ANTONIO MACHADO

(1875-1936)
My childhood, memories of a patio in Seville,
And a luminous garden where the lemon tree ripens…

Antonio Cipriano José María Machado Ruiz, world wide known as Antonio Machado, was born at 4:30a.m. on July, 26th, 1875 in Seville, in a small house, part of Las Dueñas palace, owned by the Dukes of Alba. He was the second of five brothers in a liberal family. His father was a famous folklore intellectual, and his mother a nice woman, daughter of a confectioner of Triana. The family was from some generations part of the progressive middle class of Andalusia. His grand father was doctor and teacher of sciences, and a man of deep liberal convictions, even affiliated to the Revolutionary Desk of Seville. His father collaborated with the republican press, directed the Popular Translations Library and published several studies on Andalusian and Galician folk.
The childhood in Seville lasted only eight years for Machado, because all the family moved to Madrid when the grand father was named teacher on the Central University of Madrid. There the poet will finished his studies in an intellectual and liberal way, studying in the famous Instituto Libre de Enseñanza, with a unique board of teachers, and that will renovate the concept of education in Spain.
Machado was not a precocious poet, nor even a good pupil, stopping for different times his formation, for the economical problems of his family. But the influence of his family and of the above mentioned Institute will mark the path that his intellectual way will follow: idealistic rationalism, liberal political ideas and a well marked concept of civil ethics, and of course, the heritage of the popular literature and traditional folklore, present all through his poetry. Although all this, he will finish high school at the age of 25. at that age, he was an idle youngster, lover of the literary chats at cafes and frequent to theatrical and scenic places. He starts to connect with literary personalities of his intellectual youth hood, and to feel the influence of Unamuno, Juan Ramón Jimenez and Rubén Darío. In 1899 he moves to Paris, where his brother Manuel lives, and both work in Garnier Ed. He meets there Oscar Wilde, Pío Baroja and Gómez Carrillo. Back to Spain, he works as an actor in Díaz de Mendoza Company, as he finishes his studies. His first poems, from 1898, begin to be published in some magazines.
In 1902 he goes back to Paris, to work in the consulate, but he has to resign time later, for his incapacity on the diplomatic business. It is then when he meets Rubén Darío, who, time later, will dedicate the celebrated “Oración”. Back again in Madrid, he becomes a friend of Juan Ramón Jimenez, and at the end of that year, he publishes his first grand poetic book, “Soledades”, with a modernist, but human tradition.
Now is when his collaborations with different newspapers and magazines start to increase, until 1907, year in which he gets a public work teaching French, moving to Soria. Here he meets the quite young Leonor Izquierdo Cuevas, daughter of his landlady. Two years later they get married, being she 15 and he 35. he publishes a new edition of “Soledades, Galerías y otros poemas”, and in 1911, obtains a grant to study in Paris, where the couple moves in January. Machado attends courses from Bedier, and also conferences of the most famous philosopher of the time, Bergson. He will inspire Machado’s poetry as “word in the time”. But in July, Leonor gets an important illness, tuberculosis, and they have to move to Spain for medical order. She will die the first day of August of the following year, death that will provoke a deep depression on the poet. He moves to Baeza (Jaén), where he will live ten years with his mother, teaching, studying and meditating.
In 1917 he meets a young poet from Granada, Ferderico García Lorca, and in 1919 he moves to Segovia, where he will live until 1931. This year he obtains a post in the institute Calderón de la Barca in Madrid. Machado does not like teaching, and this was only a way of getting money, he was little respected by his pupils and passed everybody.
But Machado is considered a master of poetry by the new generations, above all by the poetic group “Generación del 27” (Lorca, Alberti, Salinas, Guillén…), and also becomes famous for its prose work, published y magazines and gathered in his books “Abel Martin” and “Juan de Mairena”.
In 1924 he publishes a new book of poems, “Nuevas Canciones”, and between 1926 and 1932 he opens six theatre pieces with his brother, Manuel, an important figure of Spanish Modernism. His theatrical pieces were not as appreciated as his poetry, getting mayor fame later the piece “La Lola se va a los Puertos”.
In 1927 is chosen member of the Real Academia de la Lengua, but he will never pronounce his opening discourse. This year also opens “Juan de Mairena”. From 1928 until the Spanish Civil War, he has a secret affair with a married woman, also poet, named in his verses Guiomar, and whose real name, Pilar Valderrama, was not known until some years later.
The war will make this couple get apart, and they won’t ever meet again: Machado moved with his family to Valencia and Pilar with hers to Portugal. The poet joins to the Alliance of Anti fascist Writers, and is on the second international congress in Valencia. In 1937 he publishes his last book, “La Guerra”, with illustrations of his brother José. On January, 22nd, 1939 Machado starts with his family his last exodus: from Barcelona to Gerona, and from here to France, taking refuge in a hotel in Coulliure, quite ill. He will die here on February, 22nd, and three days later, his mother will also die. Both were buried in a pantheon on Coulliure’s cemetery, where his corpse still rests.
“Y cuando llegue el día del ultimo viaje,
Y esté al partir la nave que nunca ha de tornar,
Me encontraréis a bordo, ligero de equipaje,
Casi desnudo, como los hijos de la mar.”
(And when the day of the last travel arrives,
And the ship that will never return is ready,
You will find me on board, free from baggage,
Almost naked, like the sons of the sea)
His complete work were published for the first time in Mexico in 1940, with prelude of José Bergamín, while in Spain a edition of his “Complete poems” circulated, even though it was not complete. His fame was growing and growing, in Spain, with the opposition of the regime, as in the rest of the world. The first edition of his complete works appeared in 1964 in Buenos Aires, compiled by Aurora de Albornoz and Guillermo de la Torre.
Nowadays, there are hundreds of editions and studies of his work.
On July, 26th, 2000, the same day of his 125 anniversary, Joan Manuel Serrat, Spanish song writer, was awarded in Seville with the First International Award Antonio Machado for his contribution to the spreading and ethic and aesthetic knowledge of the poet thanks to his immortal album “Dedicado a Antonio Machado” (Dedicated to Antonio Machado).


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The work of Antonio Machado. (Due to the lack of recognized translations, we offered the Spanish editions of each book).
* Soledades, Revista Ibérica, Madrid, 1903
* Soledades, galerías y otros poemas, Pueyo, Madrid,1907
* Campos de Castilla, Renacimiento, Madrid,1912
* Páginas escogidas, Calleja, Madrid, 1917
* Poesías completas, Residencia de Estudiantes, Madrid, 1917
* Nuevas canciones, Mundo Latino, Madrid, 1924
* Juan de Mairena, Espasa Calpe, 1936
* La guerra, Espasa Calpe, 1937
* Obras, Séneca, México, 1940
* Juan de Mairena (nueva edición en dos volúmenes), Losada, Buenos Aires, 1943
* Abel Martín, Cancionero de Juan de Mairena, Losada, Buenos Aires, 1943
* Obra poética. Con epílogo de Rafael Alberti, Pleamar, Buenos Aires, 1944
* Obras completas de Manuel y Antonio Machado, Plenitud, Madrid, 1947
* Campos de Castilla (2ó edición), Afrodisio Aguado, Madrid,1949
* Canciones, Afrodisio Aguado, Madrid,1949
* Los complementarios y otras prosas póstumas, Losada, Buenos Aires, 1957
* Aurora de Albornoz: Poesías de guerra de A. Machado, Asomante, S. Juan de P. Rico, 1961
* Obras: poesía y prosa, Losada, Buenos Aires,1964. Edición completa de Aurora de Albornoz y Guillermo de la Torre.
* Prosas y poesías olvidadas. Recogidas por Robert Marrast y Ramón Martínez López, Centre de recherches de L´Institut d´Études Hispaniques, Paris, 1964
* Los complementarios, Edición crítica y facsímil con transcripción, al cuidado de Domingo Yndurain, Taurus, Madrid, 1971
ð Campos de Castilla. Edición de Rafael Ferreres, Taurus, 1970