Antonio Machado is known for having been part of what is called the “Generation of ’98”, a group of Spanish intellectuals determined to rebuild a new popular consciousness after the Spanish-American war. Let’s discover its history and its poetic path.
Who was Antonio Machado
Antonio Machado (Seville, July 26, 1875 – Collioure, February 22, 1939) was a Spanish poet. It is born in the note Andalusian city forced to abandon her at the age of eight when he moved to Madrid with his family.
Here he attended the Institución Libre de Enseñanza and, once he grew up, he approached the theatrical and literary environments of the city. In the cafes he approaches figures such as Miguel de Unamuno or Juan Ramon Jimenez, receiving constant stimuli.
Antonio Machado and the beginning of his career
During his youth he also left for Paris where he met the likes of Oscar Wilde and Rubén Darío. In these years he made his debut with his first collection of poems entitled “Soledades”, while continuing to work as a professor. Several years pass before his most famous collection comes out, “Campos de Castilla”, published in the same period in which he loses his wife Leonor.
Upon his death he decides to return to Andalusia where a peaceful existence passes dedicating himself to his work and his passion for reading which he alternates with long walks.
In 1919 he moved near Madrid and returned to being active by strongly opposing Primo De Rivera during his dictatorship.
In addition to poems he also makes some theatrical texts together with his brother Manuel, including “Juan de Mañara” and “La Lola se va a los puertos” which achieved great success. In this period he also joined the Real Academia Española de la Lengua and meets Pilar, his second great love of life. Everything becomes complicated, however, with the arrival of the thirties and therefore the civil war which he witnesses entirely before dying in February 1939.
The style and poetics of Antonio Machado
In Machado’s poetics, various characteristic features such as the obvious can be observed influence of modernism that coexists with a simple factual language. It often turns out to be very intimate, as in the case of “Solitudes” which tells not only about this condition from a human point of view, but also about the spaces in which one lives.
The landscape then becomes central in “Campos de Castilla” with which it moves away from subjectivity to make room for a sort of historical dimension which retraces events of the past. His style then changes numerous times in subsequent collections, often touching on various themes.
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