Soledades. Galerías. Otros poemas: Antonio Machado

Antonio Machado's revised and enlarged Soledades. Galerias. Otros Poemas of 1907, the first edition appeared in 1903 along with Juan Ramon Jimenenez's Arias tristes of the same year, marks the high point of the Spanish Symbolist experiment and a major contribution to the guerra literaria of the period. For all the hundreds of articles, conference papers and longer studies which offer a medley of opinion, often of superficial, doubtful or indifferent judgement, none has placed Machado in the context of his intellectual formation and his personal experiences. Thus, the Introduction considers his early education in an extraordinarily talented family, his schooling in the Institucion Libre, the only secular establishment in Spain at the time, and the influence of its leader, Giner de los Rios. Machado's two visits to Paris and his experience there of Symbolism and its effect on his own verses are fully considered. The major section of the Introduction examines the influence of the poet's contact with the Helios group and his collaboration with writers like Unamuno, Juan Ramon Jimenez and Azorin. This edition argues that the poet aimed, like them, to respond to a national crisis by way of a guerra literaria. This campaign would be based on the idea of a national regeneration, with strong religious overtones, through art and the recreation of tradition through a re-writing of popular poetry and the Spanish mystic poets. Between the first edition of Soledades in 1903 and this second edition of 1907 Machado's maturing poetic vision and his innermost thoughts and feelings are explored in both the Introduction and the Notes. Machado's coining of his 'galerias del alma', unique at the time, is set in the context of national and personal crises and traced to a further intellectual obsession of the moment, neomisticismo, a modern version of the mystic writers of the 1500s which Machado had read and admired. All the major obsessions of the age are explored to show how Machado employed them in poetic terms to create, arguably, the finest collection of poetry of the period. Each poem has an explanatory note and commentary. An Appendix with a 'reading' of a Symbolist poem from Soledades is offered as a guide to how such a poem works and how it expresses the poet's own obsessions. This edition is offered as a guide to students, teachers and researchers of Spanish Symbolist poetry and to all readers who have a special interest in Antonio Machado.