The 3 most important WORKS of Luis CERNUDA

Inside of spanish poetry of the first half of the 20th century, Luis Cernuda positioned himself as one of the renowned poets. He was born in Seville in 1902 and trained in law. Right there, in his hometown, he was a disciple of the writer Pedro Salinas. Added to this, and influenced by romanticism and different references from his time, he launched into poetic creation. In this lesson from a PROFESSOR we will delve into the characteristics of the verses of Luis Cernuda and his most important works.

Index

1. Luis Cernuda's style
2. Profile of the air, one of Luis Cernuda's outstanding works
3. The forbidden pleasures
4. Clouds

Before highlighting the most important works of the Sevillian author, let's see what are the main elements of his poetry and the path that was made in it. lyric. To begin with, it is worth mentioning that Luis Cernuda is one of the fundamental figures of the Generation of 27. But what does it mean? Well, this was a literary trend where poets, filmmakers, playwrights and prose writers united similar ideas in poetic creation between 1923 and 1927 in Spain.

With this influence and his later experimentation in personal creation, his poetry has a romantic root and he plays at making contrapositions between reality and desire. As Carlos Monsiváis points out, for Luis Cernuda love opposes and defines the worldFor him, poets have "the ability to fall in love" where he finds the "aesthetic that allows him [to create]".

Among rhymes that exalt language and construct various images that rescue the forms of speaking of colonialism, Cernuda went through different periods marked by sensitivity, melancholy and pain. The first works of the poet stand out a certain spirit of loneliness and nihilism to then transform his discourse from intimacy and spirituality. This led him to acquire a personal style and against the current.

Thus, he decided to deal with issues such as loneliness, desire and the different forms of love. Already at the end of his life, after going into exile in different countries in order to Civil war, he settled in Mexico and wrote his last verses between 1952 and 1963.

We talk about the stages in the life of an artist to classify his work, in this case we have selected an outstanding work from each stage of the life of Luis Cernuda. A first moment of youth and artistic initiation; a second moment of youth where a certain poetic mastery is demonstrated; finally, a third moment where the author enters a stage of maturity and makes it known with the launch of a collection of poems that would give rise to the last installment of his works until his death in the exile.

Air profile

With a dedication to his teacher Pedro Salinas, Cernuda publishes his first collection of poems in 1927 as a magazine supplement Coast. This publication begins a process of learning and immersion in poetry in his life. Through twenty-nine poems he constructs images that refer to the natural world temporarily situated (he puts us in the fall, at night, somewhere) that are accompanied by an introspection emotional. However, Cernuda is sober and does not seek to make amplified descriptions.

Four years after publishing Air profile, Cernuda he is marked by the current surrealism, which results in the creation of The forbidden pleasures. With this book he opens a new aesthetic stage of his poetry: he uses the Free verse and prose to compose poems loaded with love and eroticism. In this case, the author makes explicit that his conception of full love and eroticism is exclusively homosexual.

As Monsiváis indicates in his study of this poetry, Cernuda

“He renounces any subterfuge and challenges a medium, the Spain of the thirties, where assuming oneself as homosexual, outside or inside the poem, is a social suicide. Without respite, he fights for the civil rights of a minority with the simplest method: to exercise them widely ”.

With this book he was already marking his exile, his distancing from certain values ​​and the resistance from art to an established romantic order.

Finally, with his collection of poems Clouds Cernuda takes us into a new step in her poetic production. They say this book marks his maturity as an artist. At this point she had lived long enough and had already experimented lyrically. She had the tools to inspire herself; his exile and the time of war served to compose.

It is precisely this condition that accompanied Spain with the Civil War that determines the subtitle of this book “Desolation of the Chimera”. With this, Cernuda makes a symbolic reference to a country that has abandoned its children and seems not to reach an ideal expected by its population. In this work we find poetic games that dramatize scenes from the Gospel, enter into dialogues with God, acquire existential tones, etc.

If you want to read more articles similar to Luis Cernuda: most important works, we recommend that you enter our category of History of Literature.

• Carnero, G. (1988). Luis Cernuda and poetic purism: Profile of the air.
• Monsivais, C. (2009). Luis Cernuda. Mexico: National Autonomous University of Mexico.