POET

Miguel Hernández (1910 - 1942)

BIOGRAPHY

When Concepción Gilabert Giner de Hernández gave birth to her second son, Miguel, both she and her husband, Miguel Hernández Sánchez, a poor herdsman and dealer in sheep and goats, took for granted that their son would soon be hard at work helping with the family business, eventually taking it over with his older brother, Vicente. From a very early age the young Miguel was expected to perform tedious and menial tasks around the house and stable. A lengthy, enriched education was out of the question, both for economic and sociocultural reasons; so, instead of starting school at the usual age, he was forced for years to shepherd his father's flock and to sell the milk he had drawn with his own hands. This grueling, solitary experience had a profound impact on the sensitive youth. His work on the farm led him to establish a special bond with nature, and he later drew on that experience in his poetry.

At first Hernández's father had no inkling of the boy's predilection for literature, but when his passion for reading and writing became evident, his dour, cantankerous father tried hard to discourage such impractical pursuits and frivolous daydreams. However, the determined young goatherd had made a conscious decision to become a poet. Gifted with an ability to versify and a phenomenal memory, he survived a difficult apprenticeship during which, with the help and advice of close friends and mentors, he managed to learn Hispanic literature and culture, particularly the poetry and theater, at the same time mastering a wide variety of styles of poetry from earlier decades and other cultures. Against enormous odds, he broke loose from the severe limitations of his humble beginnings to emerge as one of the greatest and best-loved Spanish poets.

Miguel Hernández Gilabert was born on 30 October 1910 in the town of Orihuela, near Murcia, in southeastern Spain. Orihuela is in a valley watered by the Segura River and shaded by the peaks of the Sierra de la Muela. This rich agricultural land, with palm trees, orange groves, and lush flower and vegetable gardens, supported a community bound by proudly maintained traditions and by allegiance to the ubiquitous and ultraconservative Catholic church, which had not changed much since Orihuela was reclaimed from its Muslim inhabitants in the thirteenth century.

Hernández was one of seven children, including his brother Vicente, two younger sisters—Elvira and Encarnación—and three other siblings who died at early ages. When he was three years old the family moved to a rather poor district on La Calle de Arriba, inhabited for the most part by herdsmen, shoemakers, bricklayers, and their families. The Hernándezes' property, however, did provide them with certain amenities: a stable, a well, a large garden, and an orchard that eventually included mulberry, lemon, and fig trees—some planted by the poet himself. It is impossible to overemphasize the importance to Hernández of this garden and orchard—"huerto mío" (my orchard), as he referred to it affectionately—a small, quasi-Arcadian oasis of beauty and calm where he wrote several of his earliest poems.

Hernández's mother, known as Concheta, was submissive, timid, quiet, and long-suffering but also ready to protect her son as best she could from the unjust criticism and often harsh treatment he received at the hands of his father, Miguel, who was obstinate, harsh, authoritarian, and choleric to the point of being violent. Throughout his lifetime, in fact, the poet suffered from painful headaches which (as he wrote his wife, Josefina Manresa de Hernández, from prison on 29 January 1940) he suspected might have been caused in part by the frequent blows to the head that he had received from his father.

Almost until the age of nine, Hernández had as his "school" the garden and orchard around his house, the hills of the Sierra de la Muela, and the nearby waters of the Segura River. Throughout his poetry are images assimilated during that often difficult, yet pastoral, youth.

Much has been made of Hernández's spectacular rise from obscure shepherd to literary giant, and many a myth has arisen around his self-education: as Yolanda Guerrero wrote in El País (13 April 1992): "Su formación escolar fue corta, apenas un año. El hambre pudo más. Abandonó los libros por las cabras, pero la fidelidad del 'niño'... hacia la literatura le regresaron al primer amor" (He spent a short time in school, hardly a year. Hunger was a stronger calling. He left his schoolbooks for his goats, but his loyalty ... toward literature made him return to his first love). The facts are that he was in school from age nine to age fifteen; he was then unceremoniously forced to withdraw by his father. However, during his early preschool years Hernández was not entirely cut off from school; his older brother, Vicente, was enrolled in school, and Hernández would often help him with his homework, learning practically as much in the process. When he was almost nine years old, Hernández began his formal schooling at Escuela del Ave María, a school annex for poor children located in the shadows of another school, the Colegio de Santo Domingo de Orihuela, a Jesuit-run, upper-middle-class private college that had been attended by, among others, the novelist Gabriel Miró, also a native of Orihuela. In 1923, at age thirteen, Hernández, an excellent student and already far better educated than the vast majority of his social class, was honored by an invitation to study at the college and was the only disadvantaged student in the group, an "alumno de bolsillo pobre" (empty-pocketed student), as one friend called him.

There he became enthralled by Spanish literature, especially drama and poetry, and he was soon reciting poems to large audiences and playing important roles in school plays. His Jesuit teachers had suggested to his parents that he consider a vocation in the priesthood, though Hernández felt no such inclination himself, and the teachers had offered to pay his way through school.

However, he had no choice in the matter, for in March 1935, when he was fifteen--and rated first in his class--his father obliged him to leave the college because he was needed to help tend his father's growing herd and to sell the milk. Hernández was devastated by his father's decision and longed to be back with his Jesuit "fathers" and his classmates. One common thread in the lives of so many of Hernández's contemporaries is their education, erudition, and worldliness; unlike them, he was rigidly forbidden to indulge in such interests by his uneducated and overly practical father, who saw no use for formal education or for what his son wrote and recited. Throughout most of his youth Hernández was in conflict with his father over his desire to read and study, and later over his ambition to become a poet.

Fortunately Hernández had spent enough time at the Colegio de Santo Domingo to enable him to continue nurturing his desire for knowledge and love of literature. There were, of course, neither books at home nor money with which to buy them, but his single-minded determination to read led him to borrow them from many sources. While a college student, Hernández had been influenced and aided by don Luis Almarcha, the local vicar and founder of the Federation of Catholic Farmers' Unions--and later bishop of León--who was amazed by the young student's thirst for knowledge and tireless energy in pursuing an education. Almarcha became one of the poet's greatest benefactors, referring to him affectionately as "Miguel ... y mártir" (Miguel ... and martyr). The vicar loaned him books and helped him in every possible way.

Among Hernández's other favorite sources of books were the local libraries, especially those of the Casino, a sociopolitical club, and the Círculo de Bellas Artes de Orihuela, whose employees happily encouraged his literary pursuits. Among his college classmates were two in particular who regularly provided him with books and literary discussion: Augusto Pescador Sarget, who became a well-known professor of philosophy and dean of several Hispano-American universities; and José Marín Gutierrez, who wrote under and became known by the nom de plume Ramón Sijé.

Hernández read everything he could get his hands on: works by classical writers such as Garcilaso de la Vega, San Juan de la Cruz, Luis de León, Miguel de Cervantes, Tirso de Molina, Lope de Vega, Luis de Góngora, and Francisco Quevedo; by more-modern writers such as Juan Ramón Jiménez, Rubén Darío, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Antonio Machado, Jorge Guillén, Rafael Alberti, and Federico García Lorca; by popular writers such as José Marí Gabriel y Galán, Pérez Escrich, and Luis de Val; and by foreign writers such as Paul Verlaine and Paul Valéry. But Hernández especially loved the works of his fellow oriolano Miró, for the richness of his language and the splendor of his imagery. Miró was perhaps the first writer to have shaken the complacent, orthodox Catholic establishment of Orihuela, and Hernández adopted both Miró's fascination with words and images and his critical stance toward the local conservative religious hierarchy. They also shared a love of Orihuela and its lush surroundings, a love that can be seen throughout their works, which exude pantheistic sensuality.

Whenever Hernández was not tending herd or doing chores, he was reading or discussing literature with friends. For example, he and his friend Carlos Fenoll, whose father was a baker, often carried on such discussions in the streets as they delivered their milk and bread. One of his habitual reading places was the bedroom he shared with Vicente. Another of Hernández's reading places, perhaps his favorite, was out on the Orihuelan plains and hillsides where he took his herd to graze. He read relentlessly day after day, so bent on his task that he occasionally lost track of his flock.

Soon the zealous reader began trying his hand at writing poems of his own, using as often as not a goat's back for a desk. These poems were shaped and inspired as much by the numbing routine of his pastoral chores as by the poets whose works he read. At eighteen he started writing poems in classical arte mayor (major art) and arte menor (minor art) meters--mostly simple, bucolic poems, quintessentially Virgilian, reworking the archaic forms and grand vocabulary he learned from the great poets.

His day-to-day chores provided a common motif in many early poems, such as "En cuclillas, ordeño una cabrita y un sueño" (Squatting on My Heels, I Milk My Goat and My Dream, in Obra completa, 1992), a short poem which illustrates his early predilection for creating visual and auditory metaphors out of the down-to-earth scenes of everyday life. In "Aprendiz de Chivo" (The Apprentice Kid, also in Obra completa) Hernández depicts the miracle of birth, the awkward yet splendid first moments of a newborn goat as it slowly awakens to the pleasures of its mother's milk and the sheer joy of being alive. In "Leyendo" (Reading, also in Obra completa) a sequence of visual images captures the highlights of the young Hernández's daily ritual, savored down to the last precious rays of dusky sunlight:

Me pongo sentado. Leo.

(La muriente luz se enjambia

fingiendo una gran Alhambra

de mármol cristaloideo.)

(Trunca el ave su gorgeo.

Por el oriente descuella la noche.

¿Nace una estrella?)

No quedan luces.... No leo.

(I now sit straight up. I read.

[The swarming rays of dying day

trace a grand Alhambra

of crystallized marble.]

[The bird cuts short its cheery tune.

From the east the night descends.

Is that a star I do not know?]

There's no more light.... I cannot read.)

Although many of Hernández's early poems probably have not survived, about forty of them were published for the first time in Obra completa, which includes over one hundred previously unpublished works.

In the years immediately after Hernández left school, probably the greatest influence on the young poet was the circle of friends that grew out of poetry meetings held at the bakery run by the Fenoll family on Calle de Arriba near his house. Señor Fenoll had a considerable reputation in the neighborhood for his coplas (popular verses), and he passed on his passion to his children, most notably Carlos, who was an inseparable part of Hernández's social and intellectual life. Sijé (Marín Gutierrez) was drawn to Hernández for the latter's poetry and intellect. For years this trio regularly held court within the warm, welcoming confines of the bakery, where, while waiting for the dough to rise or surrounded by the heady aroma of freshly baked bread, they recited poems or dramatic works to each other or tried out their own verse on friends. They eventually managed to draw into their tertulia (literary circle) several of those who lived in the vicinity, such as Jesús Poveda and Manuel Molino, who would sit in ever-increasing numbers listening to or reciting poetry and participating in dramatic recitals. Miró and Orihuela were the two forces that joined and held the group together, and the main attraction, as he had been while a student at college, was Hernández, in Carlos Fenoll's words "un genial actor, tan bueno como poeta" (a genius actor, as well as a good poet). Always drawn to the theater, Hernández helped the tertulia form a theater group, which they called the Farsa, after the drama publication of the same name.

Sijé became Hernández's mentor and guru, suggesting that he study in great depth the sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Spanish poets and dramatists and teaching him to fashion his verse with particular care for allegory, semantics, and symbols. Finally, one of his poems, "Pastoril," which he had written in his beloved orchard, was published in the Pueblo de Orihuela on 13 January 1930; his career as a published poet had begun. Obviously the work of a neophyte, this poem shows the unmistakable influence of de la Cruz, Garcilaso, and Darío, as well as the counterinfluences of Romantic poetry and popular verse.

Sijé got Hernández invitations to recite his poetry both at the Casino and at the Círculo Católico, but reading his poetry to listeners at the Casino was no match for doing so for his friends, among whom he could give full vent to his emotions and his penchant for dramatic expression. Not loath to use coarse language among friends, in 1936 Hernández wrote Fenoll from Madrid: "Vale más un 'me cago en ...' entre ellos, que un elegio de ninguno de éstos" (Better an "I don't give a shit for ..." from them [his friends] than heaps of praise from those others [big-city literati]).

On 1 May 1930 his old friend Almarcha, writing from Madrid, asked Hernández to write a poem in honor of human labor; the result was "Al trabajo" (To Work, in Obra completa), clearly influenced by the poet's readings of Darío--especially his "Marcha triunfal" (Triumphal March, in Cantos de vida y esperanza [Songs of Life and Experience, 1905]). Read aloud by a laborer, Hernández's poem was very well received, encouraging his long-held dream of traveling to Madrid, the cultural and intellectual center of the country and the logical place to go--as it had been for Bécquer and countless others before him. But it was at least a year before Hernández could finally make that first trip. On one occasion he tried to join the army by registering for the draft, but his number was never called, much to his disappointment.

He became involved with Juventudes Socialistas de Orihuela, serving as its president, alongside directors Pescador Sarget, José Bellod, and José María Ballesteros. In the spring of 1931 Hernández won first prize with his poem "Canto a Valencia" (Song to Valencia, in Obra completa ) in a regional poetry competition in Elche sponsored by Orfeón Ilicitano (a cultural association). Disappointed that the prize turned out to be only an ornamental inkstand, an unfortunate choice for a poet who wrote exclusively in pencil, Hernández nevertheless felt more encouraged than ever to make his long-postponed journey to Madrid. Chief among those nudging him in that direction was Sijé's friend don José Martínez Arenas, who gave Hernández a letter of introduction to Concha de Albornoz, daughter of the minister of justice. Hernández's father said that, when his son ran out of food (which his father felt would surely be soon), he could always come home.

Hernández had hardly arrived in Madrid on 30 November 1931 when his boundless enthusiasm was dispelled by the cool reception he met within the cold, unfriendly Spanish metropolis, which might just as well have been a foreign city. The tension caused in Hernández by the differences between big-city and country life was to affect him and pervade his poetry at every stage of his life.

When his long-anticipated visit to Concha de Albornoz did not open the doors he had hoped, Hernández visited literary critic Ernesto Giménez Caballero in December 1931, but there, too, any hopes for a quick solution to his problems were dashed when the critic wrote a mildly ironic article about him in the Gaceta Literaria (14 January 1932). Another article, written by Francisco Martínez Corbalán for Estampa (22 February), was much more positive: "Este es el hombre. Tiene lo que no se compra; le falta lo que se puede adquirir" (This is the man. He has that which cannot be bought; he lacks that which can be learned). Neither article, however, had much impact in Madrid circles. Nevertheless, Hernández managed to survive through the winter until 15 May, thanks to old school friends Pescador Sarget and Bellod, who were attending the university in Madrid; they lent him food, money, and books and continued to encourage his writing.

Just before Hernández returned to Orihuela, Giménez Caballero published one of Hernández's poems, "Reloj rústico" (Rustic Clock, now in Obra completa ), in the Gaceta Literaria (1 May 1932), but this attention was too little and too late to keep the disillusioned poet in Madrid any longer. Desperate for the money for a ticket home, he decided to use a friend's unused railway ticket, but, not having the proper travel documents with him when he was stopped by the Guardia Civil, he was promptly arrested and imprisoned--the first of two such arrests that left indelible impressions on Hernández. He was obliged to contact his family and friends for funds to get him out of jail, where he remained for several days. He felt that his six months in Madrid had been a disaster; help from the cultural powers had not been forthcoming, nor would it be for years to come.

Back in Orihuela, Hernández at first worked as a bookkeeper for the Globo, a fabric company, but later he found a better (though still low-paying) job as a clerk in a notary's office. While out celebrating at a carnival with his friends on a hot August day in 1932, he saw Josefina Manresa among a crowd of girls and began flirting with her. The daughter of an officer of the Guardia Civil, and a seamstress by trade, she was beautiful, shy, and easily embarrassed. She ignored Hernández completely, retreated to the safety of her circle of friends, and promptly forgot him, unaware that she had changed the course of his life and her own and would inspire some of his greatest poetry. He, on the other hand, was totally smitten from the moment he saw her and would remain so throughout their lengthy courtship and eventual marriage.

Sijé's influence on Hernández became especially strong following his return in seeming disgrace from Madrid, at that time a hotbed of political and cultural ferment, awash in philosophies to suit every taste. One in particular, neo-Góngorism, propelled by traditionalist fervor, had coalesced around celebrations in 1927 honoring the three hundredth anniversary of the death of Góngora, the poet of verbal enigma. The movement had proven irresistible to both Sijé and Hernández. Among the many books that Sijé suggested his friend read and reread were Góngora's Fábula de Polifemo (Fable of Polyphemus, 1613) and Soledades (Solitudes, also 1613), as well as books by modern imitators, such as Gerardo Diego's Fábula de Equis y Zeda (1932) and Rafael Alberti's Cal y canto (Stone and Mortar, 1929).

Under Sijé's tutelage, and entranced by neo-Góngorism's hermetic imagery, labyrinthine metaphors, and classical forms such as the octava de arte mayor, Hernández was hard at work composing his first book, "Poliedros"--published as Perito en lunas (Lunar Expert, 1933) on the advice of his publisher, Raimundo de los Reyes. Hernández was unaware that in literary circles interest in that style had already peaked and was rapidly waning. He would never have been able to publish the book had Almarcha not loaned him the money, later refusing to take back the loan. Almarcha did not like the style of the book, telling Hernández: "Mis gustos literarios no van por ahí" (my literary tastes do not include such as this). The book did not get the attention for which Hernández had hoped from the critics, probably because his hermetic style was beyond the scope of most uninitiated readers, though it was fully intentional, as he explained in "Mi concepto del poema" (My Concept of the Poem, in Obra completa):

El poema no puede presentársenos Venus o desnudo. Los poemas desnudos son la anatomía de los poemas. ¿ Y habrá algo más horrible que un esqueleto? Guardad, poetas, el secreto del poema: esfinge. Que sepan arrancárselo como una corteza. ¡Oh, la naranja: qué delicioso secreto bajo un ámbito a lo mundo!

(Poems should not appear nude or Venuslike. Nude poems are poetic anatomy. Could there be anything more horrible than a skeleton? Poets, guard well the secrets of your poems: sphinx. Make the reader grasp the peel of meaning. Oh, orange: what delicious secrets lie hidden within your tiny world!)

Although Hernández had absorbed through his reading the styles and techniques of baroque pastoral poetry, his "lunar" Arcadia was as far removed from its aristocratic source as Hernández's "huerta-vergel" (orchard-garden) was from the gardens of Aranjuez (near Madrid). Beneath the artifice of his culteranismo (art for the sake of art) conceits, the quality of the poetry shines through the regional themes, rustic flavors, and popular images intimately linked with the common elements of life on the land: wells and irrigation systems; trees and vegetation; bulls and roosters; and palms and snakes--proof of Hernández's deep attachment to the natural world around him, the wellspring of his pantheism.

Dismayed by the critics' lack of enthusiasm for his work, on 10 April 1933 Hernández wrote Lorca a letter denouncing them passionately, saying that his book had "más personalidad, más valentía, más cojones ... que el que casi todos los poetas consagrados a los que, si se les quitara la firma, se les confundiría la voz" (more personality, more valor, more balls ... than all the works of most well-known poets, who all sound alike, except for their signatures). Lorca replied: "Tu libro es fuerte, tiene muchas cosas de interés y revela a los buenos ojos pasión de hombre, pero no tienes más c..., como tú dices" (Your book is powerful, has much that is interesting, and reveals the soul of a man of passion, but you do not have more b..., as you say). Lorca refers to "c..." rather than "cojones," managing to put some distance between himself and the more plebeian Hernández. Yet Lorca encouraged Hernández, telling him to be patient and trust in his innate ability. Though with different backgrounds and educations, both poets admired each other's work.

Everyone who knew Hernández well has testified to his probity and genuine goodness, yet at least on one occasion he employed his verbal skills against one particular individual. In fall 1932 the writers Carmen Conde and Antonio Oliver, in conjunction with the Universidad Popular de Cartagena, organized a special ceremony and meeting in Orihuela in honor of Miró. The conference was opened by Sijé, followed by Hernández's reading from his works. The keynote speaker, Giménez Caballero, who had written so patronizingly about Hernández earlier in 1932 and had just come back from a trip to Italy, disrupted the conference by attacking Miró's aesthetic principles; his speech drew the ire of many in attendance and caused an uproar, resulting in the arrest and brief detention of Hernández and several others, including Conde and Oliver, who soon became Hernández's close friends and admirers. Perhaps in response to this provocation, Hernández dedicated the twelfth poem of Perito en lunas to Giménez Caballero. Titled "Lo abominable," the poem uses complicated metaphors to laud the utilitarian marvels of the common toilet, showing that Hernández may indeed have gotten the last word where Giménez Caballero was concerned.

With the publication of Perito en lunas Hernández had finally proved himself a full-fledged poet with uncanny ability. His career took off rapidly from that point, evolving from the hermetic baroque style of Perito en lunas through the sensual love poems and quasi-religious themes of early versions of El silbo vulnerado (The Injured Whistle, posthumously published in 1949), to the crystal clarity and sexual candor of the sonnets in later versions of El silbo vulnerado and Imagen de tu huella (Image of Your Footprint, published in 1963), which were reworked in Hernández's first major work, El rayo que no cesa (1936; translated as Unceasing Lightning, 1986).

In order to hold Hernández's wavering interest in traditional forms, Sijé repeatedly urged his friend to write poetry and criticism for Destellos and Voluntad, two journals that he edited. In 1933, unsatisfied with those journals, Sijé conceived a new journal, the Gallo Crisis: Libertad y Tiranía, a neo-Catholic publication inspired by and dedicated to activist Catholic principles, along the same lines as Cruz y Raya, the journal edited by José Bergamín.

Still under Sijé's aegis, Hernández started working on an auto sacramental (miracle play), which he first called "La danzarina bíblica" (The Biblical Dancer). Eventually published as Quién te ha visto y quién te ve y sombra de lo que eras (He Who Has Seen You and He Who Sees You and the Shadow of What You Were, 1934; performed, 1977), it is written in verso clásico popular (popular classical verse) and combines bucolic, allegorical, and religious elements in the style and spirit of Pedro Calderón de la Barca. However, though Hernández had always been fascinated with drama, he had little technical and practical experience and was also at a disadvantage with respect to the techniques needed to craft a dramatic work, relying instead to a great extent on his intuition as an artist and a poet, which had a negative effect on the work's dramatic structure and characterization.

In late 1933 Hernández had three main preoccupations. First, his clerical job paid so little that he could not afford to buy new clothes or shoes. Second, he was still at odds with his father over his choice of profession, though this was countered by the help and encouragement that his mother and his sister Elvira provided him and by the growing critical acclaim for his work. Finally, toward the end of 1933, Hernández was becoming obsessed with Josefina, and the resulting sexual tension began to be reflected in his increasingly erotic and sensual love poetry.

On 28 February 1934 there was a benefit performance at the Círculo de Bellas Artes de Orihuela to collect money for Hernández's next trip to Madrid. The local town council provided him with a monthly subsidy of fifty pesetas, which he used to settle into modest quarters on Calle de la Aduana in Madrid in March 1934. The city was in cultural and political turmoil. He was no longer unknown, and he had friends to see and acquaintances to renew, among them Lorca, Alberti, Guillén, Manuel Altolaguirre, Luis Cernuda, Carlos Salinas, María Zambrano, Delia del Carril, and others who warmly welcomed and accepted him. Many of these were politically active on the Left and published their work in journals such as Emilio Prados's Litoral. Two such poets, Pablo Neruda and Vicente Aleixandre, were to play important roles in Hernández's life and work.

That summer Hernández again ran out of money, a common occurrence in his life, and had to return to Orihuela to find the peace and tranquility needed to finish his play (Quien). The final act was composed in the Sierra de la Muela and published in Cruz y Raya (July-September 1934). Hernández's love affair with Josefina was blooming. Her seamstress shop was on the way to his notary office, so he was able to flirt with her on occasion. His poetry at this time, though still conceptual, was increasingly sexual and down-to-earth, befitting a twenty-three-year-old poet in love. Josefina became more and more the muse behind his love poems in the various early versions of El silbo vulnerado--poems with titles such as "Cántico corporal" (Corporeal Canticle) and "Primera lamentación de la carne" (First Lament of the Flesh), reflecting Hernández's youthful vigor and sexual energy. The final version of El silbo vulnerado followed not long afterward, together with four more sonnets, to which he gave the name Imagen de tu huella. These love poems show the poet caught between two conflicting tendencies: on the one hand, lusty and blatant sexuality is reflected in the sensual, fertile images of acacia, orange blossoms, ripe figs, and succulent oranges; on the other hand, themes of anxious virtue and love show Hernández's emotional attachment to the baroque aesthetic ideal, to pure poetry, to Sijé and his Christian principles, and to the lofty ideals of social justice. Though already present in Perito en lunas, this tension between the spirit and the flesh had become fully developed in Hernández's poetry by this period.

One of the images most often found in his works is that of the bull, a symbol of sexuality, virility, and love. The poet is portrayed as bullfighter, for example, in poem 3 of Perito en lunas, "¡A la gloria, a la gloria toreadores!" (Onward to Glory, Onward to Glory, Toreadors!), and the bull symbolizes death. As Lorca had before him, Hernández honored the fallen bullfighter Ignacio Sánchez Mejías with his own poem, "Citación final" (Final Citation), which includes one of the major themes found throughout Hernández's works, his defiant fear of death: "Estoy queriendo, y temo la cornada de tu momento, muerte" (I long for and fear the moment of your horn's thrust, death).

For someone so passionately involved with life, Hernández was notably shy in his dealings with Josefina to the point that, on one occasion, when he hand-delivered a sonnet he had written expressly for her, biographer María de Gracia Ifach says that Hernández felt too awkward to do anything but smile and walk away almost immediately. They finally started seeing each other formally on 27 September 1934, and his poetry began to reach new depths of feeling and humanity.

In October 1934 Hernández put the finishing touches on his next play, El torero más valiente (The Bravest Bullfighter), dedicating it to Bergamín. Sijé published scenes 4 and 5 of act 3 in the Gallo Crisis (Autumn 1934), but the play was never published in its entirety in Hernández's lifetime and was thought lost until his wife found the complete manuscript in 1961. (It was published, as edited by Agustín Sánchez Vidal, in 1987.) On 30 November 1934 Hernández set out for Madrid with his cousin Antonio Gilabert and wrote the first of his many long letters to Josefina on the following day, from his room on Calle de los Caños. Full of great expectations, he was once again forced to concede defeat and returned home empty-handed in late December to face expectant friends and family--and also frustration and isolation.

Hernández was back in Madrid by mid February 1935 and found that, finally, his luck had changed. His friend Enrique Azcoaga immediately offered him a job with the "misiones pedagógicas" (pedagogical missions) traveling throughout the countryside bringing books and culture directly to the inhabitants--reminiscent of Lorca's Barraca theater company--which brought Hernández closer to the lives of the people but kept him from his literary work in Madrid. He soon found some employment better suited to his talents and more favorable to the creation of poetry when José María de Cossío offered him a job as a staff writer to work on an encyclopedia of bullfighting titled Los toros (The Bulls, 3 volumes 1943-1947). That work, which Hernández found boring and soon tired of, involved sifting through anecdotal information and historical documents and writing biographies of famous personalities such as Reverte, Espartero, and Tragabuches.

In Madrid, Hernández was being drawn deeper and deeper into the circle of poets that favored the Republican government and its socialist views, removing him further and further from Sijé's influence. When Sijé paid him a visit in Madrid, it was clear that, though they remained close friends, irreconcilable changes had drawn a permanent intellectual barrier between them. Hernández remained torn between two worlds, between the artificial, decadent city and the pure, Arcadian countryside: Madrid, with its dirty streets overflowing with too many people, trams, and cars--and too much garbage and smoke--and Orihuela, with the Segura, Sierra de la Muela, and traditions. To add to Hernández's frustrations, relations between him and Josefina became decidedly cool during the spring and summer of 1935. At first he wrote her more long letters from Madrid, writing less frequently later during his affair with Maruja Mallo, a Galician artist well known in literary circles. He was never completely dishonest with Josefina about his activities but did not shed full light on them until they were long over.

Hernández's decision in 1933 to write a play in the auto sacramental tradition had been made due in great part to Sijé's influence, but by 1935 Hernández realized that his real interests and talents lay elsewhere than in the realm of mystical-aesthetic and neo-Catholic poetry, toward which Sijé had been trying to lead him. Neruda, an established literary figure in Madrid, where he was Chilean consul, had shown increasing interest in Hernández's work. Both poets had a natural affinity for each other and enjoyed each other's company, often at Neruda's home on Casa de la Flores, which was open to his friends at any time. A lasting friendship developed between Neruda and Hernández, who was helping to proofread Neruda's Residencia en la tierra (Home on the Land, 1935).

When Aleixandre published his La destrucción o el amor (Destruction or Love) in 1935 and Hernández could not afford to buy it, he wrote Aleixandre asking for a free copy and went to Aleixandre's estate, Velingtonia, to pick it up. Aleixandre, like Neruda, became a lifelong friend and mentor to the younger poet. In Ifach's view Aleixandre probably helped fill the void created by Hernández's loss of Sijé's friendship. Leopoldo de Luis, discussing Aleixandre's friends in Poesía española contemporánea (Contemporary Spanish Poetry, 1965), wrote that if friendship could be reduced to one name, if solidarity and companionship had one voice, that name would be "Miguel" [Hernández]. That he ever felt comfortable and secure in Madrid can only be attributed to the influence and affection of Neruda and Aleixandre, two giants among poets who eventually became Nobel laureates and whose homes became Hernández's favorite haunts prior to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.

In June 1935 Hernández collaborated on an homage to Neruda which included a warm dedication (collected in Obra completa) and three then-unpublished cantos materiales (material songs) from Residencia en la tierra. Hernández sent copies to Juan Guerrero Ruiz and to Sijé, along with a letter to the former in which he spoke effusively of his warm feelings for Neruda and his poetry. Sijé, with whom Hernández had not corresponded for some time, wrote back offended at Hernández's choice of friends, admonishing him for his poor taste in poets, and urging him to return to Orihuela for an obviously well-needed rest.

Hernández did return, but not until August, at which time he had been away in Madrid for almost seven months. Notwithstanding the warm welcome from family and friends, including Sijé, the meeting between Hernández and Sijé highlighted how much they had drifted apart. Furthermore, relations with Josefina were still unsettled: she was disdainful and cool toward him, and it seemed as though their relationship was over. The return to Orihuela, in fact, did nothing to appease Hernández's anguish over wanting to be both with his friends in Madrid and with those in Orihuela. As he often did at such times, Hernández turned to his writing, working tirelessly on his next dramatic work, Los hijos de la piedra (The Sons of the Stone, performed 1946; published, 1959), inspired by the Asturian miners' strike of 1934. Events in Asturias and Catalonia had raised the political stakes in the country, and writers and intellectuals such as Hernández were actively being recruited to take up the political challenge.

While in Orihuela, Hernández received a letter from Neruda urging him to return to Madrid to help with the new poetry journal Caballo Verde para la Poesía, which he and Altolaguirre were preparing for publication. Regarding Sijé, Neruda wrote: "Tú eres demasiado sano para soportar ese tufo sotánico-satánico" (You are too sane to be associated with that soutanic-satanic fanatic). Earlier, in January 1935, Neruda had written Hernández: "Le hallo demasiado olor a iglesia, ahogado en incienso.... Ya haremos revista aquí, querido pastor, y grandes cosas" (It [the Gallo Crisis] smacks too much of church and incense.... We will soon put together our own journal here, dear shepherd, and do great things). Hernández had tried without success to bridge the gaps between the rival groups and their different visions: that of Aleixandre, Altolaguirre, and above all Neruda; and that of Sijé. The conflict between the two groups gradually played itself out in various issues of both journals, with each side taking indirect shots at the other through poems and articles.

Hernández returned to Madrid in August 1935 with mixed feelings. He had left Orihuela on far better terms than before, there having been a certain rapprochement between him and his family. However, his differences with Josefina had not been mended, and the end of their relationship seemed imminent. Furthermore, his fading friendship with Sijé left him emotionally drained. And, while bathing in the Segura just before his departure, Hernández dove from a cliff into unfamiliar waters and cut his forehead, requiring several stitches and bandages. That shedding of blood, a powerful recurring image throughout Hernández's work, gave rise to one of his most remarkable poems from this period, "Sino sangriento" (Bloody Fate, now in Obra completa), published in the journal Revista. Upon his return to Madrid, Hernández resumed his work on Los toros and, along with Conde, Oliver, and Altolaguirre, was spending much of his spare time working with Neruda on Caballo Verde para la Poesía. Altolaguirre offered him a copy of the first issue, in which his poems "Vecino de la muerte" (Neighbor of Death) and "Mi sangre es un camino" (My Blood Is a Road) appeared. Two of his best works at this time were an ode he dedicated to Aleixandre-- "Oda entre arena y piedra" (Ode between Sand and Stone)--and an ode to Neruda, "Oda entre sangre y vino" (Ode between Blood and Wine). (All these poems are in Obra completa.)

Hernández wrote Sijé during autumn to ask for his forgiveness and understanding, but an answer was long in coming. Eventually Sijé wrote Hernández on 29 November 1935, complaining that Hernández had not sent him a copy of the first issue of Caballo Verde and wondering what had happened to his old friend Miguel. His letter was full of recriminations against Neruda, Aleixandre, and Alberti and everything they represented. Yet, in the last issue of the Gallo Crisis (Spring-Summer 1935), Sijé, despite his earlier criticism of Hernández, included one of Hernández's poems, "El silbo de afirmación en la aldea" (The Whistle of Affirmation in the Village, now in Obra completa), in which the poet reflects on his unhappiness and sense of alienation in Madrid in tones similar to those of Lorca's Poeta en Nueva York (1940; translated as The Poet in New York, 1940). By publishing this particular poem, Sijé clearly hoped to gain something in his struggle against Neruda for Hernández's loyalty, but his plans may well have backfired, for the poem had in fact been written long before it was published, and the emotions and feelings expressed, though still present, no longer dominated Hernández's heart.

One of the contacts Hernández made through Neruda was Raúl González Tuñón, an Argentine journalist whose complex views on the social role of poetry in times of crisis and revolution made a deep impression on Hernández, pushing him even further in Neruda's direction. The poem "Sonreídme" (Rejoice with Me, in Obra completa), written by Hernández at about this time, shows how completely his ideas had evolved. At about the same time Hernández was writing "Sonreídme," Sijé was stricken with pneumonia and septicemia in late December 1935 and died on Christmas Eve. Much to his chagrin, Hernández only found out about it sometime later.

Devastated by the news and beset by terrible feelings of guilt, Hernández turned inward to concentrate and distill his sorrow, composing an elegy to Sijé that many critics consider to be one of the finest elegies in the Spanish language, sufficient to have ensured the poet's fame had he never written another word. First published in Revista de Occidente on 10 January 1936 (and collected in El rayo que no cesa ), the elegy is an earthy evocation of his friendship and love for Sijé and of Sijé's long-standing influence on Hernández:

Yo quiero ser llorando el hortelano

de la tierra que ocupas y estercolas,

compañero del alma, tan temprano.

Alimentando lluvias, caracolas

y órganos mi dolor sin instrumento,

a las desalentadas amapolas

daré tu corazón por alimento.

Tanto dolor se agupa en mi costado

que por doler me duele hasta el aliento.

................................

Tu corazón, ya terciopelo ajado

llama a un campo de almendras espumosas

mi avariciosa voz de enamorado.

A las aladas almas de las rosas

del almendro de nata te requiero,

que tenemos que hablar de muchas cosas,

compañero del alma, compañero.

(I want to be the grieving gardener

of the earth you fill and fertilize,

my dearest friend, so soon.

With rain and snails my stifled sorrow

nourishes the organs of your body

and I would feed your heart

the drooping poppies. Pain bunches up

between my ribs till every breath I draw

becomes an aching stitch.

......................

My greedy lover's voice cries out to you,

summoning your crumpled velvet heart;

come to the drifting almond sprays;

come to the winged roses blooming

in the almond tree so creamy white;

we've so many things to talk about,

my friend, my dearest friend.)

--translation by Edwin Honig (from The Unending Lightning, 1990)

In this poem Hernández rages against death and the return to nothingness, immortalizing in the elegy not only his loss but all such losses. In one sense Sijé would not have been flattered by Hernández's natural, concrete imagery and avoidance of conceits in this poem, where the pristine purity of Sijé's style of verse ("pure-white almond blossoms") are contrasted with Hernández's sensual and earthy vitality ("blood-red poppies"). Hernández was later to show his mastery of the elegy on many other occasions, such as in "Epitafio desmesurado a un poeta" (Epitaph Without End to a Poet), dedicated to Julio Herrera y Reissig, and "El ahogado del Tajo" (The Drowned Poet of the Tagus), inspired by Bécquer, both of which are in Obra completa.

Another irony in the Hernández-Sijé relationship can be seen in Hernández's review of Neruda's Residencia en la tierra, written prior to Sijé's death though not published until 2 January 1936 in the Sol, in which Hernández eloquently defends Neruda's full-blooded poetry:

Estoy harto de tanto arte menor y puro. Me emociona la confusión desordenada y caótica de la Biblia, donde veo espectáculos grandes, cataclismos, desventuras, mundos revueltos, y oigo alaridos y derrumbamientos de sangre. Me revienta la vocecilla mínima que se extasía ante un chopo, le dispara cuatro versitos y cree que ya está hecho todo en poesía.

(I have had enough of minor and pure art. Give me the disorganized and chaotic confusion of the Bible, where one can read about spectacular events, cataclysms, misadventures, and world-shaking events and hear shouts and sniff the smell of gushing blood. Not for me the dainty voice that swoons ecstatically at the glimpse of a poplar and then dashes off four lines of verse which supposedly contain all there is to be said about poetry.)

Hernández's enthusiasm for Neruda's brand of poetry was not surprising: both poets were impassioned and impelled by the same forces. Moreover, Neruda had often predicted that Hernández's break with Sijé would surely come in time.

Thus, though up to 1934 Hernández had been for the most part a partisan of neo-Góngorism, from 1935 to his death in 1942 he evolved from a tendency toward servile traditionalism to greater and greater independence of form and imagery. His early preference for the octava and the sonnet and his penchant for la tropología culterana (culturalist tropology) eventually gave way to the simpler textures and more direct language of the canción (song) and the romance (ballad), revealing his kinship with Machado and Lorca. This coexistence of popular and sophisticated art, common throughout most of Spanish history, was also typical of Spanish literature in the 1930s.

The culmination of Hernández's enthusiasm for traditional forms can be found in El rayo que no cesa. These poems were composed over a crucial two-year period in Hernández's career: 1934, when he was writing poems for Sijé and the Gallo Crisis and preparing his play Quién, and 1935, when he was publishing poems in Caballo Verde and working on his proletarian-inspired play Los hijos de la piedra. As such, El rayo que no cesa is a pivotal work in Hernández's development as a poet. His discovery of love, in the person of Josefina, caused him to search out a richer, yet more restricted, vocabulary, less excessively decorative and more functional.

In these sonnets Hernández still exhibits a love of wordplay, conceits, and occasional verbal and rhetorical excess, but much less so than in his neo-Góngorist works. More often than not in El rayo que no cesa his poetic fireworks produce gems, such as the elegy to Sijé, which Hernández included in the book at the last minute in his honor. The influence of the religious eroticism latent in the Song of Songs and de la Cruz's Cántico Espiritual (Spiritual Canticle, 1584) can be felt throughout, as well as echoes of Neruda's Residencia en la tierra and Aleixandre's La destrucción o el amor.

Of thirty poems in El rayo que no cesa, twenty-seven are sonnets. There is also a long opening poem, a long fifteenth poem that divides twenty-six of the sonnets into two groups of thirteen, and the elegy of Sijé (poem 29), which is followed by the final sonnet. Some critics, particularly Dario Puccini, have analyzed how this collection reflects Hernández's poetic growth and maturity from the earlier El silbo vulnerado and Imagen. Although Josefina is nowhere mentioned by name in the poems--only as "you"--the clues to her influence on them are everywhere; all the poems in El rayo que no cesa, with the exception of the elegy, were inspired by her. However, on closer inspection one realizes that the real focus of the poems is the poet and his love, rather than the beloved. This love is definitely carnal and frankly desired but unfulfilled; the anguished lover is both Hernández and Everyman, and his eros and agape are the same forces that rage within all humans. The central images are the knife, blood, the ever-present bull, and a relatively new one, el barro (clay), developed in the central poem (number 15):

Me llamo barro aunque Miguel me llame.

Barro es mi profesión y mi destino

que mancha con su lengua cuanto lame

(My name is clay although I am called Miguel.

Clay is my profession and my destiny

and stains everything that it touches with its tongue)[.]

The publication of El rayo que no cesa effectively concluded the first chapter of Hernández's poetic career. At about the time Hernández published El rayo que no cesa, José Ortega y Gasset was urging him to write more material for Revista. In January 1936 Hernández took a fateful trip to San Fernando del Jarama. Poorly dressed as usual on a cold, rainy day, and having forgotten to bring the proper identification papers with him, Hernández was stopped by the Guardia Civil and imprisoned, only managing to secure his freedom on the strength of a phone call to Neruda in Madrid. This second arrest by the Guardia Civil made such an impression on the young poet that he wrote Josefina, saying: "Tengo odio a la Guardia Civil, menos a tu padre, Josefina" (I abhor all civil guardsmen, with the exception of your father, Josefina). Hernández carried such distrust and hatred with him to the grave.

Hernández was determined to end the stalemate between himself and Josefina, with whom he had not been in touch for quite some time. In a desperate attempt to set things right between them and find out whether she still loved him, Hernández wrote her father, Manuel Manresa, for information, asking him to intercede on his behalf. Manresa wrote back immediately, offering his support and saying that his daughter had been waiting for Hernández's letters and his return, hoping for their reconciliation, and suffering alone in silence.

On 10 April, Hernández returned to Orihuela with mixed feelings. His reunion with Josefina was passionate and joyful, and the welcome he received from his friends was very warm. But his happiness was tempered by sadness when he visited Sijé's parents and Josefina Fenoll, Sijé's former fiancée. The city of Orihuela unveiled a plaque in honor of Sijé on 14 April in a ceremony attended by many people, including Hernández, who read the eulogy.

He and Josefina Manresa planned to marry within two weeks, but Manuel Manresa was transferred to the town of Elda, in another jurisdiction, so they had to postpone their wedding plans indefinitely, and Hernández was once again forced to return to Madrid without her. With Josefina and her family in Elda, Hernández felt isolated in Madrid, in spite of his ever-expanding circle of friends. Josefina had become associated with nature (its quietness, peace, and solitude), one of the two poles of his creative energy. Neruda, Aleixandre, and other urban intellectuals represented the city, the other side of Hernández's nature (bustle, people, ideas, and movement).

On 18 July 1936 a Spanish military uprising led by Generalissimo Francisco Franco in the North African province of Melilla caused vital Spanish services, such as mail and trains, to come to a stop. Sometime during the next day, Lorca, who ironically had left Madrid to seek the comparative peace and safety of his beloved Andalusia, was captured by the military and killed with some other prisoners near Granada. Such mass executions and other chaotic events threw the country into turmoil and exemplified the wanton death and destruction of the next three years. The Spanish Civil War was to have a disastrous effect on all aspects of life in the country, particularly those involving culture. Many of the greatest intellectuals and finest artists eventually left the country to live in exile; others, like Lorca, Miguel de Unamuno, and Machado, died at the onset or during the war; and a few others, such as Hernández, died not long afterward as a direct result of that brutal conflict and the subsequent savage reprisals and executions.

Yet many in Spain seemed oblivious, including the citizens of Orihuela, where summer festivities were in full swing when Hernández returned there for a visit on 29 July. But tragedy soon struck again; on 13 August, Manuel Manresa and three other civil guards were killed in an armed attack while Josefina and Hernández were spending the day together in Cox.

The Madrid to which Hernández returned on 18 September showed signs everywhere of the effect that the war was having on Spain. On 27 September Hernández enrolled in the well-known Fifth Regiment, part of the Republican forces fighting Franco and the Nationalists. They built barricades and dug ditches in the town of Cubas, which was overflown daily by enemy bombers heading toward Toledo. Taken ill, Hernández returned to Madrid to recuperate and begin working on a play titled Pastor de la muerte (Shepherd of Death, in Obra completa). He soon joined the First Calvary Company of the Peasants' Battalion as a cultural-affairs officer, reading his poetry daily on the radio. He also traveled extensively throughout the area, organizing cultural events and doing poetry readings for soldiers on the front lines, or even pitching in where necessary to dig a ditch or defend a position. As more and more war poems flowed from his pen, and as his name and poems could be heard increasingly on the lips of his compatriots, he slowly approached the status of prime poet of the nation during the war years.

Together with Pablo de la Torriente Brau, a Cuban and fellow officer, Hernández organized a cultural evening in Alcalá de Henares on 27 November, attended by several well-known figures including Prados and Alberti. Three weeks later Brau was shot dead, his leather vest (a gift from Hernández) riddled with bullet holes. His death was yet another blow to the poet and inspired the second elegy in the soon-to-be-published Viento del pueblo (Wind of the People, 1937).

With the war opening up and more and more people dying or getting injured, Hernández, worried by a lack of news from Josefina (due to irregular mail service) and plagued by loneliness, thought incessantly about their postponed marriage plans. He wanted to get married as soon as possible, perhaps by January, but she refused to get married under those circumstances, due to her father's murder and also because her wedding dress was not ready. Consequently Hernández involved himself increasingly in the war effort in an attempt to take his mind off his personal problems.

At about this time Machado moved to Valencia, and Neruda accepted a posting to the Chilean embassy in Paris. Ortega had also left Spain, and Unamuno died on 31 December under house arrest, causing shock waves throughout the country. While in Valencia in January, Hernández wrote the poem "Recoged esta voz" (Take Up This Cry), which he eventually read to the forces at the front and which is collected in Viento del pueblo. He was surprised at how peaceful Valencia was compared to Madrid, a fact that perhaps explained why the Republican government had already started moving to Valencia. From the town of Jaén he wrote Josefina in early March that in four days he would be coming to marry her.

Hernández and Josefina were finally married in Orihuela on 9 March 1937 in a no-frills civil ceremony attended by close friends Carlos Fenoll and Jesús Poveda. The atmosphere at the wedding was not entirely happy, for Manual Manresa had only been dead for seven months, but Hernández's postmarital poetry soon took on new tones and colors, full of sensuality and sexuality seemingly fulfilled. Unfortunately, after only forty days with his bride, Hernández had to return to his regiment on 18 April. Four days later tragedy struck once again when Josefina's mother died. In order to take his mind off the almost constant stream of tragic events, Hernández kept busy working on his poetry, correcting proofs of Viento del pueblo and preparing speeches. When his propaganda unit was shifted to Castuera in Estremadura province, he took time off from his exhausting pace to see Josefina and came down with a severe case of anemia. Hugh Thomas, noted Spanish Civil War historian, mentions the accelerating pace of Hernández's literary activities during the war years, a pace that inevitably took a heavy toll on the poet's health and required him to rest and recuperate on several occasions.

Back with his unit after his recovery, he devoted himself to finishing Teatro en la guerra (Theater in the War, 1937), a group of short propaganda plays of a kind one would have expected from an officer with the government propaganda unit, and certainly not among the best of his dramatic works that have survived. However, Hernández had undergone an important change since the beginning of the war. In the prologue to the book he wrote that since 18 July 1936 "entiendo que todo teatro, toda poesía, todo arte, ha de ser, hoy más que nunca, un arma de guerra" (I know that all theater, all poetry, all art must be, today more than ever, a weapon of war). This prologue, stating clearly his involvement with and commitment to the Republican side, was one of the main documents used against him after the war.

In July 1937 well-known writers from all over the world converged on Madrid for the first of two sessions of the International Writers' Congress; the second session was held in Valencia. Hernández was reunited with Neruda and made or renewed acquaintance with such important figures as André Malraux, Octavio Paz, Cesar Vallejo, Stephen Spender, Claude Aveline, and Jean Cassou. During this congress Hernández had the opportunity to get much closer to Machado, who made a very moving closing address. Hernández and Neruda saw each other whenever they could, touring the area where Neruda had lived and visiting his bombed-out flat in Casa de las Flores, where little was left save some scattered manuscripts, which the Chilean poet chose to leave where they lay among the rubble.

After the congress, and with Viento del pueblo and Teatro en la guerra set for publication, Hernández managed to spend some time with Josefina in Cox, where he put the finishing touches on Pastor de la muerte. On 21 August, Vicente Ramos and Manuel Molina organized a ceremony to honor Hernández at the Alianza de Intelectuales in Alicante, and the poet took the audience by storm with readings of both prose and poetry, including several of his new poems from Viento del pueblo.

In August, Hernández was invited by the Republican government to be part of a group of Spanish intellectuals attending the Fifth Festival of Soviet Theater in Moscow. After a two-day stopover in Paris, where he met with Paz, Hernández flew to Moscow, then Leningrad and Kiev in September for an action-packed month of plays, concerts, ballets, and banquets, as well as interviews with journalists. He was impressed with Russian culture, especially the theater, and took copious notes he intended to use in writing new dramatic works.

Back in Spain in early October, he spent time at home with Josefina, who was pregnant. Viento del pueblo had finally been published to generally favorable reviews. Although some had criticized its plebeian or vulgar aspects, most praised its earthy appeal to the heart rather than the mind, which may explain why it had such a strong effect on the Republican forces at war; it raised the morale of most who heard or read it. The first poem, "Primera elegía" (First Elegy), dedicated to the memory of Lorca, is reminiscent of Jorge Manrique's fifteenth-century couplets on the death of his father. Lorca had been almost like a god for Hernández; his death meant not only the loss of a friend but also that of a colleague, mentor, and helpful critic of Hernández's dramatic works. In his prologue to the book, Hernández wrote: "Los poetas somos viento del pueblo: nacemos para pasar soplados a travès de sus poros y conducir sus ojos y sus sentimientos hacia las cumbres más hermosas" (The poets are like the winds of the people: we are born to blow through their pores and to raise their eyes and feelings to the most beautiful peaks).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Perito en lunas (Murcia: Sudeste, 1933).
Quién te ha visto y quién te ve y sombra de lo que eras (Madrid: Cruz & Raya, 1934).
El rayo que no cesa (Madrid: Héroe, 1936); translated by Michael Smith as Unceasing Lightning (Dublin: Dedalus, 1986); enlarged as El rayo que no cesa y otros poemas, edited by Rafael Alberti (Buenos Aires: Ferreiro, 1942); enlarged again as El rayo que no cesa; El silbo vulnerado; Poesías publicadas en El Gallo Crisis, edited by José María de Cossío (Madrid & Buenos Aires: Espasa-Calpe, 1949).
Viento del pueblo (Valencia: Socorro Rojo, 1937).
El labrador de más aire (Valencia: Nuestro Pueblo, 1937).
Teatro en la guerra (Valencia: Nuestro Pueblo, 1937).
El hombre acecha (Valencia: Subsecretaría de Propaganda, 1939).
Sino sangriento y otros poemas (Havana: Verónica/Altolaguirre, 1939).
Seis poemas inéditos y nueve más, edited by Vicente Ramos and Manuel Molina (Alicante: Ifach, 1951).
Antología poética de Miguel Hernández, edited by Francisco Martínez Marín (Orihuela: Aura, 1951).
Obra escogida, edited by Arturo del Hoyo (Madrid: Aguilar, 1952).
Dentro de luz y otras prosas, edited by María de Gracia Ifach (Madrid: Arión, 1957).
Cancionero y romancero de ausencias, edited by Elvio Romero (Buenos Aires: Lautaro, 1958).
Los mejores versos de Miguel Hernández, edited by Molina (Buenos Aires: Nuestra América, 1958).
Los hijos de la piedra (Buenos Aires: Quetzal, 1959).
Obras completas, edited by Romero and Andrés Ramón Vázquez (Buenos Aires: Losada, 1960).
Antología, edited by Ifach (Buenos Aires: Losada, 1961).
Canto de independencia (Havana: Tertulia, 1962).
Poemas de adolescencia; Perito en lunas; Otros poemas (Buenos Aires: Losada, 1963).
El hombre acecha; Cancionero y romancero de ausencias; Últimos poemas (Buenos Aires: Losada, 1963).
Imagen de tu huella; El rayo que no cesa; Viento del pueblo; El silbo vulnerado; Otros poemas (Buenos Aires: Losada, 1963).
Poemas, edited by José Luis Cano and Josefina Manresa (Barcelona: Plaza & Janés, 1964).
Poesía (Havana: Consejo Nacional de Cultura, 1964).
Poesías, edited by Jacinto Luis Guereña (Paris: Seghers, 1964; Madrid: Taurus, 1967; enlarged edition, Madrid: Narcea, 1973).
Dieci sonetti inediti di Miguel Hernández, edited by Dario Puccini (Rome: Societ� Filologica Romana, 1966).
Unos poemas olvidados de Miguel Hernández, selected by A. Fernández Molina (Caracas: Universal, 1967).
La prosa poética de Miguel Hernández (Tres obras desconocidas; Valoración), edited by Juan Cano Ballesta (Palma de Mallorca: Papeles de Son Armadans, 1968).
Cinco sonetos inéditos, compiled by Dario Puccini (Caracas: Revista Nacional de Cultura, 1968).
Poemas de amor, edited by Leopoldo de Luis (Madrid: Alfaguara, 1969).
El hombre y su poesía, edited by Cano Ballesta (Madrid: Cátedra, 1974).
Obra poética completa, edited by Luis and Jorge Urrutia (Bilbao: Zero, 1976).
Reformatorio para adultos 1942 (N.p., 1976).
Teatro (Havana: Arte y Literatura, 1976 [i.e., 1977]).
Poesía y prosa de guerra y otros textos olvidados, edited by Cano Ballesta and Robert Marrast (Pamplona: Peralta, 1977).
Poemas sociales de guerra y de muerte, edited by Luis (Madrid: Alianza, 1977).
Teatro completo, edited by Vicente Pastor Ibáñez, Manuel Rodríguez Maciá, and José Oliva (Madrid: Ayuso, 1978).
Poesías completas, edited by Sánchez Vidal (Madrid: Aguilar, 1979).
Veinticuatro sonetos inéditos, edited by José Carlos Rovira (Alicante: Instituto de Estudios Juan Gil-Albert, 1986).
Prosas líricas y aforismos, edited by Ifach (Madrid: Torre, 1986).
El torero más valiente, edited by Agustín Sánchez Vidal (Madrid: Alianza, 1987).
Dos cuentos para Manolillo (para cuando sepa leer), edited by Rovira (Madrid: Palas Atenea, 1988).
Ultimas ausencias para un niño, edited by Rovira (Madrid: Palas Atenea, 1988).
Obra completa, 2 volumes, edited by Sánchez Vidal, Rovira, and Alemany Bay (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1992).
Songbook of Absences: Selected Poems of Miguel Hernández, translated by Thomas C. Jones, Jr. (Washington, D.C.: Charioteer, 1972).
Miguel Hernández and Blas de Otero: Selected Poems, edited by Timothy Baland and Hardie St. Martin, includes translations by Baland, St. Martin, Robert Bly, and James Wright (Boston: Beacon, 1972).
The Unending Lightning: Selected Poems of Miguel Hernández, translated by Edwin Honig (Riverdale-on-Hudson, New York: Sheep Meadow, 1990).

Play Productions

El refugiado, Alicante, Teatro Principal, 27 April 1938.
Los hijos de la piedra, Buenos Aires, Teatro del Pueblo, 11 April 1946.
El labrador de más aire, Madrid, Teatro Muñoz Seca, 17 October 1972.
Quién te ha visto y quién te ve y sombra de lo que eras (auto sacramental), Orihuela, Teatro Circo de Orihuela, 13 February 1977.

Other

"Poemas de Miguel Hernández (1930-1932) no recogidos hasta la fecha," in Literatura alicantina, edited by Vicente Ramos (Madrid & Barcelona: Alfaguara, 1965).
"Miguel Hernández," in Modern European Poetry, edited by Willis Barnstone (New York: Bantam, 1966).