His poetic vocation was awakened by reading the poetry of  Rubén Darío, Machado, and Juan Ramón Jiménez. The influence of the latter is evident in his initial poetry.  The most characteristic of his style are the grandiose metaphors and the free verse, wide, dramatic at times, calm at others, solemn almost always. For Aleixandre poetry is communication,  even more than beauty. He considers that there are no ugly or beautiful words in poetry, but only living words and dead words.  In his poetic creation, he is continually concerned with where will be to place each word, pretty or ugly, where that word seems to be necessary.

There are two clearly defined stages in his work. In the books of the first stage, he is influenced by  Surrealism, which will mark a large part of his production in key aspects of his style, such as the tone of secrecy and the abundance of visionary images. He develops here a tremendously pessimistic conception of man. Man is the most painful being in the universe: he is only imperfection, pain, and anguish. Humans are more fragile and vulnerable the more they humanize themselves. The perfect state would be a return to earth, to merge with Nature to participate in its glorious unity. In these lines was written Pasión de la tierra (1935). This unique conception gives many of his poems an undoubted telluric force. Sombras en el paraiso (1939-43) also belongs to this stage, where he gathers a vision of the cosmos in its glory, before the appearance of man and, with him, pain and limitation. It is a vision of a prodigious Eden, free from suffering and death. The poetic language of Aleixandre reaches its peak with this book.

In a second stage, his latest works, the language becomes simpler. From 1945 to 1953 he wrote Historia del Corazón (1954), a book that represents a new look and a new conception. The innovation consists of a more positive look at humanity in general and the individual in particular. The latter continues to be a suffering creature, but now the poet admires the brave and painful work of the individual to find redemption in daily life.  The keyword of this phase is solidarity, in which Aleixandre formulates his conception of the poet's work as a guardian of human conscience, standing up until the end.

La destrucción o el amor

Sombra del Paraíso

La ciudad y los perros

La guerra del fin del mundo

Pasión de la Tierra

Nombre escondido

The book covers the history of the heart of the human being, from his childhood, through living with others, until the arrival of old age.

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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Historia del corazón (1954)

By Vicente Aleixandre

Time Period: Generation of '27

Genre: Poetry

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