Spanish Poets of the Generation of ’27: Diego, Cernuda, Lorca
Gerardo Diego: Thematic and Formal Variety
1st Stage, on Poetry:
- Traditional lyrical influences: Bécquer, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Modernism.
2nd Stage, Absolute Poetry:
- Avant-Garde: elimination of anecdote, new poetic reality.
Luis Cernuda: Life and Poetic Evolution
Born in Seville, Luis Cernuda spent his childhood and youth there. He studied law and, in 1928, moved to Madrid, where he came into contact with the literary world and developed a political consciousness from a leftist position. After the Civil War, he went into exile and lived as a teacher in England. He then rallied his poetry in the USA.
Cernuda’s “Reality and Desire”: Themes and Style
Cernuda’s Reality and Desire expresses the conflict between his desire to live in freedom and his homosexual condition, which leads to pessimism.
Themes and Style:
- Opposition between reality and desire.
- Attitude contradicts the fact: He hates it and loves it.
Other Themes:
- Love: It is associated with the feeling of freedom and rebellion against norms.
- Loneliness: Only love can save one from loneliness.
- Time: To capture the permanent, the poet searches for the instant.
- Fusion with Nature: The pursuit of happiness, beauty, and perfection.
The influence of Bécquer is evident in most of his poems, which utilize long lines and ignore rhyme.
Stages of Cernuda’s Work
There are two stages in his work; the second developed during his exile.
1st Stage:
- An initial phase in which he seeks his own style, as in Idyll, Elegy, Ode.
- In his most surreal works, such as Forbidden Pleasures (1931).
- In the consolidation phase, he combines influences of German Romantics and Bécquer.
- Sorrow for the end of love leads to frustration in “Donde habite el olvido” (taken from a verse by Bécquer).
2nd Stage (Exile):
- Reality and Desire: Issues from previous books, such as desire and oblivion.
Federico García Lorca: Life and Work
Federico García Lorca was a key figure in the Generation of ’27 for his literary work and his place in cultural life.
Biography
- Born in Fuentevaqueros (Granada), he had contact with the rural world and nature.
- Residencia de Estudiantes: contacts with colleagues.
- Fellow in New York.
- Foundation of La Barraca.
- Executed in 1936.
Themes and Style
- Basic Theme: Tragic destiny, the inability to achieve fulfillment.
- Inspiration and conscious work.
- Union of the popular and the cultured.
- A tragic poetic world.
Themes:
- Love and sex as energy and fullness.
- Childhood as innocence.
- Social and moral taxation.
Style:
- The evocative role of words.
- Impressionistic trend.
- Musicianship.
- Folk poetry.
- Classical poetic forms.
Poetic Trajectory
Gypsy Ballads and Songs, Poem of the Deep Song:
- Traditionalist and avant-garde elements.
- Sonnets of Dark Love.
Gypsy Ballads:
- An idealized Gypsy world.
- Love and death are unreal.
- The Gypsy man represents the tragic destiny of freedom, joy, and primitivism.
- The Civil Guard represents repression.
- Eroticism, order, and tragedy.
- Indetermination, vagueness, and hermeticism.
- Traditional, cultured, and popular elements combined with avant-garde elements (metaphors and symbols).
Poet in New York:
- Major Issues: New York as a symbol of technological development and dehumanization; material wealth equals anxiety, unhappiness, loneliness, and suffering; love; a desire for solidarity with others.
- More lyricism.
- Surrealist grounds and procedures.
- Irrational metaphors.
- Free verse, but also traditional metrics.