Spanish Avant-Garde Movements: Surrealism and Bécquer’s Rhymes

Posted on Mar 15, 2025 in Latin

The Avant-Garde Movements in Spain

The unfolding of artistic movements along the 20th century presented a world where traditional artistic norms were challenged. Homogenized schools, often called ‘isms,’ reflected a dehumanized art that sought to express sentiments and employed techniques that deformed reality. Key traits included breaking with past artistic standards, seeking new forms of expression, and embracing moral and political rebellion.

Surrealism: A Vanguard Movement

The concept of the avant-garde gained prominence with the rise of Surrealism. From late 1924 to 1939, figures like André Breton, Cernuda, Alberti, Lorca, and Aleixandre championed Surrealism. This movement aimed to express a supra-reality, free from control by reason, feelings, thought, logic, or cultural norms. It manifested itself through the subconscious and dreams.

Surrealism drew inspiration from the theories of Freud and Marx, emphasizing sexuality and seeking to retrieve ethical and human values from the subconscious world. It developed new writing techniques, such as automatic writing.

The Avant-Garde in Spain (1910-1925)

First Phase (1910-1918): Introduced by Ramón Gómez de la Serna, who translated manifestos, including Marinetti’s Futurist texts, and created ‘greguerías’ (short, witty sayings).

Second Phase (1918-1925): This phase saw the formation of various movements:

  • Ultraism: Founded by Guillermo de Torre, characterized by a mix of Futurism, Cubism, and Dadaism.
  • Creationism: Founded by Vicente Huidobro, with Gerardo Diego as a key figure. Creationism aimed to create a new reality rather than reflect it, emphasizing pure art and dehumanization. Poets sought to imitate God’s creative power, creating from nothing. Techniques included the absence of punctuation, single letters, neologisms, and surrealist metaphors.

Spanish Surrealism

Originating in France with Breton, Spanish Surrealism was propagated by figures like J.M. Hinojosa and J. Larrea. It explored dreams, the subconscious, instincts, love, death, and cruelty. Its character was heterodox, avoiding excessive automatic writing and synthesizing aesthetics and tradition. Authors like Alberti (Sobre los ángeles), Lorca (Poet in New York), Cernuda (Un río de amor), and Aleixandre (Pasión por la tierra) exemplified this movement.

Spanish Surrealism, with its rehumanization of European art, was arguably the most original. Its decline began around 1931, coinciding with the Second Republic.

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer: Rhymes

Bécquer’s rhymes consist of 79 short poems, primarily in assonance. They are structured into four groups, developing a love story:

  1. Introduction: The mystery of poetry and poetic genius.
  2. Development of the love story.
  3. Failure in love.
  4. Breakup.

A fundamental theme in the rhymes is frustration due to the impossible. Bécquer’s style is Late Romantic, characterized by direct and short metric poetry, assonance, repetition, a strong lyrical emotional burden, and the use of symbols. His poems influenced major figures in Spanish literature, including Darío, Machado, Juan Ramón Jiménez, and Cernuda.

Verbal Periphrasis

Verbal periphrasis is a construction that allows us to express values or modal paradigms that the conjugation of a verb cannot convey. It comprises an auxiliary verb followed by a non-personal verbal form, preceded or not by a link.

Types of Verbal Periphrasis:

  • Aspectual:
    • Inceptive: The action is about to start (e.g., ‘I’m going out’).
    • Inchoative: The action starts at a specific moment (e.g., ‘He is starting to write the book’).
    • Durative: The action is ongoing (e.g., ‘We are working on your course’).
  • According to the vision of action:
    • Retrospective: The action has been happening (e.g., ‘I’ve been reading for 3 hours’).
    • Forecasting: The action will happen (e.g., ‘I will read the book’).
    • Continuity: The action continues (e.g., ‘I keep reading the book’).
    • Completed: The action has stopped (e.g., ‘He stopped writing’).
    • Results: The action has produced results (e.g., ‘I have solved 2 problems’).
    • Recurring: The action happens repeatedly (e.g., ‘He rereads the letter’).
    • Habitual: The action happens regularly (e.g., ‘I usually get up at 7’).