Poetic Language and Themes in Miguel Hernández’s Poetry
Poetic Language: Symbols and Figures of Speech
In Miguel Hernández’s poetry, images and symbols demonstrate the creative process, where poetic elements repeat and incorporate new ones. This process, original and highly expressive, varies in intensity and meaning depending on the author’s creative and vital experience.
Stage 1: Nature and the Moon
Initially, Hernández’s poetry focuses on the wild, describing the real world. The moon becomes a central motif, often depicted as a large image in a series of metaphors reminiscent of Góngora’s style. These metaphors create a poetic world based on the appreciation of the material and the humble.
Stage 2: Love and Existential Objects
Objects become metaphors for love and existential anxieties. Lightning and space emerge as essential metaphors for love and existence, while the bull symbolizes the fatal aspect of love. The author’s style shifts from conservative to rebellious, with images of knives, daggers, swords, and lightning becoming more frequent. This period is reflected in his second poetry collection, The Ray That Has Not Stopped. The bull also takes on multiple interpretations: virility and masculinity, a fatal destiny, and suffering and death.
Stage 3: Wartime and Social Commitment
During the war, Hernández’s imagery and symbols reflect heroic values and social commitment. The wind becomes a symbol of the people’s strength, aligning with the ideals of the Republic.
Stage 4: Imprisonment and Loss
In the final stage, marked by imprisonment and the latter part of the war, the previously celebrated themes become objects of destruction. The absence of freedom, love, justice, and brotherly love are symbolized. Two sources nurture his imagery: the telluric, referring to the land and rural life, and the cosmic, connecting with modern poetics of the time, including poets like Jorge Guillén, Vicente Aleixandre, and Pablo Neruda.
Grammatical Cohesion
Hernández utilizes various techniques for grammatical cohesion, including:
- Anaphora: Avoiding repetition through lexical replacement, synonyms, pronominalization, or ellipsis.
- Deixis: Referencing personal space and time.
- Connectors: Linking different parts of the text.
Lexical Cohesion
Lexical cohesion is achieved through:
- Repetition
- Synonyms
- Hyponymy and hyperonymy
- Antonyms
- Thematic progression
- Conceptual fields
Life and Death in the Poetry of Miguel Hernández
Miguel Hernández’s poetic world revolves around the themes of love, death, and life. These themes are intertwined throughout his work, reflecting the different stages of an individual’s life. Life and death are presented in two ways: existentially and through the concept of solidarity. Death is seen as both a seed and a tragic fate. In his later poems, particularly in Songbook and Ballads of Absence, life and death are embraced. Women are often associated with life, symbolized by the womb. Love and death are portrayed as natural states, with human life perpetuated through procreation. Life is represented by blood and love, while death is seen as a new life sprouting from seeds. During his imprisonment, Hernández’s vision of death expands to encompass the continuation of the species. The cemetery replaces the womb as a symbol of life’s continuity. The sadness of losing loved ones leads him to write elegies. The recurring themes of life, love, and death are expressed through various images and metaphors. Bones symbolize both life and love, evoking the duality of existence. Rain represents the flowering of death, a natural reality that Hernández describes with metaphors like “rain tree fruit.” Ultimately, his poetry explores the constant dialectic between life and death.
Poetic Themes in Miguel Hernández’s Work
Nature
Born in a rural environment, nature plays a significant role in Hernández’s early poems. As a keen observer, he writes about the landscape and countryside with detail and passion. He considers himself a part of nature, describing its beauty and splendor with realistic and bucolic elements. In his early works, nature reflects the conservative religious atmosphere of Orihuela and symbolizes purity and divinity. Later, nature becomes a symbol of freedom. In his final poems, nature reappears as a “locus amoenus.”
Love
Love is a central theme in Hernández’s poetry. It is a passionate feeling that drives his work. A personal crisis in 1935 leads him to embrace secularism, and his love poetry becomes intertwined with pain. In some poems, love is identified with symbols like the bull, freedom, or the bullring. Later, with marriage and the news of his wife’s pregnancy, love transforms into joy. During the war, love turns into hate. Songbook and Ballads of Absence depict the painful reality of love in the context of separation and loss, focusing on his wife and children. The theme of love expands to encompass brotherly love and love for humanity as a whole.