Considered one of the most notorious voices in XNUMXth century Spanish literature, Miguel Hernández Gilabert (1910 - 1942) was a Spanish poet and playwright circumscribed to the Generation of 36. Although in some references this author is assigned to the Generation of 27 due to the intellectual exchange he had with several of its members, especially with Maruja Mallo or Vicente Aleixandre, to name a few.
He is remembered as a martyr who died under the oppression of Francoism.Because he was only 31 years old when he died due to tuberculosis in a prison in Alicante. This happened after he was arrested and sentenced to death (later his sentence was commuted to 30 years in prison). Hernández had a short life, but left a vast legacy of renowned works, among which are Moon expert, The lightning that never stops y The wind lurks.
Childhood, youth and influences
Miguel Hernández was born in Orihuela, Spain, on October 30, 1910. He was the third of seven siblings emerged from the union between Miguel Hernández Sánchez and Concepción Gilabert. It was a low-income family dedicated to raising goats. Consequently, Miguel began at an early age to carry out this trade, with no greater aspirations for educational training than elementary studies.
However, from the age of 15 the young Hernández complemented his herd care activities with an intense reading of authors of classical literature.to —Gabriel Miró, Garcilaso de la Vega, Calderón de la Barca or Luis de Góngora, among others— until he became a true self-taught man. During that time he began to write his first poems.
Likewise, He was a member of an improvised group of local literary gatherings together with prominent intellectual personalities. Among the characters he shared with, Ramón Sijé, Manuel Molina and the brothers Carlos and Efraín Fenol stand out. Later, at the age of 20 (in 1931) he received the Prize of the Artistic Society of the Orfeón Ilicitano for I sing to Valencia, a 138-line poem about the people and landscape of the Levantine coast.
Quote by Miguel Hernández.
Travel to Madrid
First trip
On December 31, 1931 he traveled to Madrid for the first time in search of a greater exhibition. But Hernández did not land a significant job despite his reputation, good references and recommendations. Consequently, he had to return to Orihuela after five months. However, it was a very fruitful period from the artistic point of view, because he came into direct contact with the work of the Generation of 27.
Similarly, his stay in Madrid gave him the theory and inspiration necessary to write Moon expert, his first book, published in 1933. That same year he returned to the Spanish capital when he was appointed collaborator - later secretary and editor - in the Pedagogical Missions, under the protection of José María Cossío. Likewise, he frequently contributed to the Revista de Occidente. There he completed his plays Who has seen you and who sees you and a shadow of what you were (1933) The bravest bullfighter (1934) and Children of stone (1935)
Second trip
His second stay in Madrid found Hernández in a relationship with the painter Maruja Mallo. It was she who prompted him to write most of the sonnets of The lightning that never stops (1936)
The poet also became friends with Vicente Aleixandre and Pablo Neruda, with the latter he established a deep friendship. With the Chilean writer he founded the magazine Green Horse for Poetry and began to lean towards Marxist ideas. Then, Neruda's influence on Hernández was made evident by his brief passage through surrealism, as well as by his messages increasingly committed to the social and political problems of those times.
Ramón Sijé died in 1935, the death of his close lifelong friend motivated Miguel Hernández to create his legendary Elegy. Sijé (whose real name was José Marín Gutiérrez), had introduced him to who would be his wife, Josefina Manresa. She was his muse for many of his poems, as well as the mother of his two children: Manuel Ramón (1937 - 1938) and Manuel Miguel (1939 - 1984).
Josefina Manresa, who was the wife of Miguel Hernández.
Civil War, imprisonment and death
In July 1936 the Spanish Civil War broke out. After the beginning of the war activity, Miguel Hernández voluntarily enlisted in the Republican army and began his political activism attached to the Communist Party of Spain (reason for his subsequent death sentence). It was a period in which the poetry books began or ended Village wind (1937) Man stalks (1937 - 1938), Songbook and ballads of absences (1938 - 1941) and Onion Nanas (1939)
Additionally, he produced the plays The farmer with more air y Theater in war (both from 1937). During the war, he actively participated in the battle fronts in Teruel and Jaén. He was also part of the II International Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture in Madrid and briefly traveled to the Soviet Union on behalf of the government of the Republic.
At the end of the war in April 1939, Miguel Hernández returned to Orihuela. He was arrested trying to cross the border into Portugal in Huelva. He went through various prisons until He died in prison in Alicante on March 28, 1942, victim of bronchitis that led to typhus and, finally, tuberculosis.
Neruda's words after the death of Miguel Hernández
The nexus that Pablo Neruda developed with Miguel Hernández was very close. Both reached an estimate in nothing proportional to the time they shared. It can be said without equivocation that their affection was seasoned with the way in which they both managed to delve into the word. After the death of the poet, Neruda felt a strong pain. Among the things that the Chilean poet wrote and said about Hernández, this stands out:
«Remembering Miguel Hernández who disappeared in the dark and remembering him in full light is a duty of Spain, a duty of love. Few poets as generous and luminous as the boy from Orihuela whose statue will one day rise among the orange blossoms of his sleeping land. Miguel did not have the zenith light of the South like the rectilinear poets of Andalusia, but rather a light of earth, stony morning, thick honeycomb light waking up. With this matter hard as gold, alive as blood, he drew his lasting poetry. And this was the man that that moment from Spain banished to the shadows! It is our turn now and always to take him out of his mortal prison, enlighten him with his courage and his martyrdom, teach him as an example of a most pure heart! Give it light! Give it to him with strokes of remembrance, with blades of clarity that reveal him, archangel of a terrestrial glory who fell in the night armed with the sword of light! ».
Pablo Neruda
The poems of Miguel Hernández
Chronologically, his work corresponds to the so-called "generation of 36". Nevertheless, Dámaso Alonso referred to Miguel Hernández as the "great epigone" of the "generation of 27". This is due to the notable evolution of its publications, from the Catholic tendencies of the hand of Ramón Sijé in the magazine The Rooster Crisis towards more revolutionary ideas and writing compromised by the influence of Pablo Neruda.
Miguel Hernández is pointed out by literary specialists as the greatest exponent of “war poetry”. Here are some of his most notable poems (according to the Europa Press agency, 2018):
To my teacher MIGUEL HERNÁNDEZ, justice has not yet been enchanted by his unjust death. The justice of men and women will never be perfect, but divine justice did reward him with the return to material life, that is, Miguel HERNÁNDEZ, sorry, rather, the spiritual energy of the poet, was reincarnated to finish the cycles of the life that the civil war and its executioners cut it off with a vile ax blow.
To my teacher MIGUEL HERNÁNDEZ, justice has not yet been enchanted by his unjust death. The justice of men and women will never be perfect, but divine justice did reward him with the return to material life, that is, Miguel HERNÁNDEZ, sorry, rather, the spiritual energy of the poet, was reincarnated to finish the cycles of the life that the civil war and its executioners cut it off with a vile ax blow.
Our poet Miguel Hernandez will never be sufficiently recognized and honored. Nobody more human. Martyr for men's rights over fascist barbarism.