Generación del 27
Generación del 27 or Generation from 1927 is a term used in the history of literature. It refers to the group of Spanish poets who entered the literary scene in the early 1920s and ruled until the outbreak of the civil war in 1936. The group owes its name to the common admiration for the Baroque poet Luis de Góngora , whose 300th anniversary of death was celebrated in 1927. Federico García Lorca , Jorge Guillén , Rafael Alberti , Pedro Salinas , Dámaso Alonso , Gerardo Diego , Vicente Aleixandre and Luis Cernuda formed the core of the group, which also included Manuel Altolaguirre and Emilio Prados, editors of the magazine Litoral , who were the mouthpieces in the beginning the group was to be included. Some authors also include the younger Miguel Hernández , who was mainly supported by García Lorca and Aleixandre, to the Generación del 27 .
The group's first role models were Rubén Darío and his modernism, which was influenced by French symbolism, and Juan Ramón Jiménez with his poesía pura . In its heyday from 1927, it opened itself to the influence of Antonio Machado , the surrealism coming from France and the political poetry evoked by the civil war mood, which overcame the pessimism of the generation of 98. Under the influence of the surrealist, the lyrical self transforms into an anonymous speaker. However, the Spanish folk poetry of the Romancero remained an essential point of reference for the 1927 generation in both periods .
history
The poets of the Generación del 27 formed a close circle of friends who were held together by age, similar origins from the middle class, by an academic background and a common understanding of art. Most of them published their first volumes of poetry in the early twenties: García Lorcas Libro de poemas and Dámaso Alonso's Poemas puros appeared in 1921, followed by Pedro Salinas' Presagios (1923), Rafael Albertis Marinero en tierra (1924), Luis Cernudas Perfil del aire ( 1927), Jorge Guilléns Cántico (1928). When the group appeared in Seville in 1927 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the death of the Baroque poet Luis de Góngora , whom they had put on their sign, they had already developed a common poetics. This proclaimed the decisive departure from naturalism , from anecdote , from impressionism and represented a pure, more intellectual than emotional, hermetic and subconscious lyric poetry. Following this celebration in Seville, García Lorca gave a lecture in Granada on La imagen poética de Don Luis de Góngora - the poetic image in Góngora - which is considered the group's manifesto.
The works of the authors of this movement were criticized as antihumanist by conservative and religious art criticism and philosophy, for example by José Ortega y Gasset in his work La deshumanización del arte .
Even then, however, there were signs of a change of course. It was Jorge Guillén, of all people, who until then had been the “purest” lyricist in the group, who pointed out the dangers of “aseptic”, overly intellectual, almost “inhuman” and therefore “boring” poetry. The turn to the "impure", to the human, to the feeling, to the passion was already noticeable in Alberti's Sobre los ángeles (1929) or Lorca's Poeta en Nueva York (created 1929/30), but was noticeable in Cernudas Donde habite el olvido (1934) or Aleixandres Espadas como labios (1935) obviously. The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda , who had been consul of Chile in Madrid since 1934 , also contributed to this shift in emphasis, in which the political climate change in Spain in the second half of the 1930s played a not unimportant role . Neruda, whose epochal book Residencia en la tierra had been published a year earlier, represented a poetry that was far removed from any aestheticism and formalism, focused on people, preferred everyday topics and did not shy away from “bad taste”. In the first issue of Caballo verde para la poesía magazine , now considered the mouthpiece of the avant-garde and edited by Neruda, a manifesto appeared in October 1935 with the significant title Sobre una poesía sin pureza - about poetry without purity. This unequivocal attack on the “pure poetry” in Neruda's magazine led to a break with the revered but no longer followed Juan Ramón Jiménez. It was not without good reason that he saw the manifesto as an attack not only on his person and his work, but also on the poets of Generation 27.
The harmony that had prevailed among the poets up until then was clouded and disturbed. However, the civil war that broke out in the summer of 1936 challenged the existence of the poets and poetry itself. García Lorca was murdered in Granada as soon as the hostilities began. Salinas, Cernuda, Guillén and Alberti had to go into exile, as did the old Juan Ramón Jiménez. Antonio Machado, who was also elderly, died in 1939 while fleeing to neighboring France. Miguel Hernández died in Alicante prison in 1942 in the early post-war years. The sick Aleixandre and Dámaso Alonso, who did not want to leave his old mother, stayed in Franco's Spain. They became the custodians of the 1927 legacy of the poets, which they passed on to the younger generation of the 1950s and the Escuela de Barcelona .
See also
literature
- Dámaso Alonso, Poetas españoles contemporáneos , Gredos, Madrid 1952
- José Luis Cano, La poesía de la Generación del 27 , Guadarrama, Madrid 1970
- Hugo Friedrich, Structure of Modern Poetry , Rowohlt, Hamburg 1960
- Ricardo Gullón (ed.): Diccionario de Literatura española e hispanoamericana. Alianza, Madrid 1993
Individual evidence
- ↑ José Luis Cano, La poesía de la Generación del 27 , Guadarrama, Madrid 1970, pp. 11ff
- ↑ Dámaso Alonso, Poetas españoles contemporáneos , Gredos, Madrid 1952, p. 182
- ^ Hugo Friedrich, Structure of modern poetry , Rowohlt, Hamburg 1960, pp. 110–112
- ↑ Federico García Lorca, Obras completas , Aguilar, Madrid 1986, 3rd vol. P. 223ff
- ↑ Madrid 1926; dt. The expulsion of man from art. Munich 1964.
- ↑ Cano, p. 20
- ↑ Ricardo Gullón (ed.): Diccionario de Literatura española e hispanoamericana . Alianza, Madrid 1993, p. 1100
- ↑ Cano, p. 22