The Literary Avant-Garde and Generation of ’27: A Revolution in Spanish Literature

Posted on Sep 14, 2024 in Latin

Literary Avant-Garde in the Early Twentieth Century

The first decades of the twentieth century (until the outbreak of World War I, approximately) were a period of profound renewal and upheaval in the various arts, including literature. This period saw the emergence of groundbreaking movements (the so-called “isms”), which challenged the conventions of traditional art and literature. Common characteristics of these diverse movements include:

Open opposition to previous literature and art: they aspired to create their works independent of past literary experiences.
A desire to overcome the barriers between various art forms (literature, music, visual art, etc.) and between different literary genres.
A supranational approach, not bound to a specific literary tradition.
Rejection of realism in literature: art should not merely reproduce reality but interpret it through the artist’s subjective lens.
A deliberate effort to provoke and challenge prevailing aesthetic (and often moral) norms of their time through their works and attitudes.

Surrealism

The avant-garde art movement that most significantly influenced art (painting, sculpture, film) and literature worldwide from the 1920s onward, especially in poetry, is Surrealism. Surrealism was pioneered by a group of French poets, including Louis Aragon, Paul Eluard, Benjamin Péret, and others, led by André Breton, who published the first Surrealist Manifesto in 1924.

Surrealism was not intended as a mere artistic renewal movement but as a complete revolution, a transformation of life, both individually and collectively. It aimed to unleash the creative power of humanity, free from the constraints of reason, which Surrealists believed was tainted by education, social prejudice, and other external influences.

Surrealists employed various techniques to express uncontrolled, spontaneous moods, and deep, subconscious impulses (fears, obsessions, desires, etc.) of the human being. In a Surrealist poem, objects, concepts, or feelings that reason typically keeps separate are mixed. There are free associations of words and unexpected, unusual metaphors, images, and even violent, shocking, and repulsive elements. This language does not aim to appeal to reason but to evoke unconscious reactions in the reader.

Among the various “techniques” employed by Surrealists, the following are noteworthy:

Automatic writing: Writing without conscious thought or reflection. The poet records everything that comes to mind, even if it lacks logic, resulting in often inconsistent associations of objects, “chaotic enumeration,” and the grouping of elements with no apparent relation.
Collage: Randomly grouped phrases taken from other literary works, newspapers, snippets of conversations, etc.
Dream imagery: Surrealists placed great importance on dreams, believing they revealed the subconscious world (Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams significantly influenced the origins of Surrealism). Dream images often expressed:
- Uncertainty about individual identity, mutilation, castration, loss of face, etc.
- Uncertainty about one’s position in space: flights, falls, escapes, sudden changes in environment, etc.
- Blurring the lines between different beings: animalization, objectification, rebellions of animals or objects, objects appearing soft or semi-human, the presence of children (dolls, mannequins, etc.).
- The presence of an underground, hidden world: caves, cellars, trapdoors, cabinets, sewers, etc.
Primitivism: Surrealists also valued creations associated with mental illness, children, and primitive cultures, as they reflected instinctive attitudes not yet subjected to Western rationalism.

Although some Spanish authors (especially in the Canary Islands) mimicked the procedures of French Surrealists, Surrealism’s most interesting impact was on various works by the Generation of ’27, written between 1928 and the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. Notable examples include Sobre los ángeles (1928) by Rafael Alberti, Poet in New York (1930) by Federico García Lorca, La destrucción o el amor (1933) by Vicente Aleixandre, and Los placeres prohibidos (1931) by Luis Cernuda. These authors did not adopt all the techniques of French Surrealism; they rarely practiced automatic writing or other mechanisms of unconscious creation. However, their work exhibited a liberation of poetic imagery, often dispensing with logic. Moreover, the poets of ’27 shared with French Surrealists a rebellious attitude against prevailing social norms and moral values (religious, sexual, etc.).

This effect was also related to the use of free verse, without fixed meter or rhyme, often quite long (although very irregular, very short verses also appear). This type of versification was considered the most appropriate for expressing inner impulses spontaneously.

The Generation of ’27 as a Literary Generation

In the mid-1920s, a group of writers emerged who, collectively, would become the most significant force in twentieth-century Spanish poetry: the Generation of ’27. While there’s debate about whether the poets of ’27 constitute a true literary generation, they are undoubtedly a poetic group within a broader intellectual generation that also included novelists, artists, filmmakers, historians, and others. Nevertheless, the term “Generation of ’27” has become established to designate a relatively small group of poets: Pedro Salinas (1892-1951), Jorge Guillén (1893-1984), Gerardo Diego (1896-1987), Dámaso Alonso (1898-1990), Vicente Aleixandre (1898-1984, Nobel Prize for Literature in 1977), Federico García Lorca (1898-1936), Emilio Prados (1899-1962), Luis Cernuda (1902-1963), Rafael Alberti (1902-1999), and Manuel Altolaguirre (1905-1959). Several factors contribute to this designation:

There wasn’t a single, defining event that united them. The most significant historical events they lived through (the Second Spanish Republic, the Spanish Civil War, exile) occurred after the group’s formation.
They didn’t have a single leader, although some, like García Lorca, possessed a particularly strong personality.
While significant, the age difference between the oldest, Pedro Salinas, born in 1891, and the youngest, Manuel Altolaguirre, born in 1905, wasn’t excessively large. Notably, three of these writers, Federico García Lorca, Dámaso Alonso, and Vicente Aleixandre, were born in the same year: 1898.
They were strongly opposed to the literature that preceded them. Conversely, they admired writers of the Generation of ’98 and Modernism, as well as the Noucentists, and considered Juan Ramón Jiménez their mentor.
Despite not fitting the mold of a traditional generation, they formed a cohesive group. These authors were friends and collaborated on various activities, including:
- Cultural activities at the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid (conferences, exhibitions, theater, etc.). García Lorca and Emilio Prados lived in this house (as did the painter Salvador Dalí and filmmaker Luis Buñuel, closely associated with Lorca in their youth), and others frequented it.
- The celebration in 1927 of the tercentenary of Luis de Góngora’s death, which gave the group its name.
- Contributions to cultural magazines such as Revista de Occidente, La Gaceta Literaria, Litoral (founded by Altolaguirre), Carmen (founded by Gerardo Diego), etc.
- Collaboration on poetic anthologies, such as those edited by Gerardo Diego in 1932 and 1934.

Literary Genres in the Generation of ’27

Although primarily renowned as poets, some members of the Generation of ’27 also excelled in other genres. Their significant contributions, beyond poetry, were in:

a) Essay

Several poets of ’27 (Salinas, Guillén, Alonso, Cernuda) were prominent academics, both in Spain and abroad, and made substantial contributions to literary studies. Pedro Salinas stands out in this area with his classic works on Spanish literature (e.g., Jorge Manrique: tradición y originalidad) and contemporary literature (e.g., essays in Literatura española del siglo XX). Dámaso Alonso, an expert on Spanish Golden Age literature, particularly the poetry of Góngora, also deserves mention.

Beyond the essay proper, it’s worth noting the memoirs, letters, literary portraits, etc., written by some of these poets. The most important work in this area is La arboleda perdida by Rafael Alberti, perhaps the most brilliant memoir in the history of Spanish literature.

b) Literary Translation

The Generation of ’27 produced valuable translations of both poetry and prose, introducing important foreign authors to Spain. Notable examples include Pedro Salinas, who translated part of Marcel Proust’s monumental novel sequence In Search of Lost Time from French; Jorge Guillén, who translated the long poem The Graveyard by the Sea by Paul Valéry; Dámaso Alonso, who produced the first Spanish version of James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Luis Cernuda, who translated several classic English and German Romantic poets; and Manuel Altolaguirre, who also translated English Romantic poets.

c) Theatre

While some writers of ’27 dedicated themselves to playwriting, their works often emphasized lyricism over strictly dramatic qualities. This is true of Salinas’s plays (mostly short, one-act pieces with romantic or satirical themes) and Alberti’s dramatic works, which can be divided into two thematic groups: political theater (notably Noche de guerra en el Museo del Prado, written in 1956) and poetic drama (including the allegorical tragedy El hombre deshabitado, 1930, and the farce Los ojos del día, 1944).

Federico García Lorca’s case is quite different. While retaining the lyrical intensity of his poetry, Lorca’s theater also possesses immense dramatic value. He is considered one of the best Spanish playwrights of all time, arguably surpassed only by Valle-Inclán in the twentieth century.

Lorca’s dramatic production is notable for its thematic unity. All his plays, despite their diverse situations and formal treatments, express the same tragic conflict: the frustration of the protagonists’ desires, condemned to a sterile life or driven to death.

Although Lorca began writing plays early on, his work as a playwright intensified in his later years, from 1930 onward, during which he composed his best works. These can be classified into three generic groups:

Farces: These works blend and contrast lyrical and grotesque elements, revealing the influence of Valle-Inclán’s absurdist theater. Examples include The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife (1930) and The Love of Don Perlimplín and Belisa in the Garden (1931).
Surrealist dramas: As in his poetry (particularly Poet in New York), Lorca also embraced Surrealist techniques in his theater to express his deepest inner conflicts, such as his homosexuality, a highly problematic subject in the Spain of his time. While possessing immense literary value, the formal innovations of his Surrealist dramas (like The Public, 1930, and When Five Years Pass, 1931) prevented them from being staged during his lifetime.
Rural tragedies: In these works (Blood Wedding, 1933; Yerma, 1934; Doña Rosita the Spinster, 1935; The House of Bernarda Alba, 1936), Lorca depicts, with stark realism and narrative simplicity but also great lyrical intensity, the frustrated love, longing for freedom, and ultimate downfall of several women, trapped by social conventions and oppressed by patriarchal authority.

Evolution of the Poets of the Generation of ’27

Broadly speaking, three main stages can be identified in the evolution of the Generation of ’27:

Stage 1: Up to 1927

In their early years, most poets of ’27 displayed an experimental attitude. Their poetry during this period reflects the kind of art described by José Ortega y Gasset in his essay The Dehumanization of Art. It is a formalist, anti-sentimental poetry. Ortega championed the works of these authors. This period shows the influence of avant-garde movements like Ultraism and Creationism. The key technical tool of this poetry is imagery, especially metaphor.

However, the fundamental model at this stage was the poetry of Juan Ramón Jiménez. His influence on the poets of ’27 was deeply personal and manifested in several aspects:

“Pure” poetry: Poetry that eschewed ideological, social, or biographical elements.
High aesthetic standards: Jiménez advocated for rigorous, meticulously crafted poetry, free from prosaic language.
Metrical influences: The poets of ’27 adopted two types of stanzas that Jiménez also employed:
- Short, folk-inspired quatrains.
- Irregular stanzas, usually brief, composed in free verse.

After this initial stage, Juan Ramón’s influence gradually waned.

Another facet of the poetic attitude of the Generation of ’27 was their love for traditional Spanish lyricism. Several poets, particularly Dámaso Alonso, Gerardo Diego, and above all, Lorca (in books like Canciones and Poema del cante jondo) and Alberti (Marinero en tierra, La amante, etc.), wrote poems that drew upon the popular tradition of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries (found in both anonymous cancioneros and romanceros, as well as the works of authors like Gil Vicente and Lope de Vega). Although this type of poetry inherently contains “human” values, the poets of ’27 used it as a means of formal experimentation, avoiding anecdotal or biographical content in their work.

The influence of the Baroque poet Luis de Góngora was also significant in shaping the conception of poetry as a succession of brilliant images, prevalent among the authors of ’27 during this stage. They saw in Góngora’s seventeenth-century work the realization of some of their own poetic goals: demanding meter and stylistic invention, the creation of a poetic world distinct from reality, and the use of original metaphors.

The homage to Góngora in 1927 was an act of self-affirmation for this emerging group of poets, while also representing a challenge to institutions like the Royal Spanish Academy and to literary critics who opposed Góngora’s style.

The admiration for Góngora and other classical authors, along with their shared love for metaphor, encouraged the cultivation of classical metrical forms (sonnets, décimas, silvas, tercetos, etc.).

Beyond this pervasive influence, there were also specific instances of direct imitation of Góngora’s complex style. This is evident in Gerardo Diego’s Fábula de Equis y Zeda, which combines elements of Góngora’s style with Creationism, and Alberti’s Soledad tercera (included in the book Cal y canto), which presents itself as a continuation of Góngora’s own Soledades.

Stage 2: From 1928 to the Spanish Civil War

By the late 1920s, a certain weariness with excessive formalism and lack of human content in poetry began to emerge. This coincided with the introduction of Surrealism in Spain. Unlike other art movements of the time, Surrealism did not advocate for cold, dehumanizing approaches but sought to give voice to all human emotions and concerns, even the most deeply hidden.

Many poets of ’27 were influenced by Surrealism, although Jorge Guillén remained faithful to a more intellectual, pure poetry in the vein of Juan Ramón Jiménez.

The great themes of poetry, especially love, resurfaced with great intensity during these years. This period saw the publication of Pedro Salinas’s love poetry collections: La voz a ti debida and Razón de amor. However, Salinas’s vision of love is far removed from Romantic ideals and aligns more closely with Renaissance Neoplatonism.

Political and social issues also entered poetry during this time. Several poets, notably Alberti (in books like El poeta en la calle), but also García Lorca, Cernuda, and Emilio Prados, wrote politically engaged, revolutionary poetry during the years of the Second Spanish Republic. At the outbreak of the Civil War, almost all the poets of ’27 sided with the Republican cause, a stance reflected in their poetry.