1st Centenary of Soledades, galerías y otros poemas: present and past in Antonio Machado

Abstract

Machado was extremely interested in the use of non-linear temporal sequences, which explains in part his emphasis à la Bergson on repetition, the intellectual paradoxes arising from the leaps backwards and forwards in the subject’s consciousness, and even his view of the past as a creation in the present using the subjective materials of memory. In this essay I adopt advisedly Ortega’s concept of the «dialectical series» to connect the critique of biographical time found in Soledades, which revolves around the binomial «history»/«legend», with the poet’s preference for the time of performative enunciation over the time of the anecdote’s content. To this end, I will discuss in detail a handful of poems drawn form the 1902-1903 and 1907 editions of Soledades.