“Adiós, adiós, Europa, te me vas de mi alma, de mi cuerpo cansado, de mi chaqueta vieja”: the exile of Jorge Guillén

Abstract

Jorge Guillén’s anthropological question – “Is being a man being on the road?” – raises the existential dilemma of the human being as a fragmented subject, constantly looking for their own identity. The poet from Valladolid, who can be considered one of the most brilliant members of the Generación del 27, tells the tragic experience of Franco’s dictatorship and the exile. His poems describe a feeling of helplessness and exclusion, which is present in most of the verses of Clamor. The deep meaning that lies beneath Guillén’s ontological question, which emphasizes the semantic opposition of the two verbs, can be found in the innermost essence of the human being, who is constantly divided between the stable and unchangeable condition of their status of an eternal traveller. This is related to a precarious and changeable existence, subjected to the rules-no-rules of chance.