Poetry Of Discovery
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Poetry Of Discovery

The Spanish Generation of 1956-1971

Andrew Debicki

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Poetry Of Discovery

The Spanish Generation of 1956-1971

Andrew Debicki

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About This Book

A leading critic of contemporary Spanish poetry examines here the work of ten important poets who came to maturity in the immediate post-Civil War period and whose major works appeared between 1956 and 1971: Francisco Brines; Eladio Cabañero; Angel Crespo; Gloria Fuertes; Jaime Gil de Biedma; Angel GonzĂĄlez; Manuel Mantero; Claudio RodrĂ­guez; Carlos SahagĂșn; and JosĂ© Angel Valente.

Although each of these poets has developed an individual style, their work has certain common characteristics: use of the everyday language and images of contemporary Spain, development of language codes and intertextual references, and, most strikingly, metaphoric transformations and surprising reversals of the reader's expectations. Through such means these poets clearly invite their readers to join them in journeys of poetic discovery.

Andrew P. Debicki's is the first detailed stylistic analysis of this generation of poets, and the first to approach their work through the particularly appropriate methods developed in "reader-response" criticism.

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1The Generation of 1956–1971
Beginning in the late 1950s and extending through the 1960s, there appeared in Spain several young poets whose work reveals a high degree of originality, coupled with significant value. Because they were writing in a seemingly direct language and dealing with themes that had also been dealt with by earlier writers, these poets were at first considered mere continuers of the general tendencies of post-Civil War verse and were not accorded the importance they deserved. But as their work has grown and unfolded, as their ideas on poetry have been expressed and linked to their work, and as critics have begun to highlight their originality, their significance has become more and more apparent.1 Not only does their poetry possess value comparable to that of the major writers of the early twentieth century, but it also forces us to reconsider earlier views on the characteristics and development of contemporary poetry in Spain, and on the critical methods and approaches which are most fruitful in dealing with it.
To undertake a general appraisal of this poetry, one must first recall the characteristics of the works that preceded it. Standard interpretations of Spanish post-Civil War poetry begin by noting the formalism and lack of transcendence of most works of the early 1940s.2 Grouped around the magazine Garcilaso (1943-1946), the salient poets of this era—JosĂ© GarcĂ­a Nieto, Rafael Morales, Rafael Montesinos—produced serene and skillful verse, most often written in traditional forms (sonnets abounded). Although the “garcilasistas” mentioned the importance of feelings in poetry, the feelings that predominated in their works were an admiration of nature, nostalgic love, and well-contained religious fervor. Although one can find superficial parallels between the perfectionism of this poetry and the stylistic excellence of the works of the great poets of the Generation of 1927, the contrasts between its timidity and the originality of that earlier poetry are quite apparent.
A more significant development in post-War Spanish poetry was marked by the magazine Espadaña (LeĂłn, 1944-1951). Although it published works by many diverse writers, this magazine, unlike the much more eclectic journal Proel, was dominated by poets concerned with social issues and with the problems of daily life in Franco’s Spain. Victoriano CrĂ©mer and Eugenio de Nora were the most important of the poets writing in Espadaña; the former also articulated very clearly its antiformalist stance.3 Somewhat later, in the early 1950s, Blas de Otero and Gabriel Celaya published books dealing with social issues and written in everyday language and a seemingly direct expression—and gained a wide reading public. The social and apparently “realistic” current of the late 1940s and early 1950s is very clear when one examines the two main anthologies of the period, the AntologĂ­a consultada de la joven poesĂ­a española (whose selection was based on a questionnaire sent to writers) and Rafael MillĂĄn’s Veinte poetas españoles. The presence of social themes, the concern with daily life, the use of colloquial language and of everyday settings are apparent in the works of almost all the poets included. On the negative side, both anthologies reveal suspicious uniformity, a certain dullness, and many works that quickly became dated. The best of the “social” poets handle language in a very creative fashion, but others seem to be expressing social messages in verse.
Not all poetry of the time fits into a social current. Less obvious, perhaps, but equally significant is the appearance of works which deal with the human situation from a more individual and emotional perspective. Much of CrĂ©mer’s poetry and some of Otero’s deals with the anguish of an individual living in a hostile and at times meaningless environment. The first-rate religious poetry of Carlos Bousoño is filled with anguish, doubt, and a search for some reality beyond illusions. The early (and excellent) work of JosĂ© Hierro already reveals a concern for the impact of time on human life, and for the search for understanding in the face of surrounding enigmas. One can see this existential and perhaps neoromantic current of post-War poetry as another side of the impulse to “rehumanize” verse and bring it into consonance with the preoccupations of the times. It leads to some superb poetry, more lasting perhaps than the social works of the time; but it also brings forth a lot of confessional verse, full of exaggerated anguish and rhetorical lament.
The social and existential currents that I have been noting gained much of their impulse from books published at this time by poets of the Generation of 1927.4 The appearance of Dámaso Alonso’s Hijos de la ira in 1944 marked a key turning point for Spanish letters. Its presentation of human anguish in a colloquial tone and its highly artistic use of everyday terms, of the grotesque, and of dramatic monologue directed younger poets to a new form of expression; they also opened the possibilities for a poetic treatment of hitherto “banned” topics. Although it cannot be classified as overtly “social,” this book certainly inaugurated the treatment in verse of the ills of Spain of the 1940s. Less individually significant perhaps, yet nonetheless important, was the appearance in 1944 of Vicente Aleixandre’s Sombra del paraíso. Neither social nor “existential,” this book nevertheless placed stress on the emotive and subconscious aspects of human existence, and fit into the tendency to “rehumanize” poetry. Its use of visionary imagery and blank verse suggested ways in which the new tendencies could find successful artistic embodiment, though it did not influence later poetry directly. And although Gerardo Diego’s religious poetry had even less direct impact on the works of younger poets, it certainly fit in with the spirit of the period. (Much more important, in a sense, were the generosity and the personal help offered to these younger poets by Diego, Aleixandre, and Alonso, all of whom, in various ways, contributed significantly to their development.)
One should also note the work written at this time by poets who had already made themselves known in the 1930s and who are often classified as the “Generation of 1936” (questionable as such a classification may be). Luis Rosales and Leopoldo Panero published significant books in this period: La casa encendida by the former illustrated the tendency to emotional meaning as well as collective concerns, while Escrito a cada instante by the latter exemplified the use of private allusions and remembrances in poems which nevertheless point to larger subjective meanings.5 Rosales and Panero, together with Luis Felipe Vivanco, GermĂĄn Bleiberg, and JosĂ© MarĂ­a Valverde, continued after the Civil War to write poetry based on subjective and philosophic concerns (we think of the importance of love poetry, of religious poetry, of metaphysical inquiries) which dovetailed with the climate of the late 1940s. In general, it is important to remember Carlos Bousoño’s observation that after the Civil War the issue of generations and of the age of the poets played a much less important role than it had previously.6 At a certain moment, under the impact of given circumstances and a given intellectual climate, poets of different ages and groups revealed many similarities.
In a speech delivered in 1955 and published as a monograph, Aleixandre summarized admirably the main features of Spanish poetry of the late 1940s and early 1950s: “Yo diriá que el tema esencial de la poesía de nuestros días es . . .el cántico de hombre en cuanto situado, es decir en cuanto localizado; localizado en un tiempo, en un tiempo que pasa y es irreversible, y localizado en un espacio, en una sociedad determínada, con unos determinados problemas que le son propios.”7 Aleixandre notes that this definition helps explain the presence of specific themes, such as the social, the religious, and the national, and fits in with the tendency to simple language, to narrative devices, and to specific recollections and personal remembrances.8 It is clear that this first epoch of post-Civil War poetry marks a significant new direction—though as I will later suggest, it is a new direction that poses at least as many problems as it opens paths for future poetic expression.
Before looking ahead, however, it is useful to take into account the cultural atmosphere in which this poetry of the first post-War period took place and the way in which its creators viewed and used the literature that had come before them. FĂ©lix Grande and other critics have noted the significant effect that the poetry of CĂ©sar Vallejo and Pablo Neruda had on the younger poets of the period. Not only did it offer them examples of social poetry, but it gave them models of poets deeply committed to specific human problems and tragedies, individual as well as collective.9 Miguel HernĂĄndez, widely read by these poets, clearly furnished a model for the expression of emotional meanings through language, and offered a link, as Grande has noted, to a whole tradition of poetry going back to Quevedo and the Romancero. Just about every poet and critic of this period paid homage to Antonio Machado: he became almost the symbol of the poet preoccupied with fundamental “human” issues, both individual and national, as well as a representative of the writer who attempts to write in plain language and direct fashion. Of the poets of the Generation of 1927, the one most praised and read in this period was Luis Cernuda, both for his social consciousness and for his expression of subjective meanings. There was, on the other hand, an initial lessening of interest in Juan RamĂłn JimĂ©nez as well as Jorge GuillĂ©n and even Federico GarcĂ­a Lorca, and a tendency to stereotype their work and that of other poets as excessively “pure” and “inhuman.”
These literary tastes already point to some of the blind spots and limitations of the poetic climate of the first post-War period. Even the earlier writers praised in this period were read in a one-sided fashion: Vallejo’s verbal virtuosity and tremendous creativity were not stressed, nor was Hernández’s use of language, nor Machado’s innovativeness in making seemingly anecdotal subjects acquire universal dimensions. The tendency to oppose the dangers of empty formalism by overstressing the content and message of poetry led the writers of this period to exaggerate the separation between form and meaning, and to ignore the fact that the latter exists only through the former. Although this occurred for understandable reasons, the overall vision of literature and literary history became extremely one-sided in a way that was perilous for the impulses to creativity and innovation through poetic language.10
This is not to say, however, that none of the poets who emerged in the first period after the Spanish Civil War—the late 1940s and early 1950s—produced significant verse. Blas de Otero and Angela Figuera wrote consistently first-rate works, as valuable today as they were when they first appeared; whether addressing social questions or expressing anguish at man’s situation, their poems embody their meanings in carefully crafted language and imagery. The poetry of Gabriel Celaya, though very uneven, includes works of force and originality. JosĂ© Hierro uses evocations of the past to capture poetically the sense of loss caused by time; Carlos Bousoño’s early work, neglected by critics, conveys through perfect forms the poet’s concern with death and nothingness, and his search (religious as well as worldly) for life’s meanings. But the poetry produced, published, and anthologized in this period also included a mass of undistinguished works which declaim social messages or stridently cry out their authors’ anguish.
The limitation of this period is also apparent in the lack of attention given in the 1940s and 1950s to a very interesting poet and a poetic movement that did not fit the “realistic” canons. The poet was Carlos Edmundo de Ory, who founded the magazine La Cerbatana in 1945 and developed the theories of the vanguardist movement Postismo. Ory’s manifesto of Postismo places emphasis on the role of the imagination in poetry, as well as on the creative power of the poetic word: it asserts correspondences between its vision and those of surrealism and expressionism. Ory’s own poetry is difficult, rich and varied in form, filled with verbal and imaginative play; as Pere Gimferrer has noted, it is centered on the themes of eroticism and poetic creation. (The erotic impulse and verbal creation are linked.)11 Postismo and Ory have remained largely ignored until the present (only thanks to FĂ©lix Grande’s efforts is there an edition of the poet’s work), and it is difficult to find specific correspondences between Ory’s verse and the works of other poets. Yet his stress on the imaginative, his vision of poetry as highly creative and transcendent, and his rebellion against realistic didacticism contrasted with the general poetic atmosphere of the time and presaged, at least indirectly, significant developments of the 1960s. (Angel Crespo and Gloria Fuertes had links with Postismo.) One other group of poets noted for their careful use of language, those centered around the review CĂĄntico of CĂłrdoba in the late 1940s and early 1950s, was also largely ignored. Thanks to a recent and excellent study and anthology by Guillermo Carnero, we can see that these poets (Pablo GarcĂ­a Baena and Ricardo Molina were the outstanding ones) wrote beautifully crafted works which, as Carnero notes, provide a bridge between Spanish poetry of the 1920s and that of the 1960s.12
All in all, it is clear that the “realistic” and existential trends of the 1940s and 1950s led to a neglect of the visionary dimensions and possibilities of poetry, and to a climate of opinion which devalued these dimensions and saw the poet’s task as one of moving away from the supposed aestheticism of the Generation of 1927. It became the role of the poets who came to the fore in the late 1950s, and are the subject of my study, to redirect attention to more creative tasks. And they were to do so not by going back in time but by building more significant visions and more significantly creative poems on the basis of—and with the materials used by—post-War poetry.
The emergence of these more recent post-War poets was not marked by a single event, magazine, publication, or pronouncement. Most of them published significant books of poetry between 1953 and 1960 and were given importance by critics and reviewers at that time; several of them were given an impetus by the Adonais review and series. Yet it was not until well after 1960 that much attention was paid to the differences between their works and attitudes and those of earlier post-War writers. Somewhat like the Generation of 1927, these poets began by quietly cultivating their craft, and only later were recognized for their innovativeness. Two anthologies pinned down their importance: Francisco Ribes’s PoesĂ­a Ășltima (1963) and JosĂ© Batlló’s AntologĂ­a de la nueva poesĂ­a española (1968). The significance of these anthologies was increased by their inclusion of statements on poetics by the individual poets—statements which made clear the differences between their attitudes and those of the dominant writers who had come before them.
The vision of poetry espoused by these poets is extremely important for the understanding of their role and their works. Most noteworthy is the opposition that several of them express to the previously dominant stress on theme, message, and “communication.” JosĂ© Angel Valente, for example, puts renewed importance on style: “Me parece especialmente saludable pensar en el estilo. Porque no es el formalismo en sentido estricto el Ășnico rigor que el estilo puede padecer. Por vĂ­as distintas, el antiformalismo ha venido a parar en un formalismo de la peor especie: el de los temas o el de las tendencias.” Claudio RodrĂ­guez stresses the importance of the poetic word: “Las palabras funcionan en el poema, no sĂłlo con su natural capacidad de decir o significar, sino, ademĂĄs, en un grado fundamental, en el sentido de su actividad en el conjunto de los versos. Por eso son insustituibles.” Carlos SahagĂșn likewise underlines the value of style: “Un poema sĂłlo es vĂĄlido cuando el sentimiento que le ha dado origen, ademĂĄs de ser autĂ©ntico, va unido a una expresiĂłn Ășnica e insustituible.”13 Through these and other similar statements, the poets modify the utilitarian notions of poetry prevalent before them, and give back to poetic language some of the importance that it held for the Generation of 1927.
More novel yet and more important is the stress placed on poetry as an act of discovery and knowledge rather than mere communication. In a well-known essay to which many of these poets will later allude, Enrique Badosa unfolds a detailed attack on “communication” in poetry, and stresses that the work’s meanings only emerge in the process of its composition: “En la poesĂ­a el poeta se conoce mĂĄs a sĂ­ mismo y a las cosas, gracias a su poema, e—igual que el lector—tiene ocasiĂłn de hallarse en una nueva experiencia con que engrandecer sus perspectivas y logros espirituales.”14 SahagĂșn echoes the same idea: “En el fondo, al poeta no le importa la comunicaciĂłn. . . .Lo verdaderamente importante, para Ă©l, es esa afirmaciĂłn de sĂ­ mismo, esa indagaciĂłn en lo oscuro mediante la cual, una vez terminado el poema, conocerĂĄ la realidad desde otras perspectivas.” Claudio RodrĂ­guez speaks of a “participaciĂłn que el poeta establece entre las cosas y su experiencia poĂ©tica de ellas, a travĂ©s del lenguaje. Esta participaciĂłn es un modo peculiar de conocer.” And Valente devotes a whole essay to the question of the knowledge obtained in the process of composing a poem, concluding: “La poesĂ­a aparece asĂ­, de modo primario, como revelaciĂłn de un aspecto de la realidad para el cual no hay mĂĄs vĂ­a de acceso ...

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