Miguel de Unamuno

Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (September 29, 1864–December 31, 1936) was a writer and philosopher from the Basque Country in Spain.

Poetry

For Unamuno, art was a way of expressing spiritual problems. His themes were the same in his poetry as in his novels: spiritual anguish, the pain provoked by the silence of God, time and death.

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Unamuno was always attracted to traditional meters and, though his early poems did not rhyme, he subsequently turned to rhyme in his later works.

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Among his outstanding works of poetry are:

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• Poesías (Poems), (1907), his first collection of poetry, in which he outlined the themes that would dominate his poetics: religious conflict, Spain, and domestic life
• Rosario de sonetos líricos (Rosary of Lyric Sonnets) (1911)
• El Cristo de Velázquez (The Christ of Velazquez) (1920), a religious work, divided into four parts, where Unamuno analyzes the figure of Christ from different perspectives: as a symbol of sacrifice and redemption, as a reflection on his Biblical names (Christ the myth, Christ the man on the cross, Christ, God, Christ the Eucharist), as poetic meaning, as painted by Diego Velázquez, etc.
• Andanzas y visiones españolas (1922), something of a travel book, in which Unamuno expresses profound emotion and experiments with landscape both evocative and realistic (a theme typical of his generation of writers)
• Rimas de dentro (Rhymes from Within) (1923)
• Rimas de un poeta desconocido (Rhymes from an Unknown Poet) (1924)
• De Fuertevenra a París (From Fuertevenra to Paris) (1925)
• Romancero del destierro (Ballads of Exile) (1928)
• Cancionero (Songbook) (1953), published posthumously.