20th Century Spanish Poetry

Luis Cernuda

Under the influence of Surrealism, Cernuda abandons metrical regularity. Visionary poetic images abound in his work. These images are also used to express love, which excludes homosexual choices.

Forbidden Pleasures

This work maintains dream images and incorporates prose poems. It is a voluntarily hermetic book. Cernuda attacks repressive society and defends rebellion against the rules, which allows access to forbidden pleasures.

Donde Habite El Olvido

In the poems of Donde Habite El Olvido, the pain intensifies. The duality between the angel and the devil represents the duality between reality and desire. However, desire is the source of creation because it represents the need to create, live, and love.

Jorge Guillén

Jorge Guillén brought together all his production in three works that expanded over time:

• Cántico (1928-1950)
• Clamor (1957-1963)
• Homenaje (1967)

Themes and Style

An important theme in Guillén's work is the affirmation of being. Love is an embodiment and perfection of life, and fulfillment is possible if humans are able to enjoy their surroundings. Time, which conditions man, compels him to live intensely in the moment and enjoy life. Other poems include themes such as fate and chaos, which cause suffering. The purity of Guillén's style is reflected in the artistic use of very condensed and precise language. He uses varied metrics.

Cántico

Cántico collects poems from 1919 to 1950, with 334 poems in total. The work is an expression of the author's enthusiasm for the world. "The world is well done." Life is beautiful by the mere fact of existence. "Being, nothing else. That is the absolute bliss." Cántico is a "yes" to life, a desire to live "more." It is, therefore, an anti-romantic vision of the world. Guillén sings at dawn and noon; he prefers spring. Love is not suffering but the peak of living.

Gerardo Diego

Gerardo Diego's poetry is characterized by its thematic and formal variety.

Themes and Style

The variety of his poetry is reflected in the themes. In some poems, he eliminates the anecdote; in others, he shows love, landscapes, experiences and memories, the world of bullfighting, religion, or music. Formally, he combines avant-garde features with others from the literary tradition. Among the former are free verse, visual layout, and the use of imagery. Among the latter are the recovery of traditional metrics in sonnets or ballads. Diego's work acquires a unitary character by overcoming these formal differences between the poetry of "creation" and the poetry of "expression." It is founded on a poetic adventure that builds freely. Thus, the experimental momentum is present even in traditional-style sonnets, where there is a constant desire for renewal and exploration.

In the "expression" style, Diego's books include Versos Humanos (1925) and Nocturnos de Chopin (1963), which reveal a symbolist influence and a tendency, present in much of his poetry, to translate the sensations caused by hearing music. He frequently uses the romance form, suggesting the influence of Juan Ramón Jiménez, considered one of the great masters of the younger poets. Other important works in this trend are Ángeles de Compostela (1940), Alondra de Verdad (1941), Canciones (1959), and Odas Morales (1966), all very successful in their formal aspects.

Diego's avant-garde work, which starts very early and continues throughout his life, includes Manual de Espumas (1924), Fábula de Equis y Zeda (1932), Poemas Adrede (1932), and Limbo (1951).

Image and Manual de Espumas

In these books, the anecdote is removed, and the image reaches total preeminence.

• Image: With this work, Diego enters the Creationist stage, which aims to transpose the resources of Cubist painting into literature. This increases the connotative value of words. The musical becomes an essential support, and he uses typographical arrangement.
• Manual de Espumas: In this collection of poetry, Diego attempts to imitate the juxtaposition of phrases produced by Cubism. Abrupt changes of tenses give the impression of fragmentation. Time brings oblivion and is presented as an opposition between past and present. Sadness arises because love fades.