Antonio Machado: Life and Literary Works

Antonio Machado

Soledades, Galerías y Otros Poemas

Antonio Machado's lyrical production, the most important poet of the Generation of '98, includes Soledades, Galerías y Otros Poemas. Published in 1903 under the name Soledades, it was revised, rewritten, and reissued in 1907. In it, Machado aligns traditional Castilian poetry with Romantic poets and Modernism (both in its lexicon and by the artificial pose of sighing in the gardens, made fashionable by Verlaine), going beyond the Modernist aesthetic.

Themes

The work raises two somewhat contradictory imperatives: essentiality and temporality. We see a subjectivity that seeks to identify with readers, universalized, and meditate on the passage of time and the trail it leaves in your life. The focus is always on time, discussed in two aspects: chronological and psychological time (where the length of the seconds, minutes, etc., is determined by the circumstances). Subordinated to this issue are others such as loneliness, children who will not return, the young mother, and the dilapidated.

Language

Its meditative and transcendent character leads him to use discreet language content, to be his concept of poetry existential and spiritual. It has a nostalgic and melancholic tone, and in some poems, humorous, using word-symbols that are not always unequivocal. There is careful use of adjectives, colorful and musical properties, and syntactic clarity.

Metric

It uses polimetry and alternating consonant rhyme and assonance.

Significance and Influence of Antonio Machado's Literary Works

A connoisseur of classical and folk poetry, Machado revitalizes the poetic tradition with the sensitivity and depth of his poetry. His work was taken with disdain by the poets of the Generation of '27, who were more interested in avant-garde currents. However, it influenced some of their most emblematic works, as in the Gypsy Ballads of García Lorca, who follows the example of "The Land of Alvargonzález". He was taken as an example of civic and literary poets after the Civil War.

Campos de Castilla

Campos de Castilla marks a remarkable turnaround in his poetic career. It is a change of perspective, themes, and tone, treating the outside world (Castile, Spain), and criticism is present in his verse.

Topics

He is interested in the landscape and the peasantry. His experiences in Soria and Baeza, and his affinity with the spirit of the Generation of '98, direct their definitive work. The 1917 edition includes descriptive and reflective poems about the men and lands of Castile, expressing concern for the cultural and political crisis in Spain. "Campos de Soria" includes nine intimate tone poems about the land of Soria. "The Land of Alvargonzález" is a prose tale-legend and romance that has the theme of "Cainism" in the lands of Spain. The final poems include those inspired by Leonor, his dead wife, those of Baeza, "Proverbs and Songs," "Praises," and patriotic tone poems.

Language

It is simple and austere, with a style characterized by simplicity and naturalness of expression, unrelated to any rhetorical excess.

Metric

He especially used silva (almost always romance), romance, and popular song.

Nuevas Canciones

Nuevas Canciones collects the last poems written in Baeza and Segovia. It was received with respect, but with some hostility, as the tastes of the Generation of '27 were already present.

El Cancionero Apócrifo

El Cancionero Apócrifo, written during the last twelve years of his life, is important to understanding the evolution of his thinking. They are poems with some interspersed prose, of unequal length, which he attributes to fourteen fictitious poets. With irony and skepticism, he reflects on various themes. Among his prose production is the book Juan de Mairena, in which the character, Juan de Mairena, is a teacher who drives the project of a popular, non-elite school where students teach authentic wisdom.