Spanish Poetry: Lorca, Alberti, Cernuda, Aleixandre, Alonso, Hernandez

Posted on Mar 16, 2025 in Latin

Key Figures in 20th Century Spanish Poetry

The work is varied, encompassing traditional themes and forms. It employs sonnets, songs, and romances, and romantic compositions dominate.

Federico García Lorca (1898-1936)

Federico García Lorca was a great poet and playwright. His work presents constant themes (love, frustration, and tragic fate) and a personal style with evocative imagery. Lorca’s poetry is dramatic, theatrical, and tragic. It is theatrical because it is expressed through characters, and tragic because it reflects fatalism. Along with tragic fate, frustration and impossible desire appear (e.g., Poet in New York).

His theater is poetic and stylized. While it presents a number of arguments, it actually raises a single issue: the conflict between the individual and their environment (the individual’s desire for freedom and the environment as a symbol of repressive social power) (e.g., Blood Wedding, Yerma, and The House of Bernarda Alba).

In Lorca’s poetic path, two stages can be distinguished:

  • The first runs until 1928 and is characterized by merging popular and cultured tradition and modernity (Book of Poems, Songs, and Gypsy Ballads).
  • The second shows the surrealist influence, which is manifested in the attitude of rebellion and protest and the predominance of free verse (Poet in New York).

Rafael Alberti (1902-1999)

Rafael Alberti is characterized by the variety of themes and styles, the mastery of technique, and the union of traditional and avant-garde elements. Alberti cultivated poetry, prose, and theater. In poetry, four stages can be distinguished:

  • Neopopulist poetry (Marinero en tierra, The Mistress, and The Dawn of the Wallflower, which recreate popular opera).
  • Avant-garde poetry (Cal y Canto, a tribute to silent film artists).
  • Committed poetry (with The Shoes I Have, which began in 1930, a revolutionary poetry denouncing injustice and repression).
  • Poetry of exile (Plem, Ora Maritima, and Songs and Ballads of Paraná).

In his prose, the book The Lost Grove (1949-1987) stands out. As a playwright, he wrote political theater (Night of War in the Prado), avant-garde theater (Man Uninhabited), and poetic theater (The Scarecrow).

Luis Cernuda (1902-1963)

Luis Cernuda’s work can be divided into four stages:

  • Beginnings (two types of poetry: pure poetry of the air and classical poetry in eclogue, elegy, and ode).
  • After his stay in France, there is a surrealist influence. Cernuda raises the clash between his aspirations and his existence, which leads to a feeling of solitude in a world different due to nostalgia and longing for beauty and love. The style accentuates the purification of images, and expression inclines toward dense and emotive language.
  • During the Civil War, in 1937, he began writing The Clouds.
  • In exile, he wrote a poem that accentuates the theme of loneliness, which is mixed with the theme of exile.

Vicente Aleixandre (1898-1984)

For Vicente Aleixandre, poetry is the means to connect with the universe and human beings. In Aleixandre’s poetic trajectory, three stages can be distinguished:

  • An initial stage that is part of pure poetry.
  • A surreal stage that reveals a radical pessimism and reflects on the pain and anguish of human beings (Swords Like Lips and Birth Latter). Influenced by surrealism, it incorporates numerous images alluding to nature, as well as free verse.
  • A humanist stage (History of the Heart, 1945) that shows an evolution, focusing on human beings and the community.

Dámaso Alonso (1898-1990)

Dámaso Alonso was devoted to both poetry and literary criticism. In 1927, he published his work on the poetic language of Góngora. His poetry books include Poemillas Born in the City (1921) and The Wind and Verse (1925). The second stage culminates in the existential tone of Hijos de la Ira (1944), an essential work from the war period.

Miguel Hernández (1910-1942)

Miguel Hernández’s poetry is characterized by metaphorical richness and a warm, emotional, and passionate tone. He combines popular and cultivated elements, and his career reflects the evolution of the poetry of those years from dehumanization to social commitment.

  • The first stage reflects admiration for Góngora (Proficient in Moons).
  • The mature stage begins with Lightning in 1936, and his constant themes of love, life, and death predominate in sonnets.