The poetries of Ramon Xirau and Jaime Gil de Biedma: two far expresions of the Spanish Postwar literature

Abstract

The Spanish Civil War fractures the poetic production of this country. Particularly, due to the exile which in Mexico finds, with the arrival of an inmense group of persons, its great expression. This article seeks to compare the poetry of a paradigmatic young generation´s writer who lives the Postwar as Mexican exile: Ramon Xirau, with the poetry of someone who lives the Postwar like an inner exile (as a consequence of the oppressive environment): Jaime Gil de Biedma. This article tries to decode the idiosyncratic features and the diferences which characterize both writers in the spatial configuration that implies the semantic field called Spain. As a brief introduction I would say that Ramón Xirau is a Catalan, son of republican ancestry, who chooses the catalan language to write his poems within the Mexican exiled circles, reflecting a symbolic web penetrated by the absence, by a kind of existential non-determination; I would say that Jaime Gil de Biedma is a Catalan, son of the victors, who chooses the Spanish language to write his poems, looking for the forbbiden places of the homosexuality and of the radical leftwing thought.