Miguel Hernandez: Love, Imagery, and Symbols

Love and Poetry in Miguel Hernandez

For poetry is always an act of love. Her first published poems included comparisons where the theme of love is seen through Platonic forms. Poetry, such as that in Lunas, impregnated with baroque style, suggests sexual connotations of some mythical figures, using fruit similes to refer to sex.

Symbolism related to seasons appears: Spring represents sexuality, impurity, and provocation to sin. Winter represents chastity.

We can make a clear difference between his early work and his later work, El Rayo que no Cesa. In El Rayo que no Cesa, love is often seen from a distance ('from the barrier'), a relentless force ('that does not stop'). The lightning bolt ('Ray') is used as a metaphor to express the heartache caused by erotic dissatisfaction.

The first condition for writing love poetry is to be in love, as he was with Josefina Manresa, Maruja Mallo, and María Cegarra. Miguel is personified in four different ways in his work:

• 1. As himself: Representing unrequited love or love not fully sexually satisfied.
• 2. As the bull: Valued as a symbol of noble passion, masculinity, and bravery.
• 3. As mud: Where the person loses their own entity, personified in the most humble and low.
• 4. As a docile and tame bull: Abiding by the wishes and whims of the beloved to gain attention.

Images and Symbols in Hernandez's Verse

His early poems are sketches of the landscape, emphasizing the vividness of their images. Imagery is treated like painting, full of sensory nuances.

The moon is seen as a mirror reflecting his self. It symbolizes indirect knowledge and metaphorically evokes beauty, the ideal, and magic.

The symbols used are those that surround the poet's daily life in his native Orihuela.

• Fire/Ice-Snow: Refer to the passion of the lover and the coldness of the beloved.
• Love-Torture: Symbols include knife, sword, thorn, daggers, hammer.
• Lightning Bolt (Ray): Represents the annihilating force of passionate love.
• Bull (Toro): Represents full life but with a tragic fate. Symbolizes virility, strength, violence, masculinity, manhood, and liberty. This symbol takes on two other connotations in Miguel's poetry: as a geographic profile and as the id itself.

In the poetry of war, imagery is rich, drawn from the plant and animal kingdoms. The garden symbolizes the poetic cosmos, the gardener the poet. Miguel's poetry oozes sensuality, presenting images of the human body: lips, mouth, eyes, hands, etc.

Symbols of light and water focus on positive thoughts and images: light, star, sun, sea. Fire is also used as a symbol of purification.

Erotic symbols like the belly and the female body are at the center of life, representing the fullness of love and a safe haven.

The house, where man seeks protection for women and child, also identifies him as a city.

Water appears frequently in poems as a source of life.