Spanish_Literature

Choose a text from the Spanish so called “poesía novísima” or from other late expressions of Spanish contemporary poetry discussed in class and analyse it in relation to its author and the historical and cultural context. Try to compare and contrast the chosen text with at least another author/work treated in the second part of the module. In this essay, I will be discussing the social, historical and cultural aspects of ‘poesia novísimos’, a wave of poets that emerged in the 1970s, especially after the death of General Franco in 1975. During the dictatorship of General Franco, poetry was used as a means of propaganda. Creativity was restrained by the rampant censorship of the regime. However, towards the end of the regime, there began to be some opposition to the ruling elite. Poets and writers were openly critical about the regime. The writings of the time were more subversive and openly defiant. A whole generation would grow up ignorant of both the classic literature of Spanish and Western Europe. In addition, politics kept people from reading works from authors of the ‘other side’ or leftist works. Equally important was the censorship of works from both Antonio Machado and Federico García Lorca has died and countless others had left the country. There have been many different types of poetry and literary movement in Spain since the beginning of the 20th Century. The Existential Poetry that was popular after the Spanish Civil War (1940-1950). The Civil War and its traumatic aftermath prompted the abandonment of pure poetry for simpler approaches. Formal discipline, devotion to clarity through direct imagery, and a reduced vocabulary were stressed, and the social and human content increased. In the 1950s and 1960s, there was a move towards social realism in poetry, known as poesia social. These “Social” poets shared utilitarian views of their art. Poetry became a tool for changing society, the poet being merely another worker struggling toward a better future. These altruistic writers renounced artistic experimentation and aesthetic gratification in favour of propagandistic goals, sociological themes, and authorial self-effacement. This made way for a new movement called ‘poesia novisimo’. This movement emphasized museums, foreign films, international travel—anything but contemporary Spain with its problems. Los Novísimos ‘Poesia Novisimo’ refers to a group of poets that were published in a poetry anthology called ‘Nine Very New Spanish Poets (Nueve novísimos poetas españoles). This group of poets had two groups within themselves, ‘Los Seniors’ and ‘La Coqueluche’. ‘Los Seniors’ included the poets Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Antonio Martínez Sarrión and José María Álvarez and the ‘La Coqueluche’ or also known as the ‘younger talents’ were Félix de Azúa, Pere Gimferrer, Vicente Molina Foix, Guillermo Carnero, Ana María Moix and Leopoldo María Panero. The main characteristics of the group were the poetry was avant-garde and mood provoking. There was formal experimentation of poetry; they used different methods to express their ideas of the poems, and various techniques such as ellipsis, syncope and collage, which are the use of word omission, the omission of sounds or letters from within a word and incorporating elements from other literary sources. There was a lack of commitment and disregard for the traditional and the writing style had total freedom. Many of the poems had exotic elements and artificiality. Poems like ‘A death in Beverly Hills’ has visual elements in the poetry. This group of poets differed was that the poems focused on cultural aspects of the time. There were a lot of influences from film, music and comics. Another characteristic of the group was that the poems featured aspects of surrealism and cosmopolitan. Their literary formation was fundamentally foreign and cosmopolitan, which meant there was a rejection of the immediate Spanish tradition, with some exceptions. The rediscovery of the "damned" writers in the Spanish language: Octavio Paz, José Lezama Lima and the Baroque writers such as Francisco de Quevedo and Luis de Góngora among many others. There was study of foreign authors like T.S Eliot and the return to the Spanish modernist movement that was started by Rubén Darío. Within the movement there were two factions that coexisted inside the group: the Culturalists who included the poets Guillermo Carnero, José María Álvarez and Pere Gimferrer and those that connected to pop aesthetic, counterculture or pop culture such as Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Leopoldo María Panero. However, by the mid-1950s, a new generation which had only experienced the Spanish civil war in childhood was coming of age. They grew up with the social and political ideals of the regime, which affected all aspects of their lives and upbringing. However, by the early 1960s, the brief social realist genre that was in trend that the time, began to growing stale. Numerous novelists took a brief hiatus from writing. The general consensus as a new decade began was that the straightforward “realism” of the previous decade, while manifesting the brutal “truth” of contemporary Spanish life under Franco, ultimately failed politically because of the authoritarian regime crushing the very opposition to which these writers aspired. The death of Franco on 20 November 1975 was not a milestone in the history of Spanish culture. What came to be called discreetly “the inevitable biological fact” was something that politicians had been expecting for some time. It is also commonly accepted that the “Transition” began in 1973, when Admiral Carrero Blanco died in an attack by ETA. As far as intellectual life was concerned, since the beginning of the 1960s the “culture of Francoism” was little more than a phantom. By 1975, opposition to the Franco régime was expressed almost openly. It is true that at that time important books still could not circulate but there was a group of writers that began to openly express their opposition to the regime. The poem ‘La muerte en Beverly Hills/Death in Beverly Hills’ was written by the Catalan poet Pere Gimferrer. He was born in Barcelona. His most famous works are the Post poems in Castilian as the Tetrarch (1963), Burning the Sea (1966, National Poetry Award), Death in Beverly Hills (1968) and Strange Fruit (1969) orientation surreal. Among his outstanding works in Catalan miralls Els (Mirrors, 1970), Time foscant (Time obscured, 1972), (Fire blind, 1973). This is a discursive poetry, meta that tests linking the Baroque and avant-garde. He explores the vague boundaries between real reality and artistic reality. He also wrote poems in Catalan, L'espai desert (Desert Space, 1977), Aparicions (Apparitions, 1981) and Gale (1988). In 1998, he was awarded the highest literature prize in Spain for his body of work. The poem was written in 1968. Gimferrer has indicated that the poem was based on a true event and is presenting a sad vision of love. The poem has many features of the Novisimo group’s characteristics. The poem is written in the style of Free verse, Free verse is a form of poetry that refrains from consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any other musical pattern. There is a lot of action happening in the poem such as the death of a woman, who is apparently a prostitute, the lovers kissing in the lifts to reach the dawn, the lights of the neon signs. In the poem, there is a lack of rhyme or meter, unlike traditional poems, that have one or both features. The poem is dedicated to experimenting with form. The poem highlights the importance of cinema, the actress Ava Gardner is mentioned. The title of the poem and the fact that the poem is preceded by a quote from a film dictionary describing Beverly Hills as ‘an area where some of the biggest Hollywood actors live’. The poet then includes references to the Hollywood stars, images of films and the experience of the moviegoer’s experience as well. This is another characteristic of the movement that incorporated the cultural influences of film and mass culture in their poetry. The poem is like a contrast between the splendour of Hollywood and shooting at night In the poem, there is an emphasis of the complexity of language such as ‘is dead at the depot one whose body was a bouquet of orchids". The poetry is visual, as the images become more important than the other elements. There is use of imaginary elements describing ‘avenues blues’. The stylistic devices used in the poem, includes personifications, for example in the poem, light is given human attributes that the light can stop passers-by, ‘light that stops passers-by’ or ‘(Light) speaks softly of her childhood’. There is also use of epithet, which is an adjective or phrase expressing a characteristic quality or attribute of the person or thing mentioned, for example ‘yellow lights’ and ‘sun amazing’. There is also use of metaphor "one whose body was a bouquet of orchids" (the dead woman) and as well as comparison "when he died of love, and it was like smelling a perfume slowly’. There are some surreal elements ‘in the dark sky the stars fought’. Guillermo Carnero was born in Valencia in 1947. Ha publicado nueve libros de poesía desde 1967, y ediciones de su obra poética completa. He has published nine books of poetry since 1967, and editions of his complete poetic works. Sus poemas han sido traducidos a numerosos idiomas. His poems have been translated into numerous languages. Ha recibido importantes premios literarios. He has received major literary prizes. Es especialista en literatura española y comparada de los siglos XVIII y XIX , y ha publicado seis libros sobre los temas de su especialidad. He specializes in Spanish and comparative literature from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and has published six books on topics of their specialty. Debido a su sólida formación intelectual y a la continua introducción de motivos culturales en sus poemas, Carnero representa la tendencia culturalista de los autores novísimos.Due to its strong intellectual training and the continuous introduction of cultural motifs in his poems, Ram represents the cultural trends of the newest authors. Tanto él como Pere Gimferrer han sido calificados como poetas venecianos por su esteticismo y su cuidado de la elaboración poética. He and Pere Gimferrer have been described as ‘Venetian poets’ for their aestheticism and care of poetic production. The poem ‘Mira el breve minuto de la rosa/Watch the brief minutes of the Rose’ was written by the poet Guillermo Carnero. Among poets who gained prominence after Franco, whose work is characterised by a plethora of cultural references and centered upon the theme of death. The main theme of the poem is about the loss of beauty over time. To indicate this, it uses the symbol of the rose to represent beauty and the stem serves to indicate old age. Like in ‘La muerte en Beverly Hills’ there is no rhyme or meter that is a feature from all the poets in the movement. The poem is largely referring to the senses, he uses words like touch, spots as in to see, and this is to encourage the reader to imagine the rose. As the title shows, the poem is visual in nature, describing the rose. There is use of personification ‘the rose trembles’. Both poems are very similar in style. The poems are written in free verse and there is no rhyme or meter in both the poems. However ‘La muerte en Beverly Hills’ has more cultural references and is about a sad love, while ‘Mira el breve minuto de la rosa’ is about the loss of beauty over time. The poems are similar in the sense that they are not political poems that there is no reference to Spain or what was happening at the time. The poems are visual and include elements of surrealism and personification. The poem ‘Mira el breve minuto de la rosa’ is about nature and is describing a nature state, that beauty ages, while is describing a death in Hollywood, where an artificial reality through the medium of film is created. There are many factors which the writers wrote the poems that influenced their poetry, even though it is not explicit. It could be argued that the lack of social/political reality in the poems was a way of showing their opposition to the regime through a lack of acknowledgement. Bibliography Carnero, G ‘Mira el breve minuto de la rosa’ Debicki, Andrew P. (1994). After the War 1940-65. In: Spanish Poetry of the Twentieth Century: Modernity and Beyond. Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press. 55-98 Gareth Walters D. (2002). The Cambridge introduction to Spanish poetry. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. 155-190. Gimferrer, P ‘La muerte en Beverly Hills’