Conclusions

If we try to draw together all the strands of the argument, we shall find ourselves, perhaps, in a position to state theree main conclusions, viz:

1) that the English influences on Cernuda's work –even disregarding the considerable number of earlier English poets whom we do not investigate– are more deep-rooted, and affect wider areas of Cernuda's thought, than is generally recognised;

2) that the parallels with Yeats and Eliot, in particular, are so clear that the word “coincidences” is inadequate to describe them, unless one makes the word mean “a shared set of aims and intentions” and “exposure to the operation of similar minds”, in which case we may more economically continue to speak of “influences”, since that is what one commonly means by the term;

3) that under the stress of these influences, Cernuda's conception of poetry underwent a radical reorganisation, principally involving a new sense of the objectivisation of the speaker, the autonomy of the poetic artefact, and the freeing of the line from the tyranny of rhythmic regularity.

Touching the last point, though we have quoted him as saying he developed an early aversion to the “ritmo demasiado acusado”, his early craftsmanship had instilled in him a tendency to lapidary phrasing, and it is not until after his experiments, in the Browningesque dramatic monologue that he begins to distribute his rhythmic counterpoint in a natural way, i.e. more in accordance with context or character. One can see this, for example, by comparing “Duerme, muchacho” or “A un muchacho andaluz” with “Noche del hombre y su demonio” or “Nocturno yanqui”, though in the later poems the stanza form is retained.

Apart from this question of diction, and apart from the examples –much more numerous than we could take detailed notice of– which we have detected of direct debts of style and expression, we have noticed time and again Cernuda's departure from the unadorned “I” of his early work to a much more complex and sophisticated approach, which partakes both of Yeats's theory of the Mask, and Eliot's doctrine of impersonality. If we use the term “Romantic” in this connection, we are treading on dangerous ground, partly, as we have said, because of Spain's peculiar relation with the Romantic movement in Europe. In the sense in which the word is currently used in English, French or German, Cernuda hardly seems to fit the description. If anything, his early poems share something of the «modernista» aura of the early century. But, as he quickly adopted Unamuno, rather than Juan Ramón Jiménez, as mentor, his taste for northern Romanticism (of which his beloved Bécquer is, in some ways, a late product) soon led to a taste for what followed it: the Victorians, then Modernism.

Browning, then, and later, Yeats, became his master. From the former we have seen that he learned the technique of projecting his experience upon a persona, and it was a technique of which he grew fond and at which he became adept. We suggested, tentatively, that Browning's deliberate harshness may have betrayed Cernuda at times into an odd sort of awkward prosody, and a wordiness, which was just what he was seeking to suppress. It may also be felt that Cernuda had little real talent for the handling of dramatic situations, and that a number of his dramatic monologues tend to create a voice which is really his own, aggravated and distorted by the device.

However, his discovery of the technique is crucial, as it seems to have opened his eyes to what Yeats and Eliot were doing, in their different ways. This, with his great gifts, and his alert, enquiring mind revealed the possibility of making the speaker a kind of construct, an aggregate modern consciousness, aware of the diversity of experience, the beating of his own mind and the desire for order and symmetry. Internal coherence becomes his aim, and the aesthetic experience comes, in a way, to seem an answer –perhaps the only one– to the problem of the destructiveness of time and the contrary impulse towards eternity and beauty: the resolution, in Modernist terms, of the conflict between reality and desire.

Summarising, we may say that Browning gave him a new method and the beginnings of a new style, Yeats helped him polish his technique and centre his themes, and Eliot taught him how this new technique and this new language could be adapted to the modern sensibility by drawing discreetly on the tradition, achieving “an easy commerce of the old and new”.

These influences, together, naturally, with his own experience and consummate skill, made Cernuda what he was not before he left Spain, and possibly would not have been otherwise: “poeta de Europa”. As such, he has become one of the most original, as well 'as one of the profoundest Spanish poets of any time.