Spanish Literature: Machado, Jimenez & Narrative Before 1939
Spanish Literature: Machado, Jimenez & Narrative Before 1939
Antonio Machado: Stages, Work, and Symbolism
Stage 1: Solitudes, Galleries, and Other Poems
This stage features intimate and introspective work. Its themes include time, memory, dreams, childhood, and lost youth.
Stage 2: Campos de Castilla
This stage analyzes the Castilian landscape and people, including proverbs and songs that are poems of a sententious and moral kind.
Stage 3: New Songs & Other Works
This stage includes philosophical and poetic themes. Guiomar Songs features texts inspired by his affair with his mistress and patriotic poems. In these poems, the poet shifts from self to us, and individualism to solidarity. Machado also wrote plays, such as Lola Goes to Ports and Juan de Mairena. His work bears witness to the events of his epoch and life.
Machado’s Symbols
Solitudes (1st Stage)
- Morning: Represents decline and decay
- River water: Represents life
- Stagnant water: Represents death
- Source: Represents sadness and sorrow
- The garden: Represents daydreaming
- Garden: Represents darkness, gloom, and sadness
Campos de Castilla (2nd Stage)
- The road: Represents life
- The river: Symbolizes life
- Sea: Symbolizes the unlimited and absolute
Juan Ramón Jiménez: Stages and Works
Nobel Prize winner for Literature in 1956, Jiménez’s poetry is a continuous poem, divided into three stages:
Stage 1: Sensitive Era (1898-1915)
This stage was marked by the influence of Bécquer, Symbolism, and Modernism. Predominant themes include melancholy, landscape descriptions, and memories. It is an emotional and sentimental poetry that showcases the poet’s sensitivity. His works include: Rhyming, Gardens Distant, Sound of Loneliness, Platero and I, and Summer.
Stage 2: Intellectual Era (1916-1936)
This stage expresses experience naturally, without excessive rhetoric. Jiménez broke with Modernism and embraced avant-garde poetry. His works include: Diary of a Newly Married Poet, Eternities, Stone and Sky, Beauty, and Total Station.
Stage 3: True Era (1937-1958)
Exiled in America, Jiménez sought beauty and perfection in his poems, identifying with God. His works include: Animal Background, The Third Anthology of Poetry, On the Other Side, and God Desired and Given.
Narrative Before 1939
Novel of the Generation of ’98
The Generation of ’98’s novel critiques Spain’s issues (despotism, ignorance, and hunger).
- Presents pessimism towards Spain’s economic situation.
- Shows a strong philosophical influence of existentialism.
- Expresses a profound patriotic feeling.
- Presents reality subjectively, from the writer’s perspective.
- Features stylistic renewal.
The novel is oriented from subjectivism and allows the introduction of other genres.
Miguel de Unamuno
Unamuno’s novels escape traditional genres. They lack descriptions and character autonomy, with minimal development. His novels testify to his agony, obsessions, and thoughts on religion, death, and life. His characters are symbols of his ideas. His most important works are: Mist, Aunt Tula, and Saint Manuel Bueno, Martyr.
Pío Baroja
Baroja’s works are grouped into trilogies (3 novels) and divided into stages:
- Stage 1: The Tree of Science, The Quest, and Zalacaín the Adventurer.
- Stage 2: Memoirs of a Man of Action.
- Stage 3: From the Last Turn of the Road.
His novels feature a main character, rich dialogues, a prominent narrator role, and concise, sometimes careless expression.
Ramón del Valle-Inclán
Valle-Inclán has two well-defined styles: Modernism and the grotesque.
- Modernist works: Memoirs of the Marquis of Bradomín, Carlist Wars.
- Grotesque works: Tirano Banderas and The Iberian Rooster.
Azorín
In Azorín’s work, the narrative is fragmented into moments frozen in time. His works include: The Will, Don Juan, and Doña Inés.
Federico García Lorca
Lorca’s works are grouped under three headings:
- Block 1: Early plays with modernist influence, such as The Butterfly’s Evil Spell, which explores the theme of love dissatisfaction. He also wrote Mariana Pineda and The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife, which reflect the conflict between authority and freedom.
- Block 2: Avant-garde theatre, featuring impossible and mysterious comedies. His work The Billy-Club Puppets explores the hidden instincts of man.
- Block 3: Stage of completion, with commercially successful works like Blood Wedding, Yerma, and The House of Bernarda Alba, all featuring female protagonists.
Blood Wedding and Yerma blend prose and verse, with rich symbolism and allegorical elements. They explore familiar themes like violence, love, and death, as well as new ones like infertility and female oppression. Doña Rosita the Spinster satirizes the lives of single women waiting for a husband.