Biography of Antonio Machado | Spanish poet.

(Seville, 1875 - Collioure, 1939) Spanish poet. Although influenced by Art Nouveau and symbolism, his work is lyrical expression of the ideology of the generation of 98. Son of the folklorist Antonio Machado and Alvarez and brother of the poet Manuel Machado, also spent his childhood in Seville and in 1883 settled with his family in Madrid.

It is formed in the Institución Libre de Enseñanza and other institutes from Madrid. In 1899, during a first trip to Paris, he worked in the publishing house Garnier, and subsequently returned to the French capital, where he became friends with R. Dario. Back to Spain he frequented literary environments, where he met J. R. Jiménez, r. del Valle-Inclán and M. de Unamuno.

In 1907, he was Professor of French at the Institute of Soria, city in which two years later married Leonor Izquierdo. In 1910 was granted a pension to study Philology in Paris for a year, which took the opportunity to attend the courses of philosophy of H. Bergson and Bedier in the Collège de France. After the death of his wife, in 1912, he joined the Institute of Baeza.

Doctorate in philosophy and letters (1918), served his Professorship in Segovia and in 1928 he was elected member of the Royal Spanish Academy. At the beginning of the Civil War he was in Madrid, where he moved with his mother and other family members Rocafort Valencia village and then to Barcelona. In January 1939 he undertook road to exile, but death surprised him in the French village of COLLIOURE.

Antonio Machado

The initial texts of Machado, reviews of events and chronic local custom festivity written in collaboration with his brother, and signed with the pseudonym Ricamonte Tablante, appeared in The cartoon in 1893. His first poems were published in Electra, Helios and other magazines modernist movement that Machado was identified when he started his literary work.

However, although the compositions included in solitudes (1903) revealed the influence of modernism, the author distanced himself of decorative imagery of Ruben school to deepen the expression of authentic emotions, often expressed through a sober symbolism. In his next book, solitudes, galleries and other poems (1907), reissue and extension of the former, became more evident the melancholy and intimate tone, the use of humor as a spacer element and, above all, the intention to capture the fluidity of time.

As Unamuno, Machado felt that his mission was "immortalize the momentary", capture "fugitive wave" and transforming the poem into 'a word in time'. In later years was accentuated her meditation on the fleeting and eternal in Campos de Castilla (1912), but not by means of self-contemplation, but directed the gaze outward, and observed with awake eyes the Castilian landscape and the men that inhabited it. An austere and serious emotion runs through the poems from this book, which evokes the tragic black Spain so criticized by the generation of the 98 perspective regeneracionista, at the time that described with deep patriotism decay and ruin of the old Castilian cities.

In his next volume of poems, new songs (1924), the author stepped up both its reflective approach and judgmental 'proverbs and songs' line included in the previous book. This philosophical trend manifested itself between 1912 and 1925, stage in which Machado wrote a series of notes that would light posthumously with the title of the complementary (1971).

In this booklet, miscellany of readings, sketches and daily thoughts, first appeared its heteronymous, philosopher and poet Abel Martin and his disciple, Juan de Mairena sceptical thinker. Both are imaginary characters that allowed the creator express their ideas about culture, art, society, politics, literature and philosophy, especially in the book Juan de Mairena. Judgments, donaires, notes and memories of an apocryphal Professor (1936).

At the same time, in the complete poems of 1928 and 1933 editions decant an inspired lyric of loving and erotic theme that was, after the death of his wife, his great passion in real life, Pilar de Valderrama, called Guiomar in these verses. Already during the civil strife Machado wrote some poems and various texts in prose, part of which were collected in the war (1937). It is testimonial writings, fully incardinated in the historical circumstances of the time.

Autograph of Antonio Machado

Extracted from the website: Biografías y Vidas