Poetry
Fields of Castile
Campos de Castilla
Antonio Machado · 1912
Opening lines
Mi infancia son recuerdos de un patio de Sevilla,
y un huerto claro donde madura el limonero;
mi juventud, veinte años en tierra de Castilla;
mi historia, algunos casos que recordar no quiero.
My childhood is memories of a patio in Seville
and a bright orchard where the lemon tree ripens;
my youth, twenty years in the land of Castile;
my story, a few events I do not wish to recall.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from archive.org
Synopsis
The collection opens with the poems of the “Campos de Soria”, where Castile appears through its plateaus, its rivers, its villages and those who live in them, in a sober, spare language. It includes a long romance in the tradition of the romancero, “La tierra de Alvargonzález”, which follows a family of peasants from Soria whose younger son, destined for the Church, leaves to seek his fortune in the Indies. There follow short “Proverbios y cantares”, a few isolated poems and tributes dedicated to Unamuno and to Juan Ramón Jiménez.
Context
The poems were written in Soria from 1908 and sent in the last months of 1910 to the publisher Renacimiento; the book only appeared in the last days of April 1912, under a title that replaced that of “Tierras de España”. It marks the shift from an inward poetry, close to symbolism, to a poetry turned towards Castile. The author enlarged it in the following editions, which went from 54 to 123 pieces in the Poesías completas of 1936.
Who it is for
Poems of varied forms, from landscape to the long narrative romance and proverbs in a few lines, in a deliberately spare language.
Prizes and reception
Hailed on publication by Unamuno, Azorín and Ortega y Gasset; the book most representative of the Generation of '98 in its author's work.