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José Hierro's “Para un esteta”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

David Bary
David Bary*
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Barbara
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Abstract

The 1952 poem is commonly read as a manifesto of Spain's contemporary “social” poets and as an expression of their aversion to the estheticism of a previous poetic generation. The “esthete” addressed in the poem seems at first glance to be an obvious caricature of Juan Ramón Jiménez. The “esthete,” on closer examination, differs significantly from Jiménez in several respects. Jiménez shares neither his interest in abstract beauty divorced from existential concerns nor his overly refined, “literary” language. The only real point of identity between Jiménez and the “esthete” lies in their shared concern for the “Obra” as a substitute for personal immortality; but even that concern is typical of only one period in Jiménez' career. A comparison between Jiménez and Hierro reveals no such clear contrast in their approaches to poetry as that implied by Hierro between himself and the “esthete.” The latter turns out to be a straw man reflecting some aspects of Jiménez, some of the vanguard poets of the twenties, and something of a half-hidden visionary side of Hierro himself. Hierro seems to have invented the “esthete” as a means of affirming his own poetic individuality, a maneuver which was surely unnecessary in view of the fact that by 1952 Hierro already possessed an unmistakably personal style.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 83 , Issue 5 , October 1968 , pp. 1347 - 1352
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1968

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References

1. From the book Quinla del 42 (1952). The poem is cited from José Hierro, Poesias complétas (1944-62) (Madrid, 1962), pp. 294–295. Page references to this edition will hereafter be given parenthetically in my text.

2. See Antonio Sânchez-Barbudo, La segunda êpoca de Juan Ramon Jimenez (Madrid, 1962), I, 79–80, for a discussion of the theme of the “Obra” in the books Poesia and Belleia.

3. i, 15—18, et passim. In this article the conclusions of Sânchez-Barbudo are assumed as both public knowledge and received opinion.

4. Sânchez-Barbudo, i, 112.

5. On the question of this “nombrar” see my article “Sobre el nombrar poético en la poesia espafiola contemporânea,” in Papeles de Son Armadans, cxxxi (Feb. 1967), 161–189.

6. An opinion shared by Sánchez-Barbudo, i, 113.

7. From Eiemidades. Libres de poesia (Madrid, 1959), p. 553.

8. From Poesia, Libres de poesia, p. 889.

9. Sânchez-Barbudo, i, 118 ff.

10. i, 78 n.