El centro del silencio

Rafael Guillén

Rafael Guillén was a Spanish poet, a prominent member of the Generation of '50. Awarded Spain's National Poetry Award for Los estados transparentes in 1994, he was one of the most important authors of his generation. He had a long artistic career and among his merits is the fact of helping the recovery of Andalusian poetic culture after the devastation of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). The neoclassical influence that weighed on other members of his generation is noticeable in his early works. However, the attraction to popular themes and airs soon took on an evolution that manifested itself, already in the 1960s, abandoning the rigidity of traditional metrics. With the publication of Moheda (1979), it surprises with its uninhibited and innovative style in syntax. His themes were not light: love and eroticism are often mixed with elegy for the inevitable degradation of the passage of time, expressed in verses permeated with a cadenced musical phrasing.