Agenda y Cuaderno de Nueva York: La paradoja entre la identidad í­ntima y la máscara múltiple

Abstract

José Hierro is remembered in the history of Spanish literature for his poetic construction of a clear authorial self, in his works written during the postwar period, that can only be understood in the context of a collective us that belongs to a specific generation. Hierro's works often seem to refer to personal matters, although his confessions in most cases belong to the public sphere: it is well known that the private aspects of his life were wisely reserved in Hierro's literary pieces. Appropriate marks of realism guide Hierro's reader to a realistic reading that withdraws any fictional effect, according to the canonic use in the period. José Hierro's literary evolution leaves behind this realistic poetic to enter, in the following years, other similarly successful and productive roads. Nonetheless, it is striking that in his last poetry books we may find a peculiar way to resolve the problem of decorum and identity. We find in these works an increasing confessional tone that is concurrent to a decreasing true biographical discourse. Attending to this paradox, the purpose of this work is to demonstrate that Hierro's frequent use of culturalistic masks functions in multiple directions in his work: it allows him to connect with the young poetics as well as to refer to his intimate worries in a way that eludes a violent self exhibition