Rafael Alberti
1902–1999 · Spanish poet, playwright and painter
Rafael Alberti (born in El Puerto de Santa María in 1902, died there in 1999) was a Spanish poet, playwright and painter, and one of the leading figures of the Generation of '27 and the so-called Silver Age of Spanish literature. His career moved through avant-garde experiment, Communist militancy and exile, which makes him a useful guide to how poetry changed in his lifetime.
Alberti came from a family of sherry merchants whose fortunes had declined. He drifted through religious schools without finishing his formal education. In 1917 he settled in Madrid, where he wanted to be a painter and even exhibited at the Autumn Salon. His father's death in 1920 prompted him to write his first verses. After a lung illness forced him into the mountains to recover, he gathered the poems of Marinero en tierra, which won him the National Poetry Prize.
At the Residencia de Estudiantes he came to know Federico García Lorca, Pedro Salinas, Jorge Guillén and Gerardo Diego. A tribute to Góngora in 1927 helped define the group. A personal crisis, visible in Sobre los ángeles, pushed him towards Marxism and the Communist Party of Spain, and from then on poetry was for him a tool for changing society. During the Civil War he ran anti-fascist cultural work in Madrid. After the Republic's defeat he went into exile in France, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. He returned to Spain once democracy was restored, sat in Parliament from 1977 and received the Cervantes Prize.
His legacy lies in joining popular tradition to the avant-garde, and in a committed poetry that never gave up formal discipline.
Key works
- Marinero en tierra (1925): his first book, with its folk and sailor tone, which brought him immediate fame.
- A cal y canto (1927): a more formally demanding collection with a satirical and dramatic edge.
- Sobre los ángeles (1929): a book of inner crisis and desolation, generally seen as his masterpiece.
- Capital de la gloria (1937): poems written during the Civil War that question the poet's role and the nature of poetry.
Curiosities
A youthful love
He had a relationship with the painter Maruja Mallo until 1930, and that period is reflected in works by both of them. Years later, Alberti broke his silence about her in an article in El País.
A poem for a goalkeeper
While watching the 1928 Copa del Rey final between FC Barcelona and Real Sociedad, he was struck by Barcelona's goalkeeper, Franz Platko, and wrote a poem in praise of his outstanding performance.
Original Filopedia text based on Wikipedia (es) and Wikipedia (en) and Wikidata.