Miguel Hernández: Social Commitment, Images, and Symbols

The Social and Political Commitment of Miguel Hernández

Miguel Hernández's solutions in his writings can be divided into stages:

• The first stage expresses revolutionary acts of peasants and communists.
• The second stage begins with a poetry imbued with social protest.

The Farmer of More Air curses farmers and brandishes communist symbols.

The Ray Doesn't Stop shows loving and non-conformist introspection with a wicked society.

Wind of the People is optimistic, enthusiastic, and combative, moving by fraternity and fruitful blood. It has an epic tone but never ignores the lyric, with a clear and transparent way to be understood.

Man is a Hunter is the pessimistic version of the general war. The verse is large and painful, contemplating the defeat on an intimate level because of history, breaking the intimate daily life as a sequel and primary effect of the war. But the poet clings to life and hope through love.

Images and Symbols in Miguel Hernández's Poetry

The images and symbols vary in intensity and significance depending on the stage of Miguel Hernández's creative and vital experience.

First Stage: Orihuela

In the first stage, the moon is real nature, a rainy moon with innocent metaphors, like crying.

He is adept in contemplation as a shepherd of moons, using the moon's ease to transform everything around him.

The moon is a behavioral paradigm of nature, seen as a primary symbol of the fertility cycle and fate.

Partnerships: moon-night-death cycle of fate; the sun is the opposite: day-life.

Also, the creative process is a model for the writer. The poet is "nothing" compared to the fullness and phases of the moon.

Second Stage: Romantic-Existential

In the second stage, objects become metaphors of love and penalty, as a threat.

The beam is an essential metaphor for loving existence. The beam, an element of nature, has two faces: the lightning-like force and admiration, lightning-storm as a threat and curse.

The Bull

The bull is a reference taken from their environment, tradition, and national holiday.

In the epic poetry, the bull opposes the ox. In the wartime period, the ox is a pejorative symbol, socially or politically dominated, humiliated, and unable to claim his own with guts.

The wartime period is when the poet encounters history, overlaps, and faces the disloyal.

The Wind, Soil, and Light

The wind is in the average period of its natural value as an atmospheric phenomenon.

The soil and light shade are also present.