Spanish Modernism and the Generation of 98: Key Features and Influences
Spanish Modernism and the Generation of 98
The Modernism movement rejected the rhetoric of Romanticism. Chronologically, there are two phases in Spanish Modernism: early Modernism and a more controversial, tamed later phase. From 1913, when Azorín used the concept Generation of 98 to refer to the new writers of the time, the distinction spread between authors who took refuge in aestheticism (modernist) and those showing a critical attitude towards reality (Unamuno, Baroja, and Azorín).
One feature that distinguishes these new writers is their rebellious attitude against bourgeois values. Other features of the modernist writers are: a lack of reason, individualism, pessimism, etc.
General Features
There are parallels between the Romantic revolt against society after the first industrial revolution and its expression in the field of ideas. Thus, there is a primitive element, a return to the Romantic taste for the past, such as the Middle Ages. Castilla is seen as the essence of Spain, and there is a search for old values in the process of disappearing. Decadence is present, with a kind of complacency as dull and rundown. This decadence causes a general feeling of vital boredom. The emergence of eroticism is the maximum expression of vitalism, where love can be gentle and delicately designed sex. There is a search for the exotic that leads to a kind of cosmopolitanism. Dissatisfaction with the world leads modernist writers to an existential angst expressed by spiritualism, the identification of God with nature (pantheism). Aesthetics, namely, the exaltation of beauty, is the ideal priority.
Precedents and Influences in the Beginning of the Century Literature
- Parnasianism: art and beauty are beyond good and evil and are the only comfort in life.
- Symbolism: a claim to go beyond the apparent. Poetry becomes an instrument of knowledge through which one can grasp suprarational reality.
- Baudelaire and authors like Rimbaud originated these movements in decadence, a taste for the artificial and complicated.
- Spanish poets such as Bécquer, Rosalía de Castro, Esprondeda, or Zorrilla.
The Poetry of the Beginning of the Century
The poets seek plastic effects with the use of colors. Sound effects are also very frequent. There is a presence of ornamental adjectives, suggestive images, varied symbols, and daring synesthesia. The lexicon is enriched with exotic vocabulary, cultism, and neologisms. The recreated environments are symbolic and reminiscent: distant gardens, fountains, ponds… There is a great variety of metrics; an incessant search for originality and musical rhythm. The use of Alexandrian poetry, free verse, the dodecasyllabic, and eneasílabo is important. They also use verses whose rate is based on accentual feet (dactyls, anapaests, and amphibrachs): “bountiful distinguished races, blood of fertile…” As for the sonnets, stanzas dominated the Silver, serventesios, and, given the popular lyrics, songs, ballads, quatrains, etc.
Antonio Machado
Machado’s poetic production can be summarized into 3 major works: Solitudes (subsequently amended and called Solitudes. Galleries. Other Poems), Campos de Castilla, and New Songs.
Solitudes. Galleries. Other Poems
Regarding Solitudes, a melancholy and mournful tone predominates. Typical themes are love, the passage of time, loneliness, lost childhood, and dreams. Machado seeks to capture in his poetry what he calls universal feeling. The use of symbols is very characteristic. In the second edition, Solitudes. Galleries. Other Poems, modernist poems are deleted, and new ones are added. Furthermore, it emphasizes the intimate line. It also introduced new symbols like the galleries of the soul (inner conscience).
Campos de Castilla
In Campos de Castilla, the poet abandons the modernist aesthetic. Machado’s poetry shifts towards issues and problems that transcend the sphere of intimacy and reflect the outside world. After the death of his wife, he accepted the move to Baeza. The change of venue and the pain of the loss are reflected in a long series of poems added to Campos de Castilla.