Alberti's poetry amazes for its great variety of themes, tones, and styles. In his literary production alternates pure poetry, humor, social anguish, and political passion. In his first work, Marinero en tierra (1925), the fundamental inspiration is nostalgia for his land, its marine environment, and particularly the sea,  which the author remembers from Madrid with a vehement longing for escape. That longing is poured into a flickering and agile lyric, the poems exuding whiteness and vivid color. For the most part, these poetic compositions are inspired by the light forms of the popular lyrics but elaborated with singular finesse.

Cal y Canto (1926-27) represents a change in trend towards the cultured and the avant-garde. This is the moment of  Gongora's influence, which is manifested in sonnets, compositions in triplets, cult romances, and even a poem in homage to Góngora. In both the classical stanzas and the avant-garde forms, Alberti demonstrates the same abundance of inspiration and the same virtuosity that once reflected in his assimilation of the popular.

A life crisis follows, where the ideas, beliefs, and feelings of the poet fluctuate. Under these circumstances, he composed his masterpiece: Sobre los angeles (1927-28). The first thing that is appreciated is a radical break with traditional poetic language. The technique used is surreal, with totally free images and a predominance of the free verse. The poet is expelled from a lost paradise, wandering through a chaotic and meaningless world, with an empty soul and an uninhabited body. Around him gathered some strange beings,  "angels" that symbolize cruelty, sadness, hopelessness, and death. Later, after joining the communist party (1931), he began his stage of political and social poetry, with a deep nostalgia for the lost homeland. It is then that he considers his previous work to be "bourgeois poetry" and subordinates his creation to the struggle for revolutionary ends. Significant of this stage is his book El poeta en la calle (1931-1965)

Marinero en tierra

Cal y canto

Sobre los ángeles

Un fantasma recorre Europa 

Versos de agitación 

Entre el clavel y la espada

Golfo de sombras 

The book consists of a series of short poems where the poet expresses with great beauty his longing for the sea.

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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Marinero en tierra (1924)

By Rafael Alberti

Time Period: Generation of '27

Genre: Poetry

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