Miguel Hernández: Life, Poetry, and Commitment

Tradition and Vanguard

Miguel Hernández was not a man of learning; his life was a struggle against difficulties and shortcomings. In November 1931, hopeful, he traveled to Madrid with his teenage poems, which he brought back in 1932, disappointed by his failure to implement completely renovated literary ideas. His poetry writing became much more complex, with a *culterano* accent. This poetry is the fruit of his reading of the Baroque, Góngora, and the *gongorists* of the Generation of '27.

In 1934, he returned to Madrid to try again, and this time he accessed the literary world, thanks to influences from Sijé. It was a fertile time, open to everything and everyone; his assimilative capacity was absolute. His circle of friends expanded.

Miguel made three more trips to Madrid, and his contact with the reality of the moment made him aware and committed. Literature was undergoing substantial change. Miguel Hernández experienced in his work and life a process that would force him out of the purist aesthetic, abandoning religious lyric and turning to political commitment.

He met the poets of the Generation of '27, among whom he found support. The political events that shook the liabilities between 1936-1939 resulted in a vibrant, more direct poetry from Miguel, with an oral character like underground popular eight-syllable verses, for which he employed the ballad, which has its roots in traditional lyric in the song.

Miguel Hernández's work moves from *Gongorism*, with the fingerprints of Garcilaso, Quevedo, and Calderón, to the contagion of surreal poetry, commitment, and popular lyrical *cancionero*. But above all these traces, we can see a very personal style and heartfelt emotion that put all of his work in a context of unmistakable authenticity.

Life and Death

In Miguel Hernández's case, there is a close relationship between life and work. He developed a poetic sound, balanced, full of passion and feeling.

Life in Nature

Life is in nature. The poet in his youth stepped on the field and in the mountains; he was a tireless observer. All beings live, love, and die to make more life. This fertility and throbbing are also found in later poems where, as a husband and father, he speaks of motherhood, sometimes tinged with pain, other times with happiness, and many others with hope.

Love

In the life and work of Miguel Hernández, love rips through everything. We find the love of nature, his wife, his children, his friends, and his people. For him, his life is the focus of his work.

Death

Death also accompanies the poet throughout his life, but it exalts his desire for freedom. Not even prison could bend it. The death of his six-month-old son, and another death deeply felt by the poet, was that of Lorca.

His life starts and is rooted in the earth. He is a direct poet. A poet threatened with death, with love, with intense expressive language.

Imprisonment and Death

At the end of the Civil War, he returned to Orihuela. He initially thought of going to Huelva, then Portugal, and fleeing persecution. He was arrested and imprisoned in Madrid. Released for reasons not very clear, he returned to Orihuela, and that was his big mistake. He was denounced and arrested, and soon his confinement began. In July of 1940, he was convicted and given the death penalty.

In the poetry of Miguel Hernández, life and death go hand in hand. Throughout his poetry, full of vitality, there is always a constant premonition of death.