Miguel Hernandez: Life and Death in His Poetry

Life and Death in the Poetry of Miguel Hernandez

Death, a Part of Life

The poetry of Miguel Hernandez is a poetry of experience, developed at a time when there was talk of experience as an experience of life, love, and death. These are the three great themes of Hernandez's poetry, as seen in Song and Ballad of Absences and Winds from the Town. In his work, we see successive phases of individual growth, from the babbling and naivety of childhood to moments of contemplation and fascination with the natural environment, religion, and love. We also see the fight for ideals and the clash against adversity, with death ever-present.

Thus, poetry, life, and death are joined in two ways:

• One, in the existentialist sense: man is a being born for death.
• Another, in the sense of solidarity, of seed death: man is a being who watches over the species that remains in him.

Love and death appear united for life, perpetuating the human being as a species. Miguel Hernandez said that both life and death lavish life, not in the religious sense but as a form of permanence and constancy of the human species. He achieves this by using the symbols of death: corpses, skeletons, cemeteries, etc.

Elegies

Miguel Hernández wrote many elegies on the death of friends and family. This meant that death was an emotional reflection for Miguel Hernández rather than a lament for the loss of a loved one. He lived through many deaths nearby. Therefore, he refers to life and death as a destination for nature.

Symbols of Life and Death

Bones: The Symbol of Life and Love

Bones are a symbol of life and love, displayed in indications of bones throughout the four stages of his poetry. Their meaning evokes both life and death.

• First stage, creative: Eggs are attached to death.
• Loving period: The erotic impulse center.
• War period: Symbolizes the epic push and pull of Republican fighters.
• Period of prisons: Bones represent the absence of erotic attraction coupled with love.

Rain: The Myth of Death Blooms

Rain, which he says is the myth of death that blooms, is first used in relation to natural reality. He also uses metaphors with this term for other descriptions. In the existential-loving period, rain is love, and the effect of rain is the beloved, although it can also mean a kind of loving pity, a cause of death.

Throughout his poetry, life and death are in a dialectic debate between two forms, whose symbols change their meaning through the constant alternation between positive and negative. In his later poems, rain is a new reference to the author's life experience that relates to both personal death and collective death.