Spanish Poetry of the Twentieth Century by Debicki Andrew;

Author:Debicki, Andrew; [Debicki, Andrew P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2021-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

{Undulation of the waves on the back of a seal. Did I find that which I brought with me? Language, with its power, now touches reality.}

Guillén’s search for life’s essences though language has led to a conscious commentary on the poetic process as act of discovery—and an implicit invitation to his reader to continue that process—connecting his work with that of younger authors.

Dámaso Alonso wrote, at this time, poems that form the book Gozos de la vista (“The Joys of Sight”), although he only published them individually, in magazines; the book as a whole came out only in 1981. One of these poems, titled “Vision de los monstruos (scherzo)” (“Vision of Monsters [Scherzo]”), is a dramatic monologue whose speaker begins by asserting the superiority of human sight over that of all other creatures, only to convince himself, ironically, of his limitations. The poem ends with great comic impact, as the speaker cannot even convince us of his superiority over a grotesque imaginary slug that he himself had invented. The blend of poetry and narrative, the speaker’s self-consciousness of his poetic task, and the final undermining of traditional views about poetic and human superiority connect this work with the prevailing mode of its time.29

Vicente Aleixandre’s two books of poetry of this period also connect, in different ways, with those of younger authors. En un vasto dominio (“In a Vast Dominion,” 1962), as José Olivio Jiménez has indicated, combines a cosmic perspective with the focus on human solidarity we noted in Historia del corazón (Jiménez 1982, 83–91). The result is a somewhat preachy tone and a book devoid of the nuances of Aleixandre’s previous work.

More interesting from our point of view are Aleixandre’s Poemas de la consumación (“Poems of Consummation,” 1968). Constructed around conflicting images of youth and old age, these poems capture both the intensity of life and the tragedy of death. For the first time in his long trajectory as poet, Aleixandre wrote mostly short, sharply structured texts, placing some of them in the mouths of specific speakers. The use of narrative situations and specific points of view may fit this poetry in its time. The book’s most telling feature, however, is its self-consciousness. Its initial text, “Las palabras del poeta” (“The Poet’s Words”), already sets human life within the frame of the act of poetic naming: life is identified with the language through which it is remembered, and death is defined as the loss of that language (Jiménez 1982, 11–13). The whole book shares the self-awareness of much of the poetry of its time. It is made most evident by Aleixandre’s repeated use of lines taken from his earlier poetry (see ibid. 99–100). The reader, as a result, reads the poems not as static messages but as part of an evolving process begun much earlier, as steps in a continuing search.

One additional poet whose birth date (1906) would place him somewhere between the Generation of 1927 and that of 1936, but who was virtually unknown previously, gained importance during the 1960s.

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