The autumn days of Ricardo Delgado Vizcaíno Foundation continued their development today at the Parc des Expositions in Pozoblanco with a block of presentations dedicated to the Machado family and with a vision centered above all on Antonio and Manuel, although the influences on the poetic work of certain members of their family were also highlighted.
Here’s how the journalist and writer explained it Eva Diaz Perez which has passed through the history of an “intellectual lineage”. The first notable antecedents, according to the Sevillian author, start from the influence of the grandfather Machado, Antonio Machado and Núñez, scientist, zoologist, naturalist, anthropologist and geologist, defender of Darwin’s theses and considered one of the first ecologists. An observer of nature who left his mark on the work of the two poets Antonio and Manuel, as well as his way of capturing and describing environments in his poems.
He is not the only family character to have marked Machado’s workjust like Cipriana Álvarez Durán, the grandmother, the “storyteller” who left this “popular vein” in poets through her studies on folklore, in addition to her passion for painting which she transmitted to Manuel Machado, who also devoted himself to this art. And if their grandparents influenced the work of the Machado family, this does not escape the way of understanding the life of Antonio Machado and Álvarez “Demófilo” and Ana Ruiz Hernández, parents of Antonio and Manuel Machado. The journalist highlighted the passion for the popular world, orality, customs and the immortality of the couplets which emanate from the influence of the father and which leave romantic airs in the work of poets.
Once the family influences had been analyzed, it was time to delve deeper into the work of the Machado brothers and the first to do so was Rafael Alarcon Sierraprofessor of Spanish literature at the University of Jaén. The professor focused his presentation on the contribution of the brothers Antonio and Manuel Machado, as well as Juan Ramón Jiménez, as introducers of symbolism, of “a new type of writing and reading that works through intuition and nuance “. “All Spanish poetry, up to Bécquer and Rosalía de Castro, was realistic, it was understood by reason. There is an impressive leap with Machado and Juan Ramón Jiménez because they introduce an emotional and irrational poetry that results from the crisis of the end of the century,” explained the professor.
Irene Escolar, during the day
In addition to this crisis at the end of the century, the authors were influenced by French artists but they did not limit themselves to copying, but rather “the Machados internalized symbolism and constructed a new canon of Spanish literature”. Rafael Alarcón read some fragments of Manuel Machado’s work to illustrate this symbolism and this commitment to “sobriety and economy of means”. In this sense, he highlighted “Alma” as the work with which he seeks identity and transcendence and it means “a catalog of the end of the century, with poems of concentration and a kind of poetics of silence because its poems leave the reader paralyzed.
Antonio Machado
From the FAmilia to Manueland from Manuel to Antonio, because the last presentation of the afternoon dealt with the life and work of Antonio Machado with the help of the former vice-president of the government Alfonso Guerra, returning to the Fall conference after its presence at last year’s edition. And he did it with a declaration of intentions because his first words were to speak of “identification” with a poet whom he approached “progressively” to understand a “complex work which gave me a private school of learning.
Warwho moved the public with the passionate reading of the poems of the Sevillian author, defended that the reader can “create his destiny, his freedom” from the poems of Antonio Machado, a work of “enormous purity and transparency » and before which must be “traveled with great care because it is elusive in its simplicity”. Humor, his vision of the world “full of contrasts” or the creation of his apocrypha were some of the issues highlighted by Alfonso Guerra during his thesis where he wanted to go “beyond the trivialization made of a few verses” , because “it seems important to me to find a more complete vision of his works”. In this sense, Alfonso Guerra highlighted “the collective core” as an essential element of Antonio Machado, affirming that “his work has no meaning without the community, without the people”.
A moment of the event with all the participants
The poet’s three wounds, that of life, that of death and that of love, also took on importance during Guerra’s intervention, which established a relationship between the author’s life and his literary production by reading some of the fragments written by Antonio Machado. which is dedicated with ‘Campos de Castilla’. At this point, Alfonso Guerra wanted to highlight a letter to Rubén Darío in which he defends the life project of Antonio Machado return to Andalusia, to Seville. The afternoon ended in the best possible way, listening to the verses of Antonio and Manuel Machado in the voice of actress Irene Escolar.
Misinformation
After analyzing the life and work of Juan Valera and the Machado family, the last session of the Conference will focus on disinformation. Álex Grijelmo García, professor at the El País School of Journalism, will address this subject in “Anonymity: reason and unreason”, while the director of ABC, Julián Quirós Monago, will focus his intervention on “The written press and the new communication on the networks”.
The shortlist of speakers will be completed by Juan Luis Cebrián Echarri, founding director of El País, who will focus on “False programs as political practice”. Subsequently, a conversation will take place between the three speakers.
