Modernist Spanish Poetry and Federico García Lorca

Modernist and Traditional Trends in Spanish Poetry

The most outstanding features of this poetry are the synthesis of modernism and tradition and the diversity of aesthetic trends, among which are:

• Modernist Interior Poetry (Ultraísmo and Creationism):
  1. The importance of the city and enthusiasm for modern life.
  2. Poetic experimentation: the cultivation of the image, plastic and visual values, and the suppression of rhyme and punctuation.
• Pure Poetry: Looking at the essential representation of the world, with an outstanding presence of nature and its changes, while rejecting sentiment and the anecdotal. It tends toward sobriety and nominalism, cultivating regular versification.
• Neopopularism: Poets like Federico García Lorca, Rafael Alberti, and Gerardo Diego created poetry influenced by traditional lyric poetry and the popular style of Lope de Vega. It usually consists of short texts marked by subjectivity and features such as a conversational tone, repetitions, abundant use of refrains, dramatized forms, and traditional metrics.
• Surrealism: This movement incorporates critiques of society and its conventions, alongside the desire for liberation and freedom of expression.
• Social Poetry: Poetry committed to the social and political situation of the moment.

Federico García Lorca: Themes and Style

Federico García Lorca's work—encompassing poetry, drama, and prose—feeds on key stylistic obsessions. The central issue is frustration.

Stylistic Elements and Symbols

• Symbols: These often refer to death, though the meaning depends on the context (e.g., age, which usually refers to death, water, and blood).
• Metaphor: This is the central rhetorical style. The distance between the real and the imaginary term is considerable.
• Neopopularism: Although he had no problems assimilating literary developments, his work uses many traditional elements. Music and traditional songs are constantly present in his poetry.

The Gypsy Ballads: A Modern Myth

In The Gypsy Ballads (Romancero Gitano), the poet sings of the brotherhood of a race that is marginalized and persecuted. Lorca raises the world of the Gypsies to the height of a modern myth. The meaning of this myth illustrates the theme of the tragic fate that beats throughout all his work. The characters are people outside a conventional and hostile world, marked by frustration and doomed to death. With this ballad, Lorca reached an unforgettable and unmistakable language; it is the repeated fusion of the popular and the cult.