables, Alexandrian verses, and *silva*.
    • Campos de Castilla (1912): Poems about Castile. Themes include intimate poems, landscapes, the people of Castile (adjectives, loneliness, transience, death), patriotic concern (past, present, and future of Spain, a purely historical and progressive vision), “Tierra de Alvargonzález” (greed, the result of hardship and misery), songs and proverbs, “Praise”.
    • Nuevas Canciones (1924): Unequal value; proverbs and songs; the lyric gives way to the conceptual.
    • Last Poems (after 1924): Scarce poetic production; he wants to be a poet and a civic-military republican of Spain. “Poesías de la Guerra” (War Poems).