Juan Ramón Jiménez began writing "pure" poetry, in the sense of "simple", with traditional meters, soft musicality, adolescent tone: Arias (1903), Far Gardens (1904). He then adopted the "clothes" of Modernism, without becoming his poetry as lavish as that of its highest representative, Rubén Darío. Typically modernist is the use of color and other sensory elements, brilliant adjectives, as well as the appearance of broad rhythms (Alexandrine is frequent). But Jiménez's modernism is intimate, oriented towards contemplation and sentimental confession. Examples are Elejias, La soledad sonora, Poemas májicos y dolientes, and  Sonetos espirituales.The author's evolution represents the overcoming of Modernism (Rubén Dario) towards new and personalistic positions, in which a good part of future poetry will settle.

Very soon his language is "stripping" until arriving in 1916 to very personal poetry, "outside schools or trends". This is the year that he wrote Diary of a newly married poet, during his honeymoon trip to New York. This is followed by Eternities (1918), Piedra y cielo (1919), Poetry (1923), and Belleza (1923) among others. In all of them, the modernist lexicon, sensory adjectives, and sound rhythms have disappeared. It is naked poetry, in which it eliminates the anecdotal to give way to conceptual and emotional concentration. That is why short, dense poems predominate, in concise verses (free or with slight assonances). Later his poetry plunges into new depths (La estación total, 1946, and Animal de fondo, 1949), a strange mysticism in which the aforementioned thirst for intimacy leads him to dialogue with a "desired and desiring God", without ceasing to advance on the path of spiritual awareness and deep expression. Jiménez, a poet of exceptional sensitivity, is a model of the most demanding aesthetic concerns and of continuous renewal.

He represents the extreme case of a poet devoted entirely to his work. He lived his world in solitude, isolated by his hyperesthetic sensitivity.  It is his poetry dedicated to few people that could understand him,  given the increasing difficulty and secrecy of the themes of his poems.  Locked up in his 'ivory tower', he dedicated himself up exclusively to a demanding and endless pursuit of beauty and the finding of the precise word. He said metaphorically to have Poetry hidden in his house, for his taste and enjoyment. Poetry satisfies his thirst for beauty, knowledge, and for eternity. For Jiménez poetry is an exalted expression of beauty, wherever it is found. It is also a  path to truth, a way of knowing with extremely penetrating intelligence the essence of everything that surrounds him. His poetry is an expression of the longing for eternity, conceived precisely as an endless possession of beauty and truth. Hence his anguished concern for the transience of things and also his special idea of ​​God, whom he identifies with nature or with absolute beauty.

Platero y yo (1914)

Arias tristes (1903)

Rimas (1902)

Jardines lejanos (1904)

Piedra y cielo (1919)

Eternidades (1918)

La estación total (1946)

Animal de fondo (1949)

The book highlights the description of misty landscapes, with blurred contours to give the feeling of vagueness and where the memory of his love affairs and his unease over death are continuously present in the poet.

Poetry

In 1927, a series of young writers gathered at the Seville Athenaeum to commemorate the third centenary of Góngora's death. There are writers like García Lorca, Dámaso Alonso, Gerardo Diego, Alberti, Salinas, Vicente Aleixandre, and Luis Cernuda, among the most representative of what would later become the Generation of '27. Of approximate age and similar academic training, they constitute a compact group and all its members were aware of belonging to the group of this literary generation.

 The Generation of ‘27 has been characterized since its origin by the search for a new poetic language, even when each member develops their personal style. These poets' desire for renewal is combined with fair respect for the literature of the past. They admired Unamuno, and especially Antonio Machado, they fairly valued Rubén Darío and felt a fascination for Juan Ramón Jiménez and Bécquer, especially in his early days. In their search for a strictly poetic language, the example of Góngora was decisive, well known by the elaborate language within in his work Polifemo. 

Despite their highly cultured aesthetics, these writers have a veneration for popular forms, such as the traditional Cancionero and ballads. In addition to this admiration for tradition, they were also influenced by foreign literary currents, such as the French poet Valèry or the Anglo-Saxon T. S. Eliot. The group evolves from the original search for pure poetry, with even dehumanizing features due to its influence with the surrealist movement, towards the literature of social commitment, in the years preceding the Spanish Civil War, assimilating past and traditional forms with other more modern ones and produces an immense renewal of Spanish lyric.

Generation of '27

Celebration of Anniversary of the death of Luís de Góngora at the Ateneo de Sevilla.

Pedro Salinas publishes La voz a ti debida, a poem in which love appears as the key to organizing reality.

Pedro Salinas writes Confianza, a collection of poems that incorporate moral reflection and concern for the future of humanity into their poetry.

Jorge Guillén publishes Cántico, agnostic poetry that unreservedly reveals and perceives the world as well done.

Dámaso Alonso publishes Hijos de la hira, an existential book that reflects the misery of the postwar period after the Spanish Civil War.

Federico Garcia Lorca writes the Poema del cante jondo, where the poet pays tribute to the sentimental concentration of the traditional "copla".

Rafael Alberty publishes Marinero en tierra, where the poet recovers the memory of the immediacy of the sea in his childhood.

Martin Heidegger writes Dasein, where he exposes the philosophical assumption that the human being knows in a preontological way the factors that make up life.

William Falkner writes The Sound and the Fury, a book that recounts the progressive degeneration of a family, its secrets and the love and hate relationships that sustain and destroy it.

André Malraux writes La Condition Humaine, where he describes a serious, gloomy and violent world, dominated by logic, in which a mixture of fantasy and absurdity breaks out in search of freedom.

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Arias tristes (1903)

By Juan Ramón Jiménez

Time Period: Generation of '27

Genre: Poetry

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