Modernist Spanish Poets: Jiménez, Machado, and Darío
Juan Ramón Jiménez (1881–1958)
Born in Moguer (Huelva), Juan Ramón Jiménez, the self-proclaimed Andaluz Universal, signed some of his works with this title. He studied at El Puerto de Santa Maria and began painting and writing poetry from a young age. He showed signs of poor health, which was aggravated by the death of his father. In 1900, he went to Madrid to champion Modernism, thus becoming considered one of its pioneers in Spain. Gradually, he became a mentor to other poets, who admired and followed him. In 1916, he married Zenobia Camprubí. At the beginning of the Civil War, they went into exile in various Latin American countries, and Jiménez taught at several universities. They settled in Puerto Rico in 1951. There, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1956. Sadly, his wife died that same year, plunging him into a deep depression. He died in 1958. Jiménez was a sensitive, impressionable, elitist, and lover of beauty and perfection, who devoted his life to poetry.
It is difficult to classify him within a particular literary movement. His works show Neo-Romantic, Modernist, and Avant-Garde Noucentista features. This development suggests a poet in constant experimentation with growing complexity in his poetry, always dedicated to a minority audience.
Chronologically, he belongs to the Generation of 14 or Novecentismo, but his first works drew inspiration from Bécquer (Ninfeas and Almas de Violeta, both from 1900) and Modernism: Rimas (1902), Arias Tristes (1903), Jardines Lejanos (1904), and Pastorales (1905). This is a youthful poetry, full of memories, recollections, landscapes, gardens, and sunsets.
His poetry evolves into a more Baroque and Modern style through the use of adjectives and Alexandrines in Elegías (1907–1908) and La Soledad Sonora (1909). It is a modern, intimate, and interior style. This first stage ends with Espiritual Sonnets (1914–1915).
On March 2, 1916, Jiménez married Zenobia. The newlyweds spent three months in the U.S. During this time, he wrote Diario de un Poeta Recién Casado, published in 1917. This book opens a second phase in his poetry. The poetry has no adornments; it is pure poetry, more intellectual and demanding, in which the author removes unnecessary frills, arguments, or sentimentality. The poems are short and dense, aimed at a minority audience. Works from this stage include Eternidades (1918), Piedra y Cielo (1919), Poesía (1923), and Belleza (1923).
The third and final stage encompasses the poetry he wrote in exile from 1936 onwards. It is a deepening into metaphysics, hermetic, where a “god” (lowercase) represents the ultimate beauty. In this stage, Animal de Fondo (1936–1942) and Dios Deseado y Deseante (1948–1949) stand out.
Juan Ramón Jiménez represents the pinnacle of Spanish poetry in the 20th century and the most influential poet of the so-called Generation of ’27.
Antonio Machado (1875–1939)
Born in Seville, his family moved to Madrid in 1883. He received a liberal education at the Free Institution of Education. In the late 19th century, he went to Paris, where he encountered the new literary trends of the moment: Symbolism and Modernism. From 1907, he was a professor of French in Soria, where he married Leonor Izquierdo, a sixteen-year-old girl who died five years after their wedding. In desperation, Machado moved to Baeza (1912–1919), Segovia, and Madrid. A supporter of the Republic, he lived successively in Valencia, Barcelona, and finally Collioure (France), a village near the Spanish border, where he died in 1939, as Franco’s Nationalist troops advanced eastward during the Civil War (1936–1939).
Machado was educated in Modernist aesthetics but used simple and touching language. His poetry exhibits a double influence: Romanticism (Bécquer and Rosalía de Castro) and Symbolism, which places him among the Modernist writers. However, he stands apart with his focus on poetry as a deep throb of the spirit, an authentic human emotion. Thus, Machado fits into Modernism but also into the Generation of ’98, especially after 1912 with the publication of Campos de Castilla. Therefore, he represents the union and impossible separation of the two movements.
The main themes of his poetry are memories and recollections of his own life, concern for Spain (Castile and the landscape of Soria as symbols of decadence), the passage of time, death, and the search for God.
Soledades, published in 1903 and later expanded in 1907 as Soledades, Galerías, y Otros Poemas, is primarily Modernist and, within the themes of this movement, Neo-Romantic and intimate. Symbolism permeates the work to represent Machado’s moods and obsessions.
His masterpiece, Campos de Castilla, appeared in 1912 and was later expanded in 1917. Besides the themes mentioned above, it explores Castile, the feeling associated with the landscape, the critique of “Spain of charanga and tambourine,” and the hope in youth as a driving force against backwardness and poverty. These issues have led to his inclusion among the Generation of ’98 authors, as their interests and concerns coincided. In addition, the book includes poems dedicated to the memory of Leonor, the “Proverbs and Songs” (short compositions with a pseudo-philosophical and popular theme), and the long ballad “La Tierra de Alvargonzález.” This work does not completely abandon Modernism, although it includes some of Machado’s best-known poems.
Nuevas Canciones (1924) collects poems written in Baeza and Segovia. This book uses popular short meters, traditional couplets, and expressive resources of flamenco singing, elements that writers like Rafael Alberti and Federico García Lorca would soon adopt. “Proverbs and Songs” reappear, but more refined, without descriptors.
The first edition of his Complete Poems was published in 1917 by the Students’ Residence. The second, from 1928, was published by Espasa-Calpe.
Machado’s later poetry is scarce and of lesser quality. Notable works include “Canciones a Guiomar” (published in the journal La Gaceta Literaria in September 1929) and some war poems.
Rubén Darío
Rubén Darío is characterized by his ability to poetize all kinds of topics: medieval, Renaissance, 18th-century, American, etc. He is the poet of love and eroticism in his eagerness to enjoy without limits.
The most prominent works of his production are:
- Azul… (1888): Marks the beginning of Modernism. It is a work with a variety of rhythms and meters. The poems are characterized by elegance and sensuality.
- Prosas Profanas (1896): Represents the fullness of Parnassian Modernism. It is striking for the musicality of the verse, which demonstrates the range of metric movement. The poetry is precious, exotic, sophisticated, and fantastical. The poet, who said, “I detest life and the time in which I happened to be born,” takes refuge in an ivory tower (a symbol of aristocratic and exterior insulation).
- Cantos de Vida y Esperanza (1905): There is a crisis of earlier aestheticism. Now we encounter a more intimate poetry, more concerned with man, more anxious. There are serious, deep, and sometimes very bitter themes. Darío reflects on art, pleasure, love, time, death (an obsessive concern), life, and religion.
Transcendence
Darío is the leading Modernist poet. His figure is central to the renewal of Spanish poetry in this century. Among the pre-Modernist Spanish poets are Ricardo Gil, Manuel Reina of Cordoba, and Salvador Rueda of Malaga.
Within Modernism, we highlight Eduardo Marquina, a poet and playwright, and Francisco Villaespesa of Almeria. Decadence reaches its peak in Spanish poetry with the figure of Manuel Machado of Seville, author of Alma (1902), Cante Hondo (1912), and Ars Moriendi (1921).