Vicente Aleixandre, Dámaso Alonso & Luis Cernuda — Generation of '27 Poetry

Vicente Aleixandre

Vicente Aleixandre. The desire to communicate over the desire for beauty. His style is characterized by the wealth of surreal images and the use of free verse. Verse poetry is the medium of communication between the universe and humans.

Career and Stages

• Initial stage: Scope, pure poetry in the line near Salinas and Guillén.
• Surreal stage: Radical pessimism, reflecting on the pain and anguish of human beings, and an aim to merge with the cosmos to become insensitive. Espaldas as Lips and Last Birth. The Destruction or Love, which is a hymn to nature and love, expresses the feeling that breaks the radical solitude of man and allows merging with the beloved and the universe. Influenced by surrealism, his style incorporates numerous images that refer to the cosmos and nature, employing free verse.
• Stage humanist: History of Heart development, as it focuses on human beings and the community; in a vast domain, poetry of witness that is humane and ethical.

Dámaso Alonso

Dámaso Alonso evolves towards existential poetry, culminating in the post-war period. He devoted himself to both poetry and literary criticism. Influenced by Góngora, his poetic language is born in the aesthetics of the Generation of '27; notable references include Poemillas of the City and The Wind and the Verse, often adopting a popular tone.

In the second stage he develops an existential tone: Hijos de la ira, an essential work in the post-war poetry of the desert. He rejected aestheticism and stated: "today it is just the man that interests me... the paths of beauty or zarapazos".

Luis Cernuda

Luis Cernuda maintains an intimate and romantic mood. He addresses the impossibility of reconciling personal desire with reality, a subject that lends its title to one of his major collections, Reality and Desire. Much of his poetry is concerned with love, longing, and the search for beauty.

Career and Stages

• Home (first stage): Profile, pure poetry in The Air, and classical poetry in eclogue, elegy and ode.
• After his stay in France: A surrealist influence appears in A River, a Love, later moderated in Forbidden Pleasures. Confrontations between his aspirations and his existence produce feelings that flow into loneliness and nostalgia for a different world, a longing for beauty and especially for love. He emphasizes purification of images and dense, emotional expression, favoring spoken language and a colloquial tone that hides an enormous capacity for suggestion.
• During the Civil War: The Clouds; this work marks the period leading to his exile.
• In exile: Poetry emphasizes the theme of loneliness, mixed with the theme of exile. Clarity reaches its peak in works such as Como quien espera el alba, Vivir sin estar viviendo, and With the Hours Counted.