Valle-Inclán and Antonio Machado: Modern Spanish Literature

Valle-Inclán

Valle-Inclán's early works, published at the beginning of the century, such as the Sonatas, are modernist in genre and narrative style. The Sonatas feature the Marquis de Bradomín, whom Valle-Inclán defined as "an ugly Don Juan, Catholic and sentimental," representing the young, decadent, aristocratic modernist. His early plays also fall into this category.

In the 1920s, his playwriting culminates with the creation of a type of play called grotesques, which ridicules both Spanish society and human nature itself. The technique of the grotesque involves misrepresenting the truth to the point of absurdity, turning characters into puppets that represent human vices and weaknesses.

Notable works include: The Captain's Daughter, Don Friolera of the Haughty Horns, and Lights of Bohemia (1920), a work in which he draws a caricature of society through its two protagonists, Latin Flair and Max Estrella, bohemian and quirky characters who wander Madrid at night.

He applies the same deforming technique to the monstrosity of his novel Tyrant Flag, featuring a South American dictator, considered one of the most profound and original works of fiction of the twentieth century.

Antonio Machado

Machado's work can be divided into two stages:

• Early Modernism: Public Solitudes, his first book of poems, is rooted in the modern aesthetic. A few years later, it was expanded and published under the title Solitudes, Galleries, and Other Poems. Machado's modernism, influenced by Rubén Darío, is more intimate and less grandiose than that of other poets of this trend.
• Noventayochismo and Beyond: In 1907, he moved from Madrid to Soria, where he wrote Campos de Castilla. Abandoning modernism and following the Noventayochista trend, he wrote about the beauty and depth of the landscape and the people of Castile in a simple, sometimes almost conversational, yet deeply poetic style. Campos de Castilla also includes a section consisting of proverbs, short poems in which truths are expressed in popular philosophy, and a long romance titled The Land of Alvargonzález.

After the death of his wife, Eleanor, he left Soria and wrote prose in which he gave life to an apocryphal figure, Juan de Mairena, an imaginary professor who explains his thinking to his skeptical students in an ironic but morally and socially committed way.

Antonio Machado died in France, where he had moved towards the end of the Spanish Civil War. His remains rest there, as a symbol of the Spaniards who died in exile.