Symbols and Imagery Analysis in Miguel Hernández’s Poetry
3. Symbols and Imagery in Hernández’s Work
3.1. The Lightning Bolt
The lightning that never stops represents the force of the fury of the aggressive world around the poet, becoming a cosmic force. It is the atmospheric lightning or thunderbolt, an inexhaustible solar cosmic identity. Its meaning is appreciated when the poet refers to the lightning bolt in his sonnets, sometimes transmuting it into a knife that can eat, fly, hurt, and other tense, threatening metal forms. The poet struggles against the devastating power of the lightning bolt, as if beatable, when he writes, “but at last I can beat you.” Is it the lightning of unsatisfied passion? Other times, he is the lightning, “a ray I am subject to a flask” (Sonnet 20, v. 14). Other times, it’s a beloved with basic instinct “that relieves me his eternal beam” (Sonnet 12, v. 14). Other times it’s a leopard (v. 10, Sonnet 6).
“Lightning” is chosen by Miguel Hernández as a symbol of his tormented love and serves as the title of one of his best works: The Lightning That Never Stops, in which he describes love as a tragic fate in his life.
Death
Death is constantly repeated because, like the lightning that does not stop, besides love, so is death, death as the end of carnal and spiritual pain. We see in Sonnets 17 and 20 that they end with the same phrase: “Where I’m dying.” Other times, death appears to us with the terrifying image of “a buried alive in tears” (v. 12, Sonnet 20). Death and the desire for freedom are antagonistic elements, which is also reflected in the metaphor “slave prison of an almond.”
We cannot leave behind Constant Love Beyond Death, Quevedo’s masterpiece, which Miguel surely knew by heart or had read.
Death is present throughout the poem, until the last line of Sonnet 28, where the beloved is dying to “dress my dead heart.” And he tells his beloved to “as you can, love hungry beast, / grazing [on] my heart” (vv. 9-10) on the growing “tragic programs, / if you like the bitterness of his business’ the death of “his” heart.
3.3. The Pain
Much has been said on the topic of the three wounds: life, death, and love. Nevertheless, one might think that the wounds in Hernández’s work are four, and this fourth is certainly worthwhile. The poet’s grief is present at every moment of his life, the pain of not being all that he wanted to be: a playwright idolized. The beast Miguel’s wound bleeds in dazzling, inconsolable grief. The pain is a tradition in poetry, as seen in Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer: “He spent the cloud of pain […] with sorrow / I managed to stammer a few words […]”, and we find it if we dig.
Love
With love, the poet moves forward to Platonic rapture, as if seeking an Isabel Freyre or a Dulcinea, a dream in which to find the arms of his poetry and his whole life loving. Later, came the reality of life and fell in indifference. This anxiety, this grief, is present in each sonnet in a “Love, love, a habit dressed” Garcilaso’s verse.
1935 was a year full of events and experiences of love for Miguel, which pour in the creative passion of Ray … tormented love sonnets.
The poet is obsessed with white, representing the beauty of the beloved. The white of the almond is a color that remains an obsession for the poet, perhaps because it resembles the soft feminine skin and reminds us under different names: ivory, ice, snow, milk, pearl, jasmine, foam. The ‘Elegy’ to Ramón Sijé with “almond foam.”
The Bull
The poet praises sometimes with vigor and nobility of the bull, sometimes it is circumvented, or “just crying on the bank” (v. 13, Sonnet 26). The attributes of the bull are a reaffirmation of manhood that appears in the metaphor as a fruit in the groin. It is a symbol of bravery, but above all, of fixity, of someone not born to the humiliation and ridicule, which is submitted to the bullfights in the so-called National Day.
Other Imagery
We find constant metamorphosis: lightning, forge, anvil, gardeners, hurricane washed bull stalactite, the hawk, lilies… The blacksmith’s anvil or are instruments of Vulcan, and belong to the poetic world view of Miguel as a forger, the submission of the metal by the dictatorship of the fire.