Luis Cernuda Bidou (1902-1963) was a Spanish poet and literary critic who belonged to the renowned Generation of 27. His work was characterized by being sensitive, nostalgic and transmitting pain, which is why it was framed within the neo-romantic literary movement.
At first the poet's work was oriented towards loneliness and skepticism, later it became more intimate and spiritual in nature. There were four stages through which his poetry passed: that of learning, that of youth, that of maturity and, finally, that of early old age.
Cernuda's passion and interest in poetry led him to his own poetic theory, in which he considered originality, the role of the poet, and the themes developed. On the other hand, his poetic work was, at times, a criticism of what prevented him from fulfilling his wishes.
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The poet was born in Seville, on September 21, 1902, into a family of a good economic class. His parents were the military Bernardo Cernuda Bousa, and Amparo Bidou Cuéllar, of French descent. Luis was the youngest of the brothers; her sisters were called Amparo and Ana.
Cernuda's childhood passed quietly, and many times he became boring, shy and sensitive. He and his sisters were always under the authoritarian and strong character of the father, who imparted an inflexible discipline. The mother was affectionate, and always had an air of melancholy.
Cernuda attended his first years of education in his hometown, specifically in the institution of the Piarist fathers. At the age of nine he began to have an interest in poetry, motivated by the transfer of Bécquer's remains from Madrid to Seville..
Under the guidance of a teacher at his school who taught him the essential rules of poetry, Cernuda began to write his first verses. It was during his high school years that the poet discovered his homosexuality; that made him feel outcast and influenced his poetry.
In 1919 he began to study law at the University of Seville, showing no interest and being invisible to his professors and colleagues. There he met the writer Pedro Salinas, who taught literature classes and with whom Cernuda had a good friendship, also supported him in his first publications.
Luís Cernuda left university studies aside in 1923 to serve in the military. This is how he entered the Seville Cavalry Regiment. A year later he returned to the university, and finished his law degree in 1925.
His interest in poetry grew stronger, so he began to attend with some friends the literary gatherings of his teacher, Salinas, and immersed himself in the readings of Spanish and French authors. In addition, he met Juan Ramón Jiménez, and his first verses were published in Western Magazine.
Cernuda traveled to the Spanish capital in 1926 in order to enter the publishing business. There he had the opportunity to work in print media Noon, Coast Y The truth. In 1927 he published his first poetic book: Air profile, which was not well received by critics.
In that same year, in the month of December, he attended the commemoration of the 300 years of the death of Luís de Góngora in the athenaeum of Seville. The Generation of 27 emerged right there. In 1928, after the death of his mother, he left Seville forever, but before he said goodbye to his friends.
Later he went to Madrid, where he befriended the poet Vicente Aleixandre. He spent time in France where he worked as a Spanish teacher at the University of Tolouse, and his taste for cinema was also born. In 1929 he returned to Madrid, with many new knowledge and experiences to explore in his poetry..
Installed in Madrid, he began to work as a bookseller, and continued to attend literary meetings with his friends Aleixandre and García Lorca. In 1931 he met an actor named Serafín Fernández Ferro, with whom he fell in love, but this only corresponded to him when he had an urgent need for money..
Cernuda's love situation left him with a high degree of dissatisfaction and pain, emotions that led him to write Where oblivion dwells Y The forbidden pleasures. Finally the poet, sad but determined, ended the relationship, and concentrated on new projects.
Luís Cernuda's interest in culture led him to take part, in 1931, of the pedagogical missions, a project oriented towards knowledge and teaching. He also wrote some articles for the magazine October and collaborated in Cross and Stripe, directed by José Bergamín.
In 1936 he published a first complete edition of his poetry, entitled The reality and desire. In addition, it was part of the tribute paid to the poet and playwright Ramón del Valle-Inclán. All events were prior to the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.
He wrote a poem to his friend Federico García Lorca after learning that he was shot. During the beginning of the war he enlisted in the Alpine Battalion, and they sent him to the Sierra de Guadarrama. Later, in 1937, he went to Valencia, where he worked in the magazine Spain time.
Cernuda left Spain in February 1938, first arriving in Paris, and then going to England, where he served as a lecturer. However, he did not feel comfortable because he did not get a job of his own for himself. The poet became friends with the politician and writer Rafael Martínez Nadal, whom he frequently visited.
Soon after he got a job teaching Basque refugee children in the county of Oxfordshire. He tried to return to Spain, but his friend Nadal convinced him to stay in London. Then he worked as a teacher at the Cranleigh School boarding school.
In 1939 he began teaching Spanish at the University of Glasgow, in Scotland. Between 1940 and 1941 he wrote the first version of Ocnos, published in 1942 in London. Already in 1943 he began to teach at the University of Cambridge, and wrote his work Clouds.
In 1947 Luís Cernuda left England for good, to go live in the United States. There he began teaching literature classes for five years at a school for girls in Massachusetts, where he obtained financial solvency, however the environment made him nostalgic.
Between 1949 and 1951 he made three trips to Mexico, where he felt comfortable because he was in contact with the Spanish language. In the Aztec country he began to write Poems for a body, inspired by a boy she met, named Salvador.
In 1951 he traveled to Cuba to give some talks and conferences, invited by the magazine origins. Luis Cernuda befriended the poet José Lezama Lima, and was reunited with his countrywoman María Zambrano. In 1952 the poet made the decision to leave the classes he taught in the United States to go live in Mexico..
In Mexico he established his sentimental relationship with the young Salvador Alighieri, with whom in his own words he said: "no other time ... I was so well in love." He also resumed contact with the writer Octavio Paz, and with the Altolaguirre-Méndez couple, to whose house he moved in 1953.
He obtained a position as an hourly professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, he also collaborated in various Mexican print media. In 1955 he received the pleasant news of being honored by artists from the Cántico Group, for his praiseworthy work and clean literary career.
In 1956 Cernuda began to write Chimera Desolation, and got that Poems for a body Y Studies on contemporary Spanish poetry were published a year later. In 1958 the poet published the third edition of The reality and desire and History of a book.
Between 1960 and 1962 he traveled to the United States to teach courses at the University of California and as a visiting professor at institutions in Berkeley and San Francisco. Cernuda died in Mexico on November 5, 1963 due to a heart attack, he never returned to his country. His remains rest in the Pantheon Garden.
Luís Cernuda's literary style was characterized by having his own language, always cultured and simple, and at the same time well structured. Scholars of his work do not include it within a particular current, because it contains different nuances. In many cases he left aside the abundance of literary resources.
Luís Cernuda undertook the task of developing a work on his growth as a poet in History of a book. In it, he considered three fundamental aspects that marked his style: tradition and originality, the functionality of the poet and the themes used in his work..
In tradition and originality, he referred to the respect and balance of these aspects in his work. For him it was important to abide by the traditional and proper, both of Spanish authors and the rest of Europe. That is why characteristics of various writers converge in his work.
Garcilaso de la Vega's metrics can be observed, as well as the development of themes such as love and mythology. Also present in his work is the influence of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, with his sensitivity and ability to perceive
Of course, peace cannot be set aside in a world of chaos, under the influence of T.S Elliot and Luís de León..
The writer Juan Ramón Jiménez was also fundamental due to the personal perception he had of reality and from which Cernuda took to suppress the superficial and put aside the ornate rhetoric. Finally the Generation of 27 showed him the way to a surrealist literature.
Regarding the role of the poet, the author was an exponent of the romantic, where his experiential solitude allowed him to observe things that other writers did not see. Cernuda's personal experiences led him to shout or express disappointment, frustration, exclusion, love and heartbreak in his poetry.
Cernuda's life was not easy from an emotional point of view, because his homosexuality had to express it at a time when it was considered sin, where society had many taboos. However, the isolation and loneliness he felt marked his destiny as a poet and gave life to his work.
That is why within his poetic style it is common to observe a constant opposition between desire and reality. The most frequent themes in his poetry were:
-Loneliness, because since he discovered his sexual orientation, which he never denied, he felt marginalized in a society that was neither tolerant nor understanding. In the case of desire, it was his personal longing to live in a world that accepted those who were different in many ways..
-Love never stopped appearing in Cernuda's poetry. It was expressed like this: the love that he felt, but did not enjoy; painful love, unrequited love, frustrated love; the happy and reciprocal love and, finally, the love that allowed him to defend himself from the world.
-Another of the topics addressed by Cernuda was nature, but more than anything that refers to the world and its essence. This was related to his desire to exist in a natural paradise, where stigmata and signs were not there to prevent the freedom of thoughts and feelings..
Luis Cernuda was a brilliant poet and prose writer, with a unique literary style, and with a work varied enough to be considered a distinguished writer. His poetry is qualified or structured in four stages, which are the following:
At this stage of his literary production the poet was inclined to write about love, and more specifically that related to Greek mythology. In the same way, a sober and elegant Cernuda is evidenced, in terms of his way of perceiving the world. Among the works of this stage are:
- Air profile (1927).
- Eclogue, elegy, ode (1928).
It was Cernuda's first work, and it has been considered that it has characteristics close to the work of Jorge Guillén. In this book the poet captured the taste for life, joy and vitality.
“On earth I am:
Letme be. I smile
to the whole world; strange
I am not because I live ".
This stage is related to surrealism, which led the poet to detach himself from repressed thoughts and social signals. The work belonging to this period was one of rebellion and rebellion, where the youth let him feel his sexual preference more fully, and so expressed it.
The following works stand out:
- A river, a love (1929).
- The forbidden pleasures (1931).
- Where oblivion dwells (1933).
- Invocations to the graces of the world (1935).
This work was conceived from the author's feelings, it expressed disappointment and lack of love for an own experience. Surrealism was present in this collection of poems, it was a way that the author found to separate himself from the reality he lived; a cultured and expressive language predominated.
“A gray man walks down the foggy street;
nobody suspects it. It is an empty body;
empty like pampas, like sea, like wind
deserts so bitter under unforgiving skies.
It's time past, and its wings now
among the shadow they find a pale strength;
it is remorse, that at night doubting;
secretly approaching his careless shadow ".
This book of poems by the Spanish author was inspired by his failed love with actor Serafín Fernández. In it, Cernuda began to be more determined in the use of surrealism as a way of going beyond the real; He wrote it in free verses, in addition the amorous and erotic themes are predominant.
"What a sad noise that two bodies make when they love each other,
it seems like the wind that sways in autumn
about mutilated teenagers,
while the hands rain,
light hands, selfish hands, obscene hands,
cataracts of hands that were one day
flowers in the garden of a tiny pocket ".
At this stage he wrote about the situation in Spain during the Civil War, and the influence of English poetry was also noted in some of his works. He also traveled to his past in Seville when he wrote one of his most important prose works: Ocnos (1942), expanded in 1949 and 1963.
- Clouds (1940-1943).
- Like who waits for the dawn (1947).
It was the first that the poet wrote during his exile. It is a lyrical work that deals with the events that occurred at the time of the Spanish Civil War, and what it meant to live far from Spain. It is a sensitive, evocative and nostalgic work.
"As beautiful as fire
beats in the still sunset,
fiery golden.
As beautiful as the dream
breathe into the chest,
alone demure.
As beautiful as silence
vibrate around kisses,
winged, sacred ".
He started it when he went to Mexico. It was a poetry characterized by themes of love and nostalgia for the remoteness of his land. The poet had put aside the harmony and musicality of the influence of Garcilaso de la Vega, and opted for the dense and dry, with a rhythm free of rhetorical ornaments..
The following works stand out:
- Live without living (1949).
- Poems for a body (1951, incorporated in With the hours counted).
- Variations on Mexican theme (1952).
- With the hours counted (1956).
- Chimera Desolation (1962).
It was conceived in exile, under the influence of German and English writers. It consisted of 28 poems, whose titles were composed of an article and a noun. Cernuda used a simple and expressive language to describe themes such as loneliness, and also his taste for nature.
"Well I know that this image
always fixed in mind
it's not you, but shadow
of the love that exists in me
before time runs out.
My love so visible you seem to me,
for me endowed with that same grace
that makes me suffer, cry, despair
of everything sometimes, while other
lifts me up to the sky of our life,
feeling the sweetnesses that are saved
only to the chosen ones after the world ... ".
It was a play about exile, but in a more personal and thoughtful way. He referred to the feeling of those who were outside their country and missed him, counteracted with those who lived quietly outside of it, accepting the circumstances of life.
The poet began to reflect a fragility in his spirit, perhaps he foresaw the end of his days. Nostalgia and the desire for the moments lived lead him to feel reality in a more crude way, and that is how he captured it in each verse..
"That you were never life companions,
goodbye.
boys who will never be life companions,
goodbye.
The time of a life separates us
impassable:
aside the free and smiling youth;
to another the humiliating and inhospitable old age ...
Old stain hand
the youthful body if you try to caress it.
With lonely dignity the old man must
walk past the belated temptation.
Goodbye, goodbye, bundles of graces and gifts,
that soon I have to leave confident,
where, knotted the broken thread, say and do
what is missing here
what in time to say and do here I did not know ".
Regarding this genre, the following texts stand out:
- Studies on contemporary Spanish poetry (1957).
- Poetic Thought in English Lyric (1958).
- Poetry and literature I (1960).
- Poetry and literature II (1964, posthumous).
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