Antonio Machado and Juan Ramón Jiménez: Spanish Poets' Legacy

Antonio Machado: A Poet of Melancholy

Antonio Machado was born in Seville in 1875. Like his brother, he was educated in the liberal and progressive environment of the Free Institution of Education. His first book went unnoticed, and its influence is clear from Rubén Darío and the French symbolist poets. He appeared in 1903 with the title of Loneliness, which was published in 1907 but again under the title of Solitudes, Galleries, and Other Poems. His vocabulary is rich, full of adjectives and metaphors, as was characteristic of the modernists.

Recurring Themes in Machado's Work

Frequent topics in his poetry include the melancholy of autumn, trees, and gardens in the evening, symbolizing the sad feelings of the author. Machado's work is closely related to his own life. He lived in Soria, where, while a French teacher, he met the young Leonor, whom he married. However, after a trip to Paris, Leonor fell ill and died. This tragedy produced a deep depression that forced him to change his environment.

Campos de Castilla

His second and most significant book, Campos de Castilla, continues themes of loneliness, but the language is now easier and reflects the places where he lived. There are long and descriptive poems, legends in prose, and poems dedicated to his beloved Leonor. He invented his Cancionero Apócrifo, a fictional life and work of several philosophical poets.

Juan Ramón Jiménez: The Pursuit of Literary Perfection

Juan Ramón Jiménez (1881-1958) is one of the most prolific poets in Spanish literature. He had a difficult temperament, sickly and melancholic, which led him to confront others. He is also known for his obsession with literary perfection, as he corrected his poems repeatedly. For Juan Ramón, poetry was a genre that required a minority intelligence in the reader.

Stages of Jiménez's Work

After the Civil War, he went into exile in the U.S. and Puerto Rico with his wife, Zenobia. His work is usually divided into several stages:

• Time Sensitive (1896-1915): The initiation stage with modernist influences. Important books include Sad Arias and Almas de Violeta, which display the sentimental melancholy common to Darío and Machado. At the end of this period, he published his book Platero y yo. Although considered a children's book, it is really a book of prose poems with many references to cruelty, selfishness, and grief after death.
• Intellectual Stage (1915-1936): His first trip to America and contact with English poetry (Yeats, William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Shelley) deeply marked this stage. He named it Time Intellectual. A fundamental fact is the discovery of the sea as a transcendent reason, symbolizing life, loneliness, joy, and the eternal present.
• Philosophical Stage: This stage is more philosophical, almost mystical. It stresses the book God Desired and Desiring, which is the culmination of his earlier book, Animal Background. The poet goes so far as to identify with the God he sought—a God that exists within and outside of him, a God that is desired and desiring.

In 1956, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature, the same year that Zenobia passed away.