Dámaso Alonso and Fernández de las Rendondas (1898-1990) was a Spanish linguist, poet, teacher, literary critic, and also a member of the Generation of 27. He has been recognized for his work in the field of stylistics on language.
The work of Dámaso Alonso was oriented largely to the study and exhaustive and deep analysis of the texts of the writer Luís de Góngora. Such is the importance of his research, that it is an obligatory reference to understand the Gongorian literature..
As for Dámaso's poetry, it was characterized by being expressive, creative and having a high aesthetic level, whose main purpose was the defense and preservation of the Spanish language. On the other hand, the linguist was part of the Royal Spanish Academy and the Royal Academy of History.
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The poet was born in Madrid on October 22, 1898. He came from a family of good reputation and financial strength. His father was Dámaso Alonso y Alonso, a mining engineer, and his mother was named Petra Fernández de las Redondas Díaz. He lived his childhood in the town of La Felguera, in Asturias.
The first years of school training, Dámaso studied in La Felguera, which was his place of residence and also the seat of his father's work. Later he studied high school at the famous Jesuit College of Chamartín in Madrid..
Damaso was an outstanding student, especially in mathematics, which aroused in his father the illusion that he would study engineering. However, his taste and passion for literature was much stronger, and he confirmed it when he discovered the poetry books of the Nicaraguan Rubén Darío.
So the young Dámaso Alonso decided to study philosophy and letters, and law at the University of Madrid. At the same time, he completed his training at the Center for Historical Studies, where he had Ramón Menéndez Pidal as a mentor. The poet also participated in the activities of the Student Residence.
During the constant visits to the Student Residence, Alonso made friends with young people who were making their way into literature and who became great writers. Among his friends were: García Lorca, Luís Buñuel, Rafael Alberti, Manuel Altolaguirre and Vicente Aleixandre, whom he met in Las Navas del Marqués.
Years later, that group of friends began the Generation of 27 after a tribute to the famous Luís de Góngora. Perhaps it was this commemorative act that led him to study one of the most important poets of the Spanish Golden Age..
It is necessary to note that Dámaso Alonso, as a crown for the nascent group of writers, won the National Poetry Prize in 1927.
The poet married in March 1929 with Eulalia Galvarriato, a Spanish writer, who became his inseparable life partner. They met at the Student Residence, when she taught a Spanish course for foreigners.
Dámaso Alonso served as Professor of Language and Literature at the University of Oxford, UK. In 1933 he became part of the University of Valencia as a professor, until the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936.
As for many intellectuals, the outbreak of war was not easy for the poet. Damaso had, with some colleagues, take refuge in the Student Residence. The years following the uprising he lived in Valencia, where he continued his literary activity in the cultural magazine Spain time.
In 1941 he became part of the group of professors at the University of Madrid in the field of Romance philology. During the following years he served as a visiting professor at universities such as Cambridge, Stanford, Berlin, Leipzig and Columbia..
Both his literary work and his career as a professor made Dámaso Alonso worthy of several recognitions. In 1945 he was elected a member of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), and held the “d” chair. Eleven years later it became part of the Royal Academy of History.
He was also a member of the Association of Hispanists, and between 1962 and 1965 he served as its president. Later, 1968 to 1982, he was director of the RAE. In addition, on June 9, 1973, he entered the Mexican Academy of Language as an honorary member..
Germany and Italy also recognized his work, and made him a member of the Bavarian and della Crusca academies of Sciences, respectively. In 1978 he was awarded the Miguel de Cervantes Prize, part of the money he received was donated to the Royal Spanish Academy to carry out more research.
Dámaso Alonso enjoyed a long life, completely dedicated to literature, teaching and research, which brought him great satisfaction. However, his health began to deteriorate as he entered his ninth decade of life. His last two years he lost his speech. He died of a heart attack at the age of 91, on January 25, 1990.
The literary style of Dámaso Alonso, in the case of poetry, was oriented more to emotion than to beauty. He considered that reality could perfectly be part of it. His first works were influenced by the pure poetry of Juan Ramón Jiménez, therefore, the word mattered more than the rhetoric.
The language he used in his early works was simple and full of emotion, such is the example of Pure poems, city poems. Then his work changed its nuance, became more crystalline and human, he played a lot with the lyrics, as evidenced in The wind and the verse.
With the success of the war in Spain and all the consequences, Damaso's spirit changed, and this had a direct influence on his work. In such a way that after the conflict his poetry was of pain and at the same time of rage.
It was common at that time to use a racy and violent language that screamed in every word and every verse to be at odds with injustice and anguish..
This postwar poetry of the author was called by him as "uprooted poetry" since it was not protected by the fascist government. He always had the religious as an important point, especially God, as the culprit of the situation of chaos that the world was experiencing.
In such a way that you work like Man and god They were within that current, and the characteristics they presented were opposite to the classical norms. Free verses predominated, and the language was more direct, and at the same time dramatic.
Within the author's style, it is necessary to mention his study of stylistics, important in the development of his work on Luís de Góngora. This has to do with the analysis of language in terms of the use of artistic and aesthetic elements, in order to understand and understand the message.
For Alonso, stylistics were related to intuition, and at the same time with emotions, meanings and imagination. He considered that it had to do with speech; concluded that for each style in a literary work there was a unique stylistic variety.
As a poet, Dámaso Alonso expressed creativity, a high degree of passion and depth in his works. His poetry was inspired by the experiences of his existence, that is why over time it evolved and changed. The following were the most prominent titles:
- Pure poems. Poemillas of the city (1921).
- The wind and the verse (1925).
- Children of wrath (1944).
- Dark news (1944).
- Man and god (1955).
- Three sonnets on the Castilian language (1958).
- Chosen poems (1969).
- Poetic anthology (1980).
- Joys of the view. Pure poems. Poems of the city. Other poems (nineteen eighty one).
- Anthology of our monstrous world. Doubt and love about the supreme being (1985).
- That day in Jerusalem: car of the Passion, for radio broadcast (1986).
- Poetic anthology (1989).
- Album. Youth verses (1993).
- Literary verse and prose, complete works. Volume X (1993).
- Personal anthology (2001).
- They called a river Damaso: a poetic anthology (2002).
This work was published in 1921. Being one of Alonso's first works, it contains traits of pure poetry. The language was simple, and the tonality was quite welcoming, they were short poems, most of them two stanzas. He dealt with topics such as life, eternity, love and nature.
"This long avenue
It seems.
Today, with the fall, it has
your half light,
your white and thin flesh,
your aristocracy
and your way of wrapping me
with long eyelashes
in doubtful cold
and weak.
Oh if i could now
kiss you chastely
red and sweet mouth
forever!".
It was the second collection of poems by Dámaso Alonso, conceived between 1923 and 1924. In this work he still conserved the influence of Juan Ramón Jiménez with pure poetry. However, the poetic theme was simpler and at the same time human, the play on words and the religious predominated.
On the other hand, the poet raised an opposition between the perspective of the real and the ideal of life. The symbolism was present, as a way of expressing that the reality of existence could be lost, in addition time and beauty are added as the path towards the desire for the ideal.
"Others will want mausoleums
where the trophies hang,
where no one has to cry.
And I don't want them, no
(I say it in a song)
Because I
I would like to die in the wind,
like seafarers,
at sea.
They could bury me
in the wide trench of the wind.
Oh how sweet to rest,
go buried in the wind,
like a captain of the wind;
like a captain of the sea,
dead in the middle of the sea ".
The first publication of this work came out in 1944; two years later Dámaso Alonso produced a second edition, to which he made some corrections, and added material. It has been considered the most outstanding and renowned work of this Spanish author.
As a post-war work, its content was about the anger and pain that the poet felt about the situation and the chaos that the Spanish lived through. He exposed topics such as humanity, emotions, freedom and individual responsibilities in a universe submerged in calamity..
The work has been seen as a criticism of the author towards society. Therefore, the language he used was rude and defiant, often offensive and derogatory, with the intention of arousing reactions. God is present as a being who, according to the author, does not always act on time.
"Where is that woman going,
crawling down the sidewalk,
now that it's almost night,
with the cruet in hand?
Come closer: he does not see us.
I don't know what is more gray,
if the cold steel of his eyes,
if the faded gray of that shawl
with which the neck and head are wrapped,
or if the desolate landscape of your soul.
It goes slowly, dragging its feet,
wearing out sole, wearing slab,
but carried
for a terror
dark, by a will
to dodge something horrible ... ".
The theme of this work was existential in nature, a constant questioning of life. God is present as the creator of all things that are not always, in the author's judgment, perfect, and his help is not guaranteed. The religious concern on the part of Dámaso Alonso was evidenced.
The poet used analogies and symbolisms such as light and shadow, to explain the good and the bad of the world. On the other hand, it revealed the need for human beings to find the path to spirituality as the way out to a more peaceful and serene existence, as the end of chaos.
"Oh chiaroscuro treasure of the sleeper!
Pulled down the edge, flowed sleep.
Just space.
Light and shadow, two very fast hinds,
they flee towards the fresh water hole,
center of everything.
Is living nothing more than the brush of its wind?
Flight of the wind, anguish, light and shadow:
shape of everything.
And the hinds, the tireless hinds,
paired arrows to the milestone,
they run away and run away.
The space tree. (The man sleeps)
At the end of each branch there is a star.
Night: the centuries ".
The poet began to write this book in 1954, based again on questions about human existence, and especially in the relationship with God. In addition, he referred to the vision of the beauty of the world, as well as human pleasures.
Alonso developed the idea of man as the central point of the world, and of God looking at him through him. He also referred to divine greatness, and the freedom of the human being. The language used was simple, serene and with a broad reflective character.
"Man is love. Man is a beam, a center
where the world is knotted. If man fails
again the void and the battle
of the first chaos and the God who screams I enter!
Man is love, and God dwells within
from that deep chest, in it he becomes silent;
with those snooping eyes, behind the fence,
your creation, stunned encounter.
Love-man, total rule system
I (my universe). Oh god don't annihilate me
you, immense flower that grows in my insomnia! "...
This work by Dámaso Alonso was oriented in a certain way to the importance of language, the poems constitute the birth towards the need of the word for communication. For the poet it meant light in darkness, order within chaos.
The first sonnet is related to awakening to life, and the influence of speech, which, even when not understood, has powerful meanings. The second refers to the world that is inherited, where one grows and learns, and the last with the brotherhood produced by the language that is shared.
“Brothers, those of you who are far away
behind the immense waters, the near
from my native Spain, all brothers
because you speak this language which is mine:
I say 'love', I say 'my mother',
and crossing seas, mountains, plains,
-oh joy- with Castilian sounds,
a sweet effluvium of poetry comes to you.
I exclaim 'friend', and in the New World,
'friend' says the echo, from where
It crosses the entire Pacific, and it still rings.
I say 'God', and there is a deep cry;
and 'God' in Spanish, everything responds,
and 'God', only 'God', 'God' the world fills ".
This book was written during the poet's old age, and was perhaps a reflection of the fear of losing his sight after a serious retinal disease. However, it was also the spontaneous expression of the beauty of the world, with all its nuances, and the advantage of being able to see it.
The work was composed of a poem structured or divided into ten parts. In the fourth, which is called "Two prayers", you can see and feel Dámaso Alonso's desire to continue enjoying the pleasures that the sense of sight gives him..
"My God, we do not know of your essence, nor of your operations.
And your face? We make up images to
explain to you, oh inexplicable God: as the blind
with the light. If in our blind night our soul is shaken
with longings or terrors, it is your pen hand or your claw
of fire that caresses or flagellates ... We lack
Of the deep eyes that can see you, oh God.
Like the blind man in his pool for the light. Oh blind all! All plunged in darkness! ".
It was one of the last works of the poet, and was related to the immortal soul. Regarding the subject, Dámaso Alonso presented three hypotheses: the soul ceases to exist when the body expires; there is a non-soul that refers to brain functions; and finally the eternal soul that needs the presence of God.
"Is there a possibility of the supreme 'Being'?
I did not believe it, the more I thought to beg
that such a 'Being' existed, and perhaps, existing,
the soul could be already 'eternal' always.
And would the omnipotent 'Being' do it? ".
In his philological work or text studies, it was where stylistics predominated. The following were the most relevant works of Dámaso Alonso in this area:
- Portrait of teenage artist (1926, he signed it under the pseudonym Alfonso Donado).
- Critical edition of The Solitudes of Luís de Góngora (1927).
- Góngora's poetic language (1935).
- The poetry of Saint John of the Cross (1942).
- Spanish poetry: Essay of methods and stylistic limits (1950).
- Contemporary Spanish poets (1952).
- Gongorian studies and essays (1955).
- Galician-Asturian notes of the three Oscos (1957).
- From the dark ages to the Golden (1958).
- Gongora and Polyphemus (1960).
- Spanish songbook and ballads (1969).
- Galician-Asturian oral narratives. San Martín de Oscos I: Memories of childhood and youth (1969).
- Around Lope (1972).
- Oral narratives in Galician-Asturian from Los Oscos. Stories of healing formulas and charms by Carmen de Freixe. San Martin de Oscos (1977).
Finally, it can be said that Dámaso Alonso's work as a philologist and poet was dedicated and at the same time meticulous. Characterized in all its forms by creativity and the need to go beyond what was at first glance, the linguistic and expressive qualities gave him a place of honor..
His work on stylistics, especially that based on Luís de Góngora, has become a reference for analysis and studies. On the other hand, Alonso, with his poetry, expressed his continuous concern for the religious issue, and even more so about the relationship between man and God, spirituality was recurrent.
His poetic work has also been considered one of the most beautiful, and at the same time painful, due to the theme, the form and the substance. The poet gave way to philosophical issues from a human perspective, through the anguishes, desires and concerns that he himself came to feel.
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