The Poetry of Juan Ramón Jiménez and Antonio Machado
Juan Ramón Jiménez (Moguer 1881 – Puerto Rico 1958)
There are constant búsquedas in J.R.J.’s peculiar quest to explain his work’s evolution. This is a summary of the many paths explored in Spanish poetry from Modernism to other proper forms. The evolution of his work can be divided into the following three stages:
1st Stage: Sensitive Stage (1915 – early years)
His first books: He began to write at 17 years old. His sample poems are of a post-romantic, Becquerian tone – adolescent. However, the Modernist influence is also seen very early on, as in his first books Ninfeas and Almas de violeta. In 1903, he published his book Arias Tristes. In this work, we encounter nascent poetic concerns where the Becquerian accent is evident. The sentiments of solitude, melancholy, the passage of time, and death are characteristic of Neo-Romanticism, which penetrated the Modernist spirit. But the use of octaves, this sober language, situated him on the margins of the ornamental and more purely Modernist. In his other books written between 1903 and 1907, we encounter Jardines Lejanos, Pastorales, or Baladas de Primavera.
The Trappings of Modernism (1908-1915): J.R. composed poems like Elegías, La Soledad Sonora, Poemas Mágicos y Dolientes, Sonetos Espirituales. In these works, he adopts characteristics of Modernism: the utilization of color, brilliant adjectives, certain images, etc. There is also no lack of compositions in the style of the pre-Raphaelites that accentuated the sense of purification. As a poetic journey to this definitive stage corresponds to his memorable Platero y Yo.
2nd Stage:
This first clear step represents the path toward a new awareness, reaching a position of personalism. During his trip to New York for his wedding, the poet kept a diary. Later, a bare poetry resulted, in which brief, rhymeless poems and prose poems predominate. There are also Eternidades, Piedras y Cielo, Poesías, and Belleza. His words seek to penetrate the essence, an instrument that seeks reality in a new intelligence. This was the book that stood out for abolishing time and the desire for eternity.
3rd Stage: Sufficient or True
During his exile in America, he continued his poetic search. Two great books correspond to this stage: “On the Other Side of the poem” highlights space. Dios Deseado y Deseante highlights the craving for eternity.
Conclusion: His concern is the way of conceiving poetry: a solitary search for absolute beauty. Therefore, he served as a lighthouse for poets and components of the Generation of ’27.
Poetry of Antonio Machado
Antonio Machado transcended the traditional poetic by using symbolist procedures and created a strong emotional world possessed of great introspection.
Poetic and Themes
Machado defined poetry as a “dialogue of man with his time.” He thought of poetic intuition as lived and temporary, unlike logical thinking based on concepts.
Time stands as one of Machado’s major themes. The others, dream and love, have a common root: the concern for the temporal.
Time
Machado cared about lived time. The poet talks with his time: morning, afternoon, evening, water, or the fountain – symbols of temporality. His poetry swims in a feeling of anguish at the passage of time but also refers to temporality as fluidity and mobility.
The procedure by which Machado overlaps times had the mission to convey the impression of time’s irreparable steps and the resulting feeling of melancholy.
The Dream and Love
For Machado, dreaming is the only form of knowledge. In it, boredom is the dominant emotional note. In his verses, besides man, nature dreams as a projection of the poet.
In his work, there is little eroticism. In his poetry are incorporated bitter allusions to the lack of love, which can be glimpsed as the cause of his sadness, along with the idea that their opportunity has passed.
Solitudes. Galleries. Other Poems
Solitudes, published in 1903, had a second edition. Galleries that were too loud or external were added and deleted, replaced by an intimate and simple feeling. This book shows a perceived preference for certain environments: gloomy gardens and melancholy autumn sunsets.
Solitudes‘ topics are the passage of time, dreams, and lost youth. In general, poetic reactions are expressed about nature and the problem of death.
Solitudes is characteristic of the way of dialogue with the seasons, sunrise, night… that is personified.
Symbols of Machado in Solitudes
The Afternoon
The favorite space-time, a symbol of decline and decay. Machado’s time is sad, slow, melancholic.
Water and the Fountain
With these elements, Machado creates a complex symbol that expresses the antithesis of joy/pain:
- Water is a symbol of life in his more youthful poetry. But it also symbolizes the monotony, boredom of life, and the eternity of pain.
- The fountain requests memory, but the poet pursues evocations of joy and love and reveals a past source of sorrow.
The Orchard and the Garden
- The garden symbolizes hope, joy, and light in childhood memory.
- The garden is linked to the afternoon and the fountain. It is also very wet, dark, and gloomy. In the opposition between free nature and nature under control, Machado leaned towards freedom.
Campos de Castilla
Campos de Castilla has a more direct referentiality than symbolic. Now images correspond to a real landscape.
In Campos de Castilla, Machado deliberately turns his gaze outward: toward the landscape, people, and history.
The underlying theme of the earliest poems is the decline of Spain and the character of its inhabitants. Machado evokes the real landscape, but the descriptions become meditations.
The play also faces the enigma of life and is assaulted by religious concerns. It also includes formal and thematic developments:
- The “Proverbs and Songs,” a set of very short poems, most of which are judgmental, and “Parables,” which often deal with the problem of the “other.”
- “Seven poems about the death of Leo,” “Land of Alvargonzález” about the legendary human evil. In their fratricidal history, envy and greed for land come together.
Subsequent Production
Some poems from New songs remind Campos de Castilla, in others it appears the Andalusian countryside. In this collection of poems abound short compositions inspired by folk tradition, and pithy and aphoristic poems. Machado’s poetic work concludes with a score of texts that have been called poetry of war.