Antonio Machado: Life, Works, and Enduring Legacy

Antonio Machado: Poet of the Generation of '98

Life of Antonio Machado

Antonio Machado's life can be divided into three significant stages:

• 1875-1907: Childhood and Youth in Seville and Madrid

  These were his formative years, spent at the Institución Libre de Enseñanza. After the deaths of his father (1893) and grandfather (1895), Antonio and his brother Manuel began working for The Cartoon, writing theater reviews and daily life observations. He made two trips to France (1899 and 1902), during the second of which he met Rubén Darío.

• 1907-1919: Life in Soria and Baeza

  During this period, Machado worked as a high school teacher. He married Leonor Izquierdo, who tragically died of tuberculosis in Soria in 1912. Life without Leonor became unsustainable for him, prompting a requested transfer to Baeza, where his social sensitivity became more acute.

• 1919-1939: Segovia, Madrid, and Exile

  Machado transferred to Segovia in 1919, where he was admitted to the Royal Spanish Academy and met Pilar Valderrama. In 1931, the Republic created new institutes, and he moved to Madrid. In 1936, the Spanish Civil War broke out, and he went to Rocafort (Valencia). In 1938, he moved to Barcelona until it was taken by Franco's forces in 1939. Antonio Machado, his brother José, and his mother crossed the border and settled in Collioure, France, where he died in 1939, just two days before his mother.

His brother José found a crumpled paper in his pocket on which he had written:

These days the sun blue and childhood.

Antonio Machado left a legacy of kindness, tolerance, and profound humanity.

Major Literary Works

Soledades (Solitudes)

First published in 1902 (dated 1903) and revised in 1907. The modernist features that stand out are those relating to meter and rhythm. Symbolism is one of Machado's most characteristic modernist features in this work.

Campos de Castilla (Fields of Castile)

This book was first published in 1912 and expanded with new poems in 1917. It presents three main themes:

• The theme of Spain: socio-historical reflection poems and bitter lamentation.
• Poems inspired by the illness and death of Leonor.
• A third important group of poems reveals his true religious spirit, notably in Proverbios y Cantares (Proverbs and Songs), which features depersonalized poetry with very short poems.

Nuevas Canciones (New Songs)

Machado was increasingly attracted to prose, drama, and short stories, and less to poetry. The most notable poems in this collection are the Nineteen Sonnets.

After Nuevas Canciones, the rest of his poems were not published under new titles but appeared interspersed with prose or as personal reflections for various reasons.