Poetry
While it is true that towards the second half of the 19th century the novel evolved quickly towards Realism, this did not happen to poetry and to drama, whose transformation was less violent and still continued to be infused with Romanticism until the end of the century.
This late Romanticism is more apparent than real; sometimes it lacks depth and the lyric exaltation to which the true romantic abandoned himself. This is due to the social reality of the moment: the time in which the bourgeoisie would consolidate the Restoration of 1875. This society, which was laying the foundations of Capitalism and was taking the first steps of industrialization in the country, did not leave room for the people who admired art for art's sake.
The most representative writers are Gaspar Núñez de Arce and Ramón de Campoamor, sometimes considered as opponents of Romanticism, because Romanticism was still in its final throes as is evidenced in the classic works of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer and Rosalía de Castro.
Read more about this topic: Spanish Realist Literature
Famous quotes containing the word poetry:
“I owe everything to a system that made me learn by heart till I wept. As a result I have thousands of lines of poetry by heart. I owe everything to this.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“Poetry is essentially the antithesis of Metaphysics: Metaphysics purge the mind of the senses and cultivate the disembodiment of the spiritual; Poetry is all passionate and feeling and animates the inanimate; Metaphysics are most perfect when concerned with universals; Poetry, when most concerned with particulars.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)