Antonio Machado and Juan Ramón Jiménez: Spanish Literary Giants

Antonio Machado (1875-1939)

Machado belonged to a liberal family. At eight years old, he traveled to Madrid to study at the Institución Libre de Enseñanza. In 1899, he traveled to France where he met Rubén Darío. In 1907, he became a French professor in Soria. He married Leonor in 1910 and they traveled to France. Leonor died in 1912, making Machado's poetry more pessimistic. He spoke of Castile as a reflection of Leonor. His family advised him to return to Spain, but he soon returned to Segovia and later to Madrid. During the Civil War, he was persecuted and decided to take a boat to France, where he died in 1939. Some authors describe him as a modernist poet, while others place him in the Generation of '98 due to shared themes and attitudes.

Juan de Mairena (1931) - Machado expresses his concept of poetry: "Poetry is the essential in time."

Themes:

• Time - The poet uses symbols like afternoon, morning, night, train, moving water, clock, etc.
• Love - Expressed mainly in the Apocryphal Songbook, with three stages:
  1. Love object arises without contact.
  2. Consciousness of love and the love object's appearance.
  3. Understanding the pain that fusion with the beloved is impossible.
• Religion - A true dialogue between man and God.
• Anguish towards nothing and search for reality - Many French symbols are used.

Metrics:

Machado always used simple forms, even during the time of the silva, a typical modernist stanza. He favored romance stanzas with verses of 7 and 11 syllables, rhyming in assonance in pairs. This mixture of verse can reflect the passage of time.

Works:

• Solitudes (1903) - Belongs to modernism, based on his life but with memories of the past, synonymous with dreams. Remembering and dreaming reflect Machado as both young and old, creating an atmosphere with symbolism. In 1907, he re-edited this book as Solitudes, Galleries, and Other Poems, showing a change towards more reflective poetry.
• Fields of Castile (1912) - The subject of Spain dominates, analyzed from a regenerationist perspective. He uses the Castilian landscape as a literary symbol from two aspects: expressing his own experiences and reflecting the essence of the Castilian people (strong pride like their hard landscape). Machado used a more reflective tone and belatedly entered the Generation of '98. He also wrote poems dedicated to Leonor, more profound and dramatic.
• New Songs (1924) - Contains all the poems he wrote from the Proverbs and Songs and short poems to pass the time in Castile.
• Apocryphal Songbook - Shows the personality of a man split into other facets of himself, projecting his "I."

Juan Ramón Jiménez

Juan Ramón Jiménez was born in Moguer, Huelva. He studied in Puerto de Santa María, coinciding with Alberti. He traveled to Paris to study law when he grew tired of painting in Madrid. After his father's death, he traveled back to Paris but returned to Madrid to attend the Institución Libre de Enseñanza, where he met his future wife. In 1916, he married in New York and came to dislike Madrid due to its social problems. He was appointed ambassador to Spain in New York, but due to the Civil War, he decided to travel to Puerto Rico, where he worked as a college professor until his death.