Analyzing Machado and Lorca: Modernism and Theater in Spanish Literature

Machado and Lorca: A Comparative Analysis

Antonio Machado: Lyricism and Modernist Expression

Machado: We are presented with a lyrical composition expressing the author's subjective world, encompassing feelings, sensations, and personal expressions. This expression is structured in verse, incorporating rhyme and rhythmic features. (Characterization as a literary genre, subgenre, is: verse or prose). The author is Antonio Machado, known for his work....

General Characteristics of Modernism in Machado's Work:

• Beauty as an aesthetic and vital principle: The poet aims to transform life into art.
• Creation of a literature of the senses.
• Revival of forms like the Alexandrian or eneasílabo verse.
• Embrace of the bizarre as beautiful.
• Exploration of melancholy and vital virtue, aligning inner distress with the external world through symbols.

Federico García Lorca: Drama, Society, and the Impossible Desire

Lorca: The text refers to The House of Bernarda Alba, Federico García Lorca's most representative and performed play, and one of the greatest works of the Generation of '27. Lorca subtitled his work as a "Drama of women in the villages of Spain," highlighting the position of women in the closed Spanish society of the time and the conflict between individual freedom and authoritarianism. This work, often considered a tragedy, is part of Lorca's cycle of dramas, along with Doña Rosita the Spinster. This cycle represents a more realistic theater, albeit with intense poetic realism, where the author emphasizes growing social concerns.

The House of Bernarda Alba was completed in June 1936, shortly before Lorca's death. It wasn't staged until 1945 in Buenos Aires. Valle-Inclán and García Lorca are leading figures of Spanish innovative theater before the Civil War and among the most universal authors of 20th-century Spanish theater. A central theme in Lorca's theater is the myth of impossible desire, portraying characters facing relentless reality, loneliness, frustration, or death. Lorca viewed theater as a form of total entertainment with a pedagogical mission.

Lorca's Theatrical Stages:

1. Initial Stage: Theatrical experiments seeking a dramatic voice.
2. Avant-Garde Stage: Works resulting from personal and artistic crises, including psychoanalysis and the cycle of impossible comedies or mysteries.
3. Cycle of Great Tragedies and Dramas: In the manner of Greek tragedy, presenting universal themes through specific and limited stories.

The House of Bernarda Alba belongs to the drama genre, similar to Doña Rosita the Spinster. It shares thematic antecedents with Ibsen's A Doll's House, addressing women's issues and rebellion against oppressive orders. The functions in the text are persuasive, aiming to change people's behavior, reflecting an allegory of a closed and unfree society, akin to a dictatorship.