Spanish Literary Movements: Modernism, Generation of ’98, and ’27
Modernist Poetry
The beauty is the goal of Modernism; therefore, the lyric is the most widely used form. Metrics are renewed, as are style and themes.
Metrics and Style
There is an obsession with forms. The poet seeks the exact word, the perfect sound, refinement… wanting the poem to be perfect.
- Metric: Looking for musicality and rhythm. Ten-syllable and dodecasyllabic stanzas are used, recovering the Alexandrian. Rhyme is often acute.
- Style: High and refined. Many learned words and figures of speech (alliterations…) are used to produce sensations.
Topics
- Sensuality: Nature, women, perfumes, and music exalt hedonism and sensual pleasure.
- Exoticism: The poet escapes reality to distant scenery.
- Universalism: The poet flees provincialism and uses refined language.
- Inwardness and melancholy: The author projects his feelings and moods onto landscapes.
Juan Ramón Jiménez
Born in Moguer, he met Rubén Darío in Madrid, who influenced Juan Ramón’s first books. In 1919, he married Zenobia Camprubí in New York. After the Civil War, he went into exile overseas, where he devoted himself to poetry. He was a brilliant and tireless poet. In 1956, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. This Spanish writer is best known for assimilating Modernism; his work is very personal and beyond any classification. Popular books include Platero and I, Total Station, God Desired and Desiring. Juan Ramón evolved from modernism to a pure poetry in his pursuit of perfection, in which poetry is the theme of the play and he is the God who created beauty.
Generation of ’98
Topics
- Appreciation for past literature: Writers of the past are appreciated.
- The study of history to find the essence of the country and regain its lost values.
- Contemplation of the Castilian landscape, reflecting the mood and critical vision of Spain.
- Existentialism: Writers wonder about the meaning of life and death.
Style
They use simple and sober language, without significant rhetorical resources.
Lyrics in the Generation of ’98
Content predominates over form. Features include: simplicity (sober vocabulary, rural settings, related to authenticity and poverty in Spain), and decadence (topics related to the country’s crisis).
Antonio Machado
Born in Seville, he was a French professor in Soria, where he met his wife Leonor, who died a few years before their marriage, causing the poet’s sadness and melancholy. He fled to Collioure before the end of the war. He is one of the best lyric poets of this generation. Topics on which he wrote:
- Existential concerns: Death, God, the passage of time…
- Expression of feelings, dreams, memories, childhood…
- The Castilian landscape and its people: As a reflection of his concern about the situation in Spain.
Theatre
Ramón María del Valle-Inclán was the best writer. The trilogy Mardi Gras (protagonist Max Estrella) and Luces de Bohemia are his best works. He created the grotesque, a literary style that offers a distorted version of reality. His intention is to show human and social reality through a critical eye.
Generation of ’27
This is the most important literary group in Spain in the early 20th century. Its poets were born at the beginning of the century and began working around 1927. It has been called the Silver Age of Spanish literature. Members include Federico García Lorca, Rafael Alberti, Luis Cernuda, Vicente Aleixandre, Gerardo Diego, Jorge Guillén, Emilio Prados, Pedro Salinas, Dámaso Alonso, and Manuel Altolaguirre. These poets were friends, some very close. The Residencia de Estudiantes played an important role in their relationships. They all shared common traits:
- Attraction to the avant-garde
- Appreciation for literary tradition, classical and popular
This last feature is what differentiates them from the avant-garde movements. The G27 was inspired by tradition and renewed it. Other features of the poets include:
- Desire for originality, innovation, and poetic renewal
- Purity of art and pursuit of perfection
- Surrealist elements
- Image supremacy
Topics
- Death: Very present, sometimes accepted as a courageous attitude, while others expressed deep grief and frustration.
- Love: Two lines, one influenced by traditional poetry and the other by avant-garde innovations.
- The landscape: The poets sing the Spanish landscape, but focus on Andalusia.
- Social concerns: Many poems include political denunciation, the horrors of war, and a desire for freedom, as these poets lived through two world wars and a civil war, and many went into exile.
Style
This is a pure poetry that, over time, lost its obsession with forms and focused on human problems. It is a simple style characterized by:
- Use of popular metrics—romance, quatrain…
- Golden Age influence on the use of heroic verse, sonnet, free verse…
- Creation of a poetic language dominated by images
- The G27 poets wrote with innovative metrics
Rafael Alberti
Born in Cádiz, his life was linked to politics. His Marxist ideas led to 38 years of exile. He famously said, “I left with a closed fist and returned with an open hand.” He died in 1999 at age 97, the last living poet of the G27.
Pedro Salinas
Born in Madrid, his life took place in Seville, Paris, and the USA, where he was a professor. Luis Cernuda was one of his students. He wrote poetry and literary criticism. He had a romance with Katherine R. Whitmore, who inspired his love poems.
Vicente Aleixandre
Born in Seville into a bourgeois family, though he lived in Málaga. He studied in Madrid and published his first texts in the Revista Occidente, where he met Alberti, Lorca, Cernuda, and Altolaguirre. At the end of the Civil War, he became a teacher for young poets of the postwar period.
Federico García Lorca
Born in Granada (his rural origins influenced his work). He enjoyed art and studied law in Madrid (Residencia de Estudiantes, where he met the poets of the G27). In 1932, he founded a theater company with which his works were performed throughout Spain. In 1936, he was shot during the Civil War.