Miguel de Unamuno - Poetry

Poetry

For Unamuno, art was a way of expressing spiritual problems. His themes were the same in his poetry as in his other fiction: spiritual anguish, the pain provoked by the silence of God, time and death.

Unamuno was always attracted to traditional meters and, though his early poems did not rhyme, he subsequently turned to rhyme in his later works.

Among his outstanding works of poetry are:

• Poesías (Poems) (1907) — his first collection of poetry, in which he outlined the themes that would dominate his poetics: religious conflict, Spain, and domestic life
• Rosario de sonetos líricos (Rosary of Lyric Sonnets) (1911)
• El Cristo de Velázquez (The Christ of Velázquez) (1920) — a religious work, divided into four parts, where Unamuno analyzes the figure of Christ from different perspectives: as a symbol of sacrifice and redemption, as a reflection on his Biblical names (Christ the myth, Christ the man on the cross, Christ, God, Christ the Eucharist), as poetic meaning, as painted by Diego Velázquez, etc.
• Andanzas y visiones españolas (1922) — something of a travel book, in which Unamuno expresses profound emotion and experiments with landscape both evocative and realistic (a theme typical of his generation of writers)
• Rimas de dentro (Rhymes from Within) (1923)
• Rimas de un poeta desconocido (Rhymes from an Unknown Poet) (1924)
• De Fuerteventura a París (From Fuerteventura to Paris) (1925)
• Romancero del destierro (Ballads of Exile) (1928)
• Cancionero (Songbook) (1953, published posthumously)