I asked Jeremy to write this post, and in the Parador of Bielsa there was time to reflect on some of the sights and ideas which had enjoyed so far on the trip. So, over to Jeremy!
His early life
Even today, 86 years after his death and 113 years after he left the small provincial capital of Soria, Antonio Machado is, for my money, the finest Spanish poet of the 20th century, at once the most accessible as well as the most intensely personal. The streets of Soria are pervaded by his memory; half a dozen or so bronze statues stand (or sit) in the streets, and his words are recorded on plaques in several places.
Machado came to Soria in 1907, via his birth in Seville, and periods in Murcia and Madrid. .But he was always committed, as was his brother Manuel to whom he was always close, to poetry. Together they spent time in Paris, where he fell under the influence of French poets and were he prepared his first book of poetry, intriguingly entitled Soledades. He was, by the time he came to Soria, a professor of French and came to Soria as a teacher of French. At the time Soria was the smallest provincial capital with a population of around 7,000, set in the hills beside the River Duero, amidst generally grand scenery. Here, as Machado himself tells us, he fell in love with the Castilian countryside, its rivers (especially the Duero) and landscape. Indeed, with Spain itself, and his second poetry collection was called Campos de Castilla.
Leonor
Much more significantly, he fell in love with the daughter of the Guardia Civil chief, in whose house he boarded. Leonor Izquierdo was just 13 but, in his own words later in life “In Soria ….I met my wife whom I adored.” They married on 30 July 1909, having waited for Leonor to reach the legal age of consent. Machado was 34 and Leonor 15 and a half. Outside the church of Santa Maria on the Plaza Mayor, there is a haunting statue of his young wife Leonor, standing beside an empty chair in a direct imitation of their wedding photograph – but with no groom.
About a year later, they went to Paris where he taught for a while. But Leonor contracted TB and they returned to Soria. On 1 August 1912, Leonor died. She was buried the next day in a grave of moving simplicity. A few days later a devastated Machado left Soria, never to return. He never married again, although he did have a relationship with a married woman towards the end of his life.
Machado’s poetry
After Leonor’s death his poetry changed too. It became more introspective, more spiritual, more about life’s journey, more about seeking and not finding. There is a strong religious spirit in much of his later verse – spiritual certainly but not specifically of any particular church or even religion. Rather in his view of life and what it entails. He lived in several places in Spain, latterly in Segovia, where he was also a professor of French. When the appalling tragedy of the Spanish Civil War broke out, he and his family became targets for the Nationalist forces under Franco, and eventually escaped across the border to France. Machado died in Collioure in 1939.
His poetry, however, is very much alive. It is also deeply Spanish, not just in language, but in images, context and tone. Both his country and its people, perhaps especially the poorer people – “good people” as he calls them – and their lives. It is the poetry of a pilgrim, but also of a land and a landscape, and it is suffused with love and caring for these things. I never read any of his poems without feeling both uplifted and somehow having learned something new and important about life in all its detail.
His best known poem is a brief and simple one, much quoted and translated but I think that it describes accurately in it’s sparse and clear imagery his own approach to his life. I quote it below both in Spanish and in my own translation, which is similar to other renderings
| Caminante, son tus huellas El camino y nada mas. Caminante, no hay camino. Se hace camino al andar Al andar, se hace camino y al Volver las vista atras Se ve la senda que nunca Se ha de Volver a pasar. Caminante, no hay camino Sino estelas en al mar. | Wayfarer, the path is Just your footsteps, nothing else. Wayfarer, there is no ordained route; You make the path by your own walking. Yes, your footsteps alone make it. If you look back You will see only a track That can never be taken again. Wayfarer, there is no pre-made road; Only your wake, Vanishing like a ship’s in the sea. |
There are many other poems on a similar theme, but none of them capture so clearly, succinctly, and movingly the poetic vision of Antonio Machado, the constant seeker. One can only hope that he found his goal in the end.
There is a strong religious spirit in much of his later verse – spiritual certainly but not specifically of any particular church or even religion. Rather in his view of life and what it entails.
He lived in several places in Spain, latterly in Segovia, where he was also a professor of French. When the appalling tragedy of the Spanish Civil War broke out, he and his family became targets for the Nationalist forces under Franco, and eventually escaped across the border to France. Machado died in Collioure in 1939.
I would love to hear from you!