The generation of 27 is one of the largest groups of artists of the 20th century. The poems of the generation of 27 respond to a time when the avant-garde, the political and the personal were completely mixed. The authors of this group (including even a Nobel Prize winner) have a very personal way of writing, and no two are the same. Let’s discover which are some of the best poems of the Generation of 27 . INDEX
1. What is the Generation of 27
2. Characteristics of the Generation of 27
3. Poems of the Generation of 27 What is the Generation of 27
The Generation of 27 was (and is, because literature is forever) a group of Spanish poets and writersborn at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century .
They were formed as Generation (understanding Generation as a group of writers who share ideologies and who were born in a certain period of time) in the celebration of the anniversary at the Ateneo de Sevilla of the 300 years of the death of the poet Luis de Gongora, who became a benchmark for the Generation in its early days.
The members of the group vary according to the anthologies that are consulted, however, the great authors who are recognized in most of them as the most important are Federico Garcia Lorca, Rafael Alberti, Damaso Alonso, Gerardo Diego, Vicente Aleixandre (Nobel Prize of the group), Luis Cernuda, Pedro Salinas and Jorge Guillen. With minor authors such as Manuel Altolaguirre or Emilio Prados; women like Rosa Chacel, Josefina de la Torre or Concha Mendez and the individual figure of Miguel Hernandez.
The Generation of ’27, together with the Generation of ’98 and Noucentisme, is considered the Silver Age of Spanish literature .
Two places are key when talking about what the Generation of 27 is: the aforementionedAteneo de Sevilla and the Residencia de Estudiantes de Madrid , where authors such as Lorca or Cernuda had relationships with young people from other disciplines such as Luis Bunuel or Salvador Dali, both related to the Vanguards, specifically Surrealism, a fundamental movement to understand the evolution group literature.
“When I close my eyes I remember them all
as a block forming a group, like
a system presided over by love”
Damaso Alonso Characteristics of the Generation of 27
The characteristics of the Generation of 27 differ from those of other literary generations due to the aforementioned influence of the Vanguards. While in previous generations (such as ’98) there was a fairly constant thematic and formal unity that was maintained over time, in the Generation of ’27, despite having stable characteristics, experimentation and change are much more evident. . Broadly speaking we can distinguish three stages: 1. First Stage (Until 1927)
In these early stages the authors begin to forge their poetic and literary identity. They assume influences from the two great poetic references of the XIX century, Gustavo Adolfo Becquer and Modernism, to later be influenced by the Vanguards .. However, as we have already commented on the variability of the movement, each of these artists works with different influences: Pedro Salinas touches on futurism, Gerardo Diego on creationism…
But the idea of pure poetry that Juan Ramon Jimenez (another Award Nobel) leads to its maximum splendor. They are also influenced by popular and traditional poetry authors such as Lorca or Alberti. In short, a movement that was already heterogeneous as soon as it started. 2. Second Stage (1927 – Civil War)
They abandon pure poetry, away from human feelings and thanks to surrealism they manage to reconnect with emotions. The influence of Surrealism is very great, as well as that of Latin American authors such as Neruda’s environment. Highlights Poet in New York, by Lorca (authentic peak of Spanish surrealist poetry) Evolve acquiring their own personality and tending to rehumanization. 3. Third Stage (After the Civil War)
Like all of Spanish society, the Civil War marks and tears the Generation of 27. Federico Garcia Lorca is assassinated and the Franco regime forces many into exile . Alberti, Cernuda, Salinas, among many others, go into exile and deal with issues about the Spain they left behind and the sadness of being away from home. Vicente Aleixandre, Damaso Alonso and Gerardo Diego remain in the country.
Gerardo Diego and Damaso Alonso sympathize more with the new political situation and become key figures in post-war poetry . Aleixandre practices the so-called ‘inner exile’ and protects great authors of the many who will come, turning his house into a temple of pilgrimage for young poets.
In short, we can say that the characteristics of the Generation of 27 are the heterogeneity of the authors that make it up, a great influence of the Vanguards(especially Surrealism) and the Civil War that divided the group. A group of magnificent poets who knew how to read the mix between the popular and the cultured, between tradition and new currents and who knew how to take Spanish poetry to a new level, to be a world power in terms of poetry.
In the Lorca center, one of the most representative authors of the Generation of 27. | Mean Albedo. 10 poems of the Generation of 27
As there is no better way to discover the work of a poet than by reading it, we leave you with 10 of the best poems of the authors of the Generation of 27, although we could well choose 100. 1. Sonnet of the garland of roses (Federico Garcia Lorca)
“That garland! early! I’m dying!
Knit fast! sings! moan! sings!
that the shadow clouds my throat
and comes again and again the light of January.
Between what you love me and what I love you,
air of stars and trembling of plants,
thickness of anemones raises
with dark moaning an entire year.
Enjoy the fresh landscape of my wound,
break reeds and delicate streams.
Drink in thigh of honey spilled blood.
But soon! That united, linked,
broken mouth of love and bitten soul,
time finds us shattered” 2. Hand delivered (Vicente Aleixandre)
But another day I touch your hand. Warm hand…
Your delicate silent hand. Sometimes I close
my eyes and lightly touch your hand, lightly touch
that checks its shape, that tempts
its structure, feeling under the winged skin the hard incorruptible bone , the sad bone where
love
never reaches . Oh sweet meat, that if soaked in beautiful love.
It is through the secret skin, secretly open,
invisibly ajar,
through which the warm heat spreads her voice, her sweet desire;
to roll through them in your hidden blood,
like another blood that would sound dark,
that sweetly dark would kiss you
from the inside, running slowly like a pure sound through
that body that resonates mine, mine populated by my
deep voices
, oh resounding body of my love! oh body possessed!,
oh body only sound of my voice possessing him!
That’s why, when I caress your hand, I know that only the bone refuses
my love – the never incandescent bone of man.
And that a sad zone of your being refuses,
while your whole flesh reaches a lucid moment
in which it totally flames, by virtue of that slow contact
of your hand,
of your porous soft hand that moans,
your delicate silent hand, through which I enter
slowly, very slowly, secretly in your life,
to your total deep veins where I bogo,
where I town you and I sing completely among your flesh. 3. Not seeing you (Gerardo Diego)
One day and another day and another day.
not see you
To be able to see you, to know that you are so close,
that it is probably the miracle of luck.
not see you
And the heart and the calculation and the compass,
all three failing. No one guesses you.
not see you
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, not finding you,
not breathing, not being, not deserving you.
not see you
Desperately love, love you
and be born again to love you.
not see you
Yes, born every day. Everything is new.
New are you, my life, you, my death.
not see you
To grope (and it was noon)
with infinite fear of breaking you.
not see you
Hear your voice, smell your aroma, dreams,
oh, mirages that the desert inverts.
not see you
To think that you run away from me, you want me, you would
like to find yourself in me, lose yourself.
not see you
Two ships at sea, blind sails.
Will their wakes kiss each other tomorrow? 4. Silence (Vicente Aleixandre)
Under the sob a garden not wet
Oh birds the songs the plumage
This lyrical blue hand without sleep.
The size of a bird lips. I don’t listen
. The landscape is laughter. Two waists loving each other.
Shadowed trees secrete voice Silence
So I review mist or hard silver
kiss on the forehead lyrical water single water of snow heart or urn
prediction of kisses oh space! where my ears no longer heard
the footsteps in the sand or light or shadow 5. Pilgrim (Luis Cernuda)
Return
Come back whoever has,
After long years, after a long journey,
Tired of the road and greed
For his land, his house, his friends, For
the love that awaits him when he faithfully returns.
But, do you
? Go Back Go
back you don’t think,
But go forward free,
Available forever, young or old,
Without a son to look for you, like Ulysses,
Without Ithaca waiting and without Penelope.
Keep going, keep going and don’t come back,
Faithful until the end of the road and your life,
Don’t miss an easier destiny,
Your feet on the ground before not trodden,
Your eyes in front of what has never been seen before. 6. I say goodbye, love, and I’m not sad (Rafael Alberti)
I say goodbye, my love, and I’m not sad.
Thank you, my love, for what you have already given me,
a single slow and prolonged kiss
that ended in pain when you left.
You did not know how to understand, you did not understand
that it was a final, desperate love,
nor did you try to tear me from your side
when you hurt me with a hard heart.
I cried so much that day that I don’t want
to think that the same suffering I expect
every time that love reappears in your life
that by denying it enlightens you.
Your light is when my light decreases,
your only love when my love declines 7. You sleep. My hand touches sleep. You sleep… (Jorge Guillen)
You sleep. My hand touches sleep. Do you sleep.
I enjoy your confident innocence,
your implicit way on that night
that makes your hand so lovingly yours.
I feel you sleep without seeing you,
most serene, sacred,
never the image of death,
and opposing nothingness
, triumphing as an inert stone.
The delicate mass of your dream
thickens next to me, without nocturnal peace,
which thus coexists with the invulnerable,
whose return upon awakening is always
the sudden immersion in our happiness.
Immersed in a heat of two, sleep
relaxes its closure, almost
sweetly open towards the still island day.
Heat, love.
The story behind the door. 8. Insomnia (Damaso Alonso)
Madrid is a city of more than a million corpses
(according to the latest statistics).
Sometimes at night I stir and sit up in this
niche where I have been rotting for 45 years,
and spend long hours listening to the hurricane moan, or the
dogs bark, or the moonlight flow softly.
And I spend long hours moaning like a hurricane, barking like
an angry dog, flowing like milk from the
warm udder of a big yellow cow.
And I spend long hours asking God, asking him why
my soul slowly rots,
why more than a million corpses rot in this
city of Madrid,
because a billion corpses slowly rot in the world.
Tell me, what orchard do you want to fertilize with our rot
? Are you afraid that the great rosebushes of the day will dry up,
the
sad lethal lilies of your nights
? extended skirt the peace of the slopes,
the silence and the shadow of the sea caves
next to your sleeping feet.
To what deep alcove do your eyelashes give way
when they rise heavy as curtains, slow
as bridal cloaks or funeral cloths…
to what perennial stay hidden from time
? Where does the path that your lips discover,
To which carnal abyss descends your throat,
which everlasting bed begins in your mouth
The wine of ashes exhales its bitter alcohol
while the cup airs, with its pause, the breath.
Two vapors raise their secret fragrances,
contemplate and measure each other before being confused.
Because love yearns for her sepulcher in the flesh;
she wants to sleep her death in the heat, without forgetting,
in the tenacious lullaby that the blood murmurs
while eternity beats in life, insomniac. 10. Dark Love (Manuel Altolaguirre)
If for you I was a shadow
when I covered your body,
if when I kissed you
my eyes were blind,
let us continue to be night,
like the immense night,
with our dark love,
without limits, eternal…
Because in the light of day
our love is small.
- Read our 15 essential short poems.
- Discover the 16 types of poems with some examples.
Bibliographic References
Ramoneda, AM (Ed.). (1990). Poetic anthology of the generation of 27. Per i Licei e gli Ist. Magistrali (Vol. 24). Editorial Castalia.
Slashes, J.M. (1986). The generation of 27 from within (Vol. 6). Akal Editions.
Lorca, F. G., & Beck, E. (2001). Poet in New York. Comars.
