ANTONIO MACHADO

ANTONIO MACHADO

A Sevillian and a citizen of several Spanish and European locations in his life, Antonio is considered one of the best poets in the Spanish language –he is included in the so called Generation of 98. His family, a large one, had intense cultural concerns. At eight years old, they moved to Madrid and the familiar ideas pushed the young poet to study at the Free Institution of Education, where he was influenced by the ideas by Giner de los Ríos, Cossío or Sela. He also graduated from University.

When his grandfather dies, the family suffers an economic downturn and his brother Manuel and Antonio give in to the bohemian life in Madrid: gatherings, cafés, tablaos… get them to know the intellectuals and their works, from Valle-Inclán to Villaespesa. Even Antonio is part of theater companies such as María Guerrero’s, with no further intentions.

Along with his brother Manuel, he would also visit Paris twice, and would work for the Garnier Publishing House, and would meet other artists, such as Pío Baroja or Juan Ramón Jiménez. In Paris, he was steeped in the modernist and symbolist ideologies, later present in his poetry. Thus, he contributed regularly in magazines such as Helios, Blanco y Negro or La República de las Letras, and published ‘Solitudes. Galleries. Other Poems’, an extension of his first book of poems, published in 1907. At that time, he moved to Soria to teach French in high school. It is where the deep feeling Castilian sneaks into the next work of the poet, ‘Lands of Castilla’. He marries the young Leonor, the love of his life, who unfortunately dies of tuberculosis leaving Machado in misery.

He teaches boths in Baeza (Jaén) and then in Segovia. Despite being elected to the Royal Spanish Academy of Language, he never took possession of his Chair. When the Spanish Civil War is about to finish, he and his family are refugeed first in Valencia and then in Barcelona, ​​to go into exile in France. However, Antonio Machado, who was sick, could not put up with the journey and died in Collioure in 1939.
Machado said:

 

If it is good to live, it is still better to dream, and best of all, to wake up.

 

 

Pay attention: a lonely heart is not a heart.

 

 

Neither the past has died nor tomorrow is here, nor is written yesterday.

 

 

Compassion does not mean toleration of ruin, or resign to the inept but to have good will.

 

 

Today is always still.

 

 

All that is ignored, is despised.

 

 

To dialogue, ask first; then… listen.

 

 

Walker, there is no path, the path is made by walking.

 

 

The concepts are everyone’s and are imposed from outside; intuitions are always ours.

 

 

The eye that you see is not an eye because you see it, it is an eye because it sees you.

 

 

Slowly and carefully, as doing things well is more important than just doing them.

 

I wish you a happy week,

Álex Rovira

Alex Rovira