Machado was a humble and highly sensitive man with a sober and austere character. Hence, his sensibility made him identified himself so much with the austere Castilian landscape.  To him, poetry was an essential word in time that captures the essence of things in time and space. He also said that 'poetry is the dialogue of man with his time', which indicates the warmth and endearing humanity that permeates all his work. 

His poetic language is progressively refined until it acquires exceptional sobriety and density. It is in his first book, Soledades (1903), that he reflects on Modernism in a very intimate way, connecting it to a sentimental Romanticism. Machado writes looking inward, in an intimate monologue, trying to capture what he calls 'the universals of feeling'. His poetry revolves pessimistically around three themes: time, death, and God. That is to say, the problem of destiny, of the human condition. To this three he also adds the positive one of love, although more dreamed than lived. Loneliness, melancholy, or anguish are the results of that look to the bottom of his soul.

Campos de Castilla (1912) is undoubtedly his masterpiece. His meeting with Castilla is a privileged one, its aridity and austerity lead him to identify Castilla fully with his soul. Paintings of landscapes and people or meditations on Spanish reality dominate here. Even though on his poems the landscapes seem collected with absolute objectivity, a careful look reveals how Machado projects his own feelings on those lands, operating a selection that selects the most severe ones, reflecting his loneliness, and meditations on death. Machado's intimistic work signifies a singular approach to serious human problems, with a depth and sensitivity identification of a poet with land hardly match on any other poet. 

Soledades: poesías

Campos de Castilla

Nuevas canciones

La tierra e Alvargonzález

Poesías completas

Juan de Mairena

La Lola se va a los puertos

It is a compilation of poetry written shortly before the death of his wife Leonor. The poet sadly recalls the happy times with his wife and meditates on the nature of man in the world.

Poetry

The Generation of '98 is made up of a series of writers who respond with their literary works to the tragic awareness of decline that is perceived in Spain at the end of the 19th century. In 1895 began the rebellion of the overseas colonies against the metropolis. The decisive intervention of the United States in favor of the colonies, particularly in Cuba, forces Spain to sign the Treaty of Paris, by which it abandons what was left of its old empire. Human and economic losses will go down in history under the name of "Disaster of 98". 

The founding nucleus of writers from the Generation of '98 is made up of Azorín, Pío Baroja, and Ramiro de Maeztu. Autodidacticism and their religious heterodoxy are some of the traits that most identify them, in addition to their revolutionary ideas and their admiration for similar philosophers of the time. They will be joined by Unamuno, Antonio Machado, and Valle-Inclán. All of them are concerned about the politics of the moment, the historical problems of Spain, and its desire for Europeanization. 

From an aesthetic point of view, his style is characterized by a sustained opposition to traditional rhetoric, as well as a taste for the use of traditional speaking in their writings. The subjectivist character of the literary movement impregnates these authors' works with an intense subjectivism, notably in their descriptions of the Castilian landscape, where what is seen is inseparable from the way of looking, fusing landscape with their soul in an intense combination of reality and sensitivity.

Generation of '98

Antonio Machado publishes his collection of poems Soldedades, galerias y otros poemas.

Azorín publishes Castilla, a book that represents the quintessence of Azorín's work, contemplating the landscape as a "small" story passed through time and seeking in literature an expression of the national spirit.

Antonio Machado publishes Campos de Castilla, a book that includes a mixture of poems, proverbs and a romance, in which the autor captures the tark landscape and spirit of Castile.

José Ortega y Gasset prublishes Meditaciones del Quijote, a profound introspection on the universal meaning of life.

Miguel de Unamuno publishes his novel Niebla, a story of impossible love that explores the confusion of existence.

Juan Ramón Jiménez publishes Platero y yo, a prose poem about his homeland in Andalusia, tells the story of a man and his donkey.

Ortega y Gasset publishes La deshumanización del arte, a philosophical book in which he alludes to avant-garde art and literature (the “isms”) that emerged after the First World War.

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

Marcel Proust publishes In Search of Lost Time, the story of Proust's own life, told as an allegorical search for truth.

Frank Kafka publishes The Metamorphosis, the life struggles of a man that wakes up one morning inexplicably transform into a huge insect.

Herman Hesse publishes Demian, a demonic hero who rejects Chistian morality with contempt.

The play Six Characters in Search of an author, by Luigi Pirandello is performed for the first time. The work is an aburdist methatheatrical play in which the caracters claim that they are incomplete creations of an author who couldn't finish the work for which they were conceived. 

Rainer Maria Rilke publishes his collectionof then elegies,Duino Elegies, a loud cry out of his solitude.

Italo Calvino publishes Zeno's Conscience, a novel about a neurotic Italian businessman.

World economic crisis starts in New York.

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Campos de Castilla (1917)

By Antonio Machado

Time Period: Generation of '98

Genre: Poetry

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