Miguel Hernández - Part Four - The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939
Part Four - The Spanish Civil War
A few weeks ago I wrote a quick overview of the life of Miguel Hernández, and how I came to know about him, but it didn’t really cover his poetry. I have split this into multiple parts, to make each of the blogs bite sized, and to reflect the phases of his writing, career and life.
The day of the publication of this part of the blog, 28th March 2024, marks the 82nd anniversary of Hernández’s death, and if I had been planning better I woiuld have timed it to coincide with the fifth and final article. However, the subject of this article, the Spanish Civil War, plays a key role in Hernandez’s ultimate fate.
Miguel Hernández Gilabert was born in Orihuela on 30th October 1910 to what Wikipedia coyly describes as a “family of low resources”. After his first poetry publication, he moved to Madrid in 1934 where he became part of a group of avant garde and radical left-wing poets and artists.
As we know, storm clouds were gathering across Europe in the 1930s. In Spain, a large part of the early 20th century had been one of a nominal monarchy run by a military dictatorship. this resulted in a wealthy upper class and a great deal of real poverty, from which Miguel Hernández emerged. Support for the dictator Admiral Juan Bautista Aznar-Cabañas collapsed around 1930 and he resigned, with an election being called. In the election liberal and socialist candidates won nearly all the big cities, and the military, including Admiral Aznar, appeared to accept the result and any potential coup option faded away. The winners declared the Second Spanish Republic and the King, Alfonso XIII, fled the country. Niceto Alcalá-Zamora became President and head of state and the Republic gained widespread support. However, they gradually became seen as very anti-religion and anti-Catholic Church and this motivated the right. In addition strikes called by the Worker’s Union (CNT) were brutally supressed, leading people to see the revolutionary committee government as no better than their predecessors. Some of the well intentioned economic policies backfired, making some people with poor paid jobs become people with no jobs. In 1933 a right wing government won the elections, including fascists who were eyeing the successes of that ideology in Germany and Italy. There was an attempted revolutionary uprising, which was brutally crushed. Agricultural reforms caused havoc across the country, with landowners brutally treating farmers, and mocking their poverty. An election was called amid rising tensions and violence. It was won by the left wing Popular Front, and was followed by reprisals and counter reprisals. The generals ruminated on a coup as Spain started to collapse in on itself, and one of the most outspoken, General Francisco Franco, was assigned to the Canary Islands and other generals were removed from their posts. But in retrospect there was no escaping the inevitability of a full scale Civil War once the generals kick started the coup on July 17th 1936 in response to, in particular, the assassination of leading monarchist José Calvo Sotelo and the lack of interest by the government in acting on it. Two sides of almost equal strength, the left wing coalition of Republicans and the right wing, pro-church, fascist, anti-communist Nationalists, began fighting across Spain.
There was no question about whose side Hernández and his friends were on. I previously mentioned fellow poets Federico García Lorca, Pablo Neruda and Luis Cernuda and how their fates differed to Hernández. García Lorca was arrested by the Nationalists in August 1936 and immediately disappeared, assumed assassinated for his beliefs and/or homosexuality. His remains have never been found. Neruda, a Chilean national and consul in Madrid, left for Chile but became immediately more politicised after García Lorca’s death. He supported Spanish people exiled by the war, helping thousands to travel to Chile from France. Cernuda was an active writer and propagandist for the Republic but left Spain for London, and then Paris, when things became dangerous in Spain. He never returned, ending up in Glasgow before he died in 1963. Hernández also became a propagandist but did also serve on the front line. The effect on his poetry was dramatic - gone were the sonnets and surreal 8 liners. Instead, the poems are didactic, brutal, political. He was a passionate orator, imploring people to back the cause and fight to the end.
The poems become longer and the enforced rhymes often disappear, leaving behind the natural rhyme of the Spanish language. Hernandez’s passion and ability to conjure images also remains.
From "Sentado sobre los Muertos" Sentado sobre los muertos que se han callado en dos meses, beso zapatos vacíos y empuño rabiosamente la mano del corazón y el alma que lo mantiene. Que mi voz suba a los montes y baje a la tierra y truene, eso pide mi garganta desde ahora y desde siempre. "Sitting On The Dead" Sitting on the dead that have been silent for two months I kiss empty shoes and fiercely wield the fist of the heart and the soul that maintains it. May my voice rise to the mountains and thunder down to the earth; my throat demands this now and forever.
The poem ends with this promise. Spoiler alert: he kept it.
Aquí estoy para vivir mientras el alma me suene, y aquí estoy para morir, cuando la hora me llegue, en los veneros del pueblo desde ahora y desde siempre. Varios tragos es la vida y un solo trago es la muerte. I am here to live, as long as my soul beats, and I am here to die when my time comes, in the bubbling springs of my people, right now and for all time. Life is many drinks, death is just one last sip.
His politics are clear and unequivocal. He wishes for Mussolini and Hitler to be “plunged into a toilet of worms”. In El Niño Yuntero (The Yoked Child), he observes a poor boy yoked to the plough, starving, simply “meat for the yoke”. He reminds the men who still labour in poverty of their obligations:
¿Quién salvará este chiquillo menor que un grano de avena? ¿De dónde saldrá el martillo verdugo de esta cadena? Que salga del corazón de los hombre jornaleros, que antes de ser hombres son y han sido niños yunteros. Who will save that little boy, smaller than a grain of oats? The working men, who, before becoming men, were, and are still, children of the yoke. They are the hammer that must shatter these chains.
He praises the soldiers of the International Brigades who fell in battle supporting their Spanish comrades; he speaks in graphic detail of hunger and death.
In the analysis of his 1937 collection, Viento del Pueblo (Wind of the People) published as part of the Obra Poetica Completa, it states:
“The most pathos can be found in these poems with social themes. Some, with the heartbreaking tenderness of "El Niño Yuntero." But all these: "Sweat", «These Hands», «Olive Growers», «Day Workers»… are a beautiful and serious synthesis of shared pain and denunciation of capitalist injustice, in defense of the exploited classes.”
He saw Russia as a key ally and had visited Moscow, travelling via Paris where he recorded words you can hear if you visit his house in Orihuela.
Postcards were printed with his poems on as a means of distributing them, and he would speak at public gatherings.
But the war was not going well. The Republicans were being pushed back into their strongholds, with Hitler and Mussolini providing backup for the Nationalists, famously bombing Guernica but less famously Alicante among others, and blocking the ports. This was, of course, practice for what was to come across Europe later. The UK and France remained neutral.
A more personal tragedy afflicted him in 1937, but I will cover that as part of the next article. He published further work in El Hombre Acecha (1938) but by 1939 the War was coming to an end as the Nationalists advanced, with Hernández’s home city of Alicante the last to fall.
Eighty five years ago today the shadow of fascism fell on Spain when Franco occupied Madrid, and by April 1st, he declared victory on national radio. He remained in office as unelected and despotic leader of Spain until 1975.
Miguel Hernández became a wanted man.
If you want to know more you can comment below, or contact me on thefigtree<at>mail.com, (replace <at> with the “@” symbol) which is also the mailing address of my sister page The Fig Tree, a webzine that is open for submissions at all times, and whose first issue is now available.
You can find out more on figtreepoetry.substack.com
Original poems © Herederos de Miguel Hernández.
Translations by Tim Fellows 2024
Thanks for your article, I attended your session on Hernandez at Read To Write and enjoyed it so it's good to hear the full story unfold