Rutgers University

The poetry of Manuel Machado, although very well received in his lifetime, has been compared since his death, for the most part unfavorably, with that of his younger brother Antonio. Thus, in recent years it has not received the critical attention that it deserves. In light of contemporary developments in literary theory and criticism, it would be well to take another closer look at the older Machado's verse from the perspective of discourse analysis, in order to discover new insights and thus be better able to place it within the context of twentieth-century poetry both of the Spanish Generation of 98 and beyond. By analyzing particular components of Manuel Machado's style, the reader will thus be able to understand how his verse represents a link between the Spanish peninsular tradition of his epoch and that of the Latin American «modernistas» as well as the Modernists of other European nations.

A characteristic of composition found in Manuel Machado's verse is that of ekphrasis. Here, I utilize the definition of ekphrasis put forward by Diane Chaffee, namely, the transformation of visual art into verbal form, which thus causes a unique confrontation between time and space, and between word and vision in one sensory experience¹¹³. Ekphrasis as a descriptive tool is, of course, not new. Classical as well as modern authors have noted its use and efficacy in such diverse writers as Homer, Virgil, Keats and Borges¹¹⁴. Both Bergmann (253) and Krieger (105-09) make reference to the fact that ekphrasis permits a work of literature to convert the static into the temporal, the simultaneous into the chronological, the linear into the circular. Significantly, this particular type of literary description also has the power to throw light not only upon the concrete work of art, but also upon itself, and the mechanisms of its creative process. In describing something exterior to itself -be it a picture, a portrait, a sculpture, - this type of description becomes self-conscious. The technique of ekphrasis thus allows the text to reveal something of itself, of its own composition, and by extension, of all artistic composition. As Bergmann comments, «when poets praise painting, it is poetry that is ultimately flattered. When they treat the problems of art and nature in painting, it is the imitation in art in general that they are questioning and, in addition, the peculiar problems of poetic imitation of the visual arts. Ekphrasis thereby gives poetry a new perspective on linguistic creation» (311). Within this metatextual frame of reference the poetry of Manuel Machado takes on a new importance, both for its own sake and for how this particular type of verbal representation echoes and reflects the concerns of other poets of the same and succeeding generations¹¹⁵.

In considering this rapprochement between one artistic medium and another, several issues are brought clearly into focus. The first of these is intertextuality, whether the broad view espoused by Jonathan Culler and Julia Kristeva, or the more narrow one held by Harold Bloom. In each case the poet attempts to place in juxtaposition two different codes that come into conflict. The poet pays lip service to the iconicity of the poetic text and that of the other artist whose work is being evoked in linguistic fashion¹¹⁶. But in veering away from the precursor artist who has been identified as a source, the poet attains originality¹¹⁷.

The second issue raised in the confrontation between poetry and the other media is

––––––––   920   ––––––––

that which Gustavo Pérez Firmat identifies as liminality: «the liminal entity is one that in a given situation takes up a position of eccentricity, one that occupies the periphery in relation to a contextually determined center» (xiv). Each of the poetic works to be considered here tempts [and (at)tempts to go beyond] the limits of poetic discourse. Paradoxically, the central focus of this poetry is its marginality: what does a poem or a collection of poems wish to communicate when it attempts to be or represent something else, be it painting, sculpture, emblem, or tapestry? As Pérez Firmat states, this type of text is therefore «constituted by a productive tension between restraint and mobility, order and disorder, tradition and treason» (xviii). Within its structure is the implicit presence of something other than itself.

This idea of liminality necessarily leads to the third issue, which is discourse itself. The poet calls attention to the inadequacy of the poetic endeavor by attempting to transform a discourse taken from another medium. Thus, the «borrowing» of discourse from an iconic representation becomes symbolic, and represents poetry's and all art's failure -in any medium- to grasp reality, truth, and eternal beauty within its artistic boundaries. And in so doing, the poetic text is able to speak of itself and its (in)ability to communicate that which is both exterior and interior to the creative process.

Manuel Machado's ekphrastic poetry is in consonance with that of other poets of his and subsequent generations who had been schooled in the classical tradition. One only has to think of Miguel de Unamuno's El Cristo de Velázquez or Rafael Alberti's A la pintura or Los 8 nombres de Picasso. All of these poets were well aware of the ekphrastic tradition in Spanish letters, and continued with an artistic mode that was favored by authors of the Golden Age¹¹⁸. The portrait poem of Manuel Machado that first comes to mind and indeed reminds the reader of this Golden Age traditions is his famous and often studied «Felipe IV» (I: 45-46), which first appeared in March, 1901, and was later included in his second published collection of verse, Alma, that appeared in 1902. This poem is to be found within the grouping aptly entitled «Museo»:

There is something very disquieting about this text, which is presumably based on a Velázquez portrait of the Spanish Hapsburg monarch. First, the text cannot be pinned down to one specific meaning. For example, does the speaker in Machado's text intend to praise or criticize his subject? What is the subject of his text, the painting by Velázquez, King Felipe IV himself, or something else? And how is the reader to interpret such ambiguous expressions as «Nadie más cortesano ni pulido / que nuestro rey Felipe», or «que Dios guarde?»¹¹⁹ Are they to be taken at face value, or are they meant to be ironic? The speaker does not give a solid clue. Gustav Siebenmann has already commented that textual indeterminacy is a salient feature of all of Manuel Machado's poetry, and not merely the portrait poems (96-97). This particular portrait poem is disquieting for yet another reason. Strangely enough, it does not coincide with any one known portrait of Felipe IV by the painter Velázquez; rather, it seems to be a composite of that of the king and that of his brother, el infante don Carlos. In the third stanza the poet points out the absence of any sort of jewelled embellishment, which seems to repeat the details of the Velázquez portrait of Felipe IV (number 1181, Prado). But in stanza four, the famous «guante de ante» described by the poet belongs not to Felipe IV but to Velázquez's portrait of don Carlos (number 1188, Prado).

Much critical ink has been spilled trying to formulate a theory on how and why Machado could have been so «mistaken», to rationalize away the reasons for such a glaring inaccuracy, and to speculate on which one of Velázquez's portraits of the King this poem is really about¹²⁰. But I think that this critical focus is a bit off the mark. Needless to say, the question that keeps on coming to mind is «Why did Manuel Machado paint a portrait in words of a portrait in oil that does not in fact exist?». The poet himself makes reference to his supposed inconsistency in this portrait poem, and in

––––––––   921   ––––––––

others that will appear in subsequent collections. He states: «En una palabra, yo pinto esos cuadros tal como se dan y con todo lo que evocan en mi espíritu; no como están en el Museo, teniendo muy bien cuidado de cometer ciertas inexactitudes, que son del todo necesarias a mi intento» (Carballo Picazo 108). My reason in mentioning Machado's own words in regard to his «inexactitudes» is not to fall into the trap of authorial intent, but merely to signal that there is more to these poems than meets (or doesn't meet) the eye.

One possible answer to the puzzling question stated above is this. These portrait poems of Manuel Machado are more than mere representations of a historical figure who in turn has been depicted on a piece of canvas, or portraits that are a product of a visual artist's imagination. Because of their surface «inaccuracies» Manuel Machado consistently draws attention to the problem of artistic representation in general, and discourse in particular: his portrait poems, indeed all art in general, do not and cannot grasp reality in their essence. And this, I think, is the key to Machado's use of the ekphrastic principle in his verse. To say it in another way, Manuel Machado's ekphrastic poems are about not only the other art forms they describe, but also about the difficulty of making any art form coincide with something outside itself, with outward reality, and concomitantly, they are also about the questionable value of art as representation. In speaking of his portrait poems, the poet himself stated: «He procurado la síntesis de los sentimentos de la época y del pintor; la significación y el estado del arte en todo tiempo; la evocación del espíritu de los tiempos; la sensación producida hoy en nosotros» (Carballo Picazo 108). This citation is especially significant because in it the poet does not speak of the success or failure in representing objective reality, but rather of art's process, effect and value, not only on the producer, that is to say the artist, but also on the receiver, either contemporary to the artist or chronologically removed from the artist's era. As Krieger notes, «Ekphrasis, no longer a narrow kind of poem defined by its object of imitation, broadens to become a general principle of poetics, asserted by every poem in the assertion of its integrity» (124).

Norman Bryson, in his Vision and Painting, comments that «to understand the painting as sign, we have to forget the proscenic surface of the image and think behind it: not to an original perception in which the surface is luminously bathed, but to the body whose activity -for the painter as for the viewer is always and only a transformation of material signs» (171). This last key phrase, «transformation of material signs», applies as well to the poetry of Machado. The poet attempts to place in juxtaposition two different codes that come into conflict. He pays lip service to the iconicity of his work and that of the painter; he attains to a certain degree a like representation of the painter's perception of reality. As Wendy Steiner notes in The Colors of Rhetoric, «the attempt to overreach the boundaries between one art and another is thus an attempt to dispel (or at least mask) the boundary between art and life, between sign and thing, between writing and dialogue» (5). But the poet also calls attention to the futility of the painter's and his own endeavors by intentionally including an inaccuracy. Thus the iconic becomes at once the symbolic, of both the painter's and the poet's failure to grasp reality, truth, and eternal beauty within codified artistic boundaries. Steiner further comments that «art as mirror claims to reveal what is "truly" there» (7). Machado's verbal studies of other art forms implicitly point out that what is «there» is only an illusion. And he does this by insuring that the receiver is aware of the text(s) as only paltry approximations of reality. The reader is then left to ponder whether what the poet says is «there» in linguistic terms may indeed be an illusion as well.

If now other of Manuel Machado's collections are considered, namely Museo (1907) and Apolo, Teatro pictórico (1911), it will be possible to reconcile them with the totality of the poet's work. In both of these collections, the ekphrastic principle is the focal point around which the poet organizes his implicit meditation on the value and purpose of art, and the concomitant dependencies among its many manifestations, styles and postures. The structural arrangement of Museo is a case in point. This collection is composed of four sub-sections whose headings recall four different styles and epochs of representational art, namely, «Primitivos», «Renacimiento», «Siglo de Oro» and «Figulinas», and thus faithfully reproduces the structured and chronologically ordered encounter of a visitor to a museum gallery. The first poem of the «Primitivos» is entitled «Alvar-fáñez. Retrato» (II: 11-12); in

––––––––   922   ––––––––

it the speaker recounts the exploits of the Cid's right-hand man, based on the details disclosed in the Spanish national epic. Here the art form alluded to is oral rather than visual, but the effect is the same. The receiver of the poetic text is very likely to relate Alvar-fáñez to the epic poem of oral tradition, but the word «retrato» suggests a visual perception. Thus the speaker juxtaposes modes of discourse drawn from two distinct media, namely epic (oral) poetry and representational portraiture. Like the poem about Felipe IV discussed earlier, this text poses for the reader a similar representational conundrum. Does the «retrato» referred to in the title indicate that the poem is about Alvar-fáñez himself, is it about how his story is told in the Poema de Myo Cid, or does it perhaps refer to an imagined oil portrait hanging in a dusty, obscure corner of a seldom visited museum? The poetic text is ambiguous, and once again the speaker does not offer to the reader an easy solution for the decoding of the various modes of discourse. For example, the first two lines of verse state «Muy leal y valiente es lo que fué Minaya, / por eso dél se dice su claro nombre, y basta» At first glance these lines seem to describe Minaya himself, but the reader actually «sees» him through the curtain of his relationship to others («muy leal»), or his actions («valiente»). Moreover, the reader is distracted by a lyric voice that intercedes to offer this second-hand description («se dice»), which calls attention to Minaya as a purely linguistic sign («Su claro nombre»), and which uses a discourse alien to twentieth-century codes of language. The poem ends with

Here the speaker calls attention to the ambiguity of his text and its modes of discourse by referring the reader to yet another text. Implicitly, this speaker also points to the text, any text, as inexact in the art of representation. The ephemeral reality of his vision is only that of another artistic representation, to which he directs his reader, «Lea el grande poema que fizo Per Abad». The frame of the speaker's vision is firmly in place, since it is enclosed in turn by yet another frame, that of the intertext of the Poema de Myo Cid. But the reader must be aware that the Machado poem continually makes reference to the process of representation and the difficulty that the artist, whether verbal or visual, encounters in making art coincide with something outside itself. The poet calls attention in still another fashion to the work of art as a set of conventions and modes of discourse: he purposefully conjures up for the reader the linguistic codes of the intertext in his use of vocabulary, namely, «deste», «el grande poema», «fizo», and «Myo Cid» all obsolete forms alien to twentieth-century Spanish discourse.

In another, poem of Museo, entitled «Las Concepciones de Murillo» (II: 41-42) and contained in the sub-section «Siglo de Oro» the poet utilizes the classical discourse of a well-structured sonnet. In the body of the text, he places his focus on only one of the paintings, in spite of his having referred to a plurality in the title as well as in the opening line of verse, «De las dos Concepciones, la morena...» Thus, there is suggested an explicit comparison between two works, while the poem provides only an implicit one. It is left to the reader to fill in the blanks, to recall and even perhaps to seek out both the painting described in the poem as well as the other whose treatment is lacking on the surface level of the text. But once again, the absence that the poet signals fails as icon even as it succeeds as symbol, fails on the mimetic level while it succeeds on the semiotic level. For in the absence of the second Murillo painting Machado has found expression for the silence of art and its uncanny ability to focus on itself as well as something exterior to itself. This twentieth-century text does not repeat the failure to capture reality's essence that was evinced in Murillo's work: Machado's poem fails in its own original way. Furthermore, «Las Concepciones de Murillo» can also be interpreted as a play on words that is consonant with the ekphrastic principle under discussion here. Aside from referring to the two paintings, the text evokes the two images formulated by the artist, one in his head and the other given concrete form. But both these images, the concrete and the theoretical, are misreadings of the reality that is ungraspable by any art form. Thus, by extension, the poet too is trapped between his own «dos concepciones», and so too the reader. It is an unending process of imperfect reflection upon/of art, as meditation as well as reduplication.

The title of Apolo. Teatro pictórico is especially significant to the theme and artistic process being examined here, in that it once again draws attention to the multifaceted relationship among the arts, and moreover to the arts as mask. Teatro pictórico makes reference to the play (in both senses of the word) of images that is art. And in regard to Apolo, Machado himself explained his reasoning behind the title «Mi libro se llama así porque, no siendo ninguna de las nueve musas la deidad inspiradora de la pintura y siendo Apolo, en la mitología, el padre de todas ellas, me pareció que el título cuadraba perfectamente en la índole de mi producción. Por eso se llama Apolo» (Carballo Picazo 101). Thus under the aegis of Apollo, the father of all arts, Manuel Machado makes reference to painting, poetry, and drama, three distinct aspects of artistic representation.

This collection consists of 25 sonnets, which are divided into several distinct groups and headed by the names of famous Western European painters or schools of art. These headings include «Sandro Boticelli», «Leonardo da Vinci», «Rubens», «Rembrandt», and «Greco» among many others, and thus echo the organization already seen in Museo. But in virtually all of the poems the poet points out to the reader the conventions of several types of discourse that make representational art possible. He emphasizes, as he has done in the previously considered texts, that the poem is a purely linguistic construct, a sign system that is agreed upon by poet and reader, just as the painting is a covenant between artist and public. Each system has a codified pre-established set of rules and well-defined parameters. For example in the poem commemorating Fra Angelico's «La Anunciación» (II: 51-52), which proceeds from the subsection entitled «Beato Angélico», Machado includes in his artistic creation the painter in the act of painting the Virgin Mary's encounter with the Angel. The poet signals that the artistic creation is a process as well as a finished product, a process in which a specific artist must participate, utilizing pre-established artistic conventions. Fra Angélico does not appear in his own painting, but is placed in the context of Machado's representation of his work. In presenting the painter producing his version of reality, the poet implicitly encourages the reader to continue with the analogy: as painter to painting, so poet to poetry, and reader to yet another version of the text, in an open-ended series of approximations to concrete reality. Each sender and each receiver enters into the creative process, and each is privy to the conventions of discourse of each artistic text.

Another example is to be found in the sonnet that celebrates Leonardo da Vinci «La Giocconda» (II: 63-64). The speaker describes Mona Lisa's enigmatic smile as well as that of the enigmatic and ambiguous «nosotros», the unspecified receivers of both the visual and verbal texts: «...Y nosotros también, eternamente, llevamos en el alma su sonrisa». It is significant to note that this reference to «nosotros» appears in exactly the middle of the sonnet, in lines 7 to 8. Thus the receiver is encouraged to be both inside (literally and metaphorically) and outside the frame of the text, or rather, the texts, to be the observer of the painting, and thus privy to its modes of discourse, and also to be the reader of the poem, and therefore knowledgeable in its conventions. This sonnet's two tercets contain five questions, presumably to be pondered by the receiver, whether the viewer of the painting or reader of the poem. The enigma that the speaker alludes to by way of his questioning posture refers not only to the subject of Leonardo's painting but also the greater issue of art as a form of communication and how the viewer is a participant in the artistic process, simultaneously inside and outside the frame of the text.

The poem «Carlos V» (II: 67-68) memorializes a painting by Titian which represents the Hapsburg emperor on horseback. It is most probably the portrait entitled «Carlos V on Horseback at Muhlberg» housed in the Prado Museum, and it utilizes yet another technique to stress the poet's concern with the question of art and how it refers to not only the exterior world but also to itself. Structurally, Machado uses once again the classic sonnet form. In the first thirteen lines of verse he faithfully de scribes the emperor as represented by the painter Titian. The poet attempts to reproduce in linguistic terms the representation of the visual artist's work by using enjambment and end-line ellipsis. The reader's eye is thus able to take in with easy verbal flow the totality of the richly detailed and exacting description. The overall impact of the verbal portrait is similar to the gallery visitor's experience, upon viewing the larger-than-life

––––––––   924   ––––––––

portrait of the imposing monarch. There is a sense of harmony, synchrony, strength and cohesiveness. The closing tercets state:

Line thirteen ends abruptly, at which point the speaker intercedes to remind the reader that the text has not captured objective reality after all, but only another artist's conception of it. The speaker calls attention to the fact that his representation is that of another, namely, that of the artist Titian. It should be noted that in the painting's display in the Prado Museum, the painter's authorship is plainly visible to the gallery visitor's eye. It appears on a neatly lettered placard at the base of the painting. Here the poet mimes the visual format in the organization of his own text, placing the «signature» of the other artist at the foot of his creation, precisely at the bottom, in the last line of verse. But in calling attention to the painting as product, the poet also implicitly communicates that the literary product is only a mere approximation to the visual one; and by extension, the visual representation is only a mere approximation of objective reality. The conventions of discourse needed for the appreciation of the visual and verbal texts -and for the intertextual relationship between the two- are a mutually agreed upon system that can never totally grasp an object exterior to itself. Thus once again the poet subtly indicates that there is more than meets the eye; these portrait poems speak of not only the products of the artistic process but of the process itself. Here, the viewer is caught up in the process of artistic reception and appreciation of both painting and poem. But it must be remembered that the whole question of aesthetic value rests firmly on the premise of codes and conventions. Art -whatever its form- is good, valuable, and valid only by social contract; it is a part of reality valuable in its own right but it is only approximate in its representation of that reality.

These are but a few examples from Machado's poetry which serve to underscore the complex and enigmatic relationship between poet and painter, poet and reader, sign and thing, art and life, representation and reality. Machado's use of the ekphrastic principle is a vehicle to communicate a much larger issue, namely, artistic creation in general and the questions that it posits about representation, reality, value, and artistic truth. Thus, even though Machado's pen describes the work of disparate artists -individual or collective, verbal or visual - I believe that the overriding concern that propels all of Machado's poetic production is his basic skepticism yet celebration of art and its questionable ability to grasp objective reality and truth in its essence.

We have seen in this brief study how in his portrait poems Manuel Machado talks not only about visual art and its processes, but about representation and artistic truth in general. Keeping this in mind, it is now much easier to reconcile what would on the surface appear to be seemingly unrelated results of artistic experimentation in the trajectory of Manuel Machado's development as a poet¹²¹. As has been demonstrated here, his earlier works show an affinity with the Latin American «modernistas», with their propensity toward the adaptation of techniques from the other arts such as painting and music (Celma Valero 119). Machado himself makes reference to this connection in the series of essays that he published under the title of La guerra literaria (1914). But I think his concern goes beyond the mere transposition of one art form to another. In the collections considered here and those that he was to produce when he had decided definitively to turn away from the «modernista» sphere, Machado continues to grapple with the troubling issue of representation, be it of Self or Other, and how the artist must attempt the impossible, namely, to capture reality with a pre-established set of codes.

One need only consider such famous titles as his «Adelfos» (Alma, 1902), or «Retrato» and «Yo, poeta decadente» (El mal poema, 1909) to see the common denominator that appears in different guises throughout his entire career. Another clear example is to be found in Canciones y dedicatorias (1915), where the poet uses as a pretext (and «pretext») the works of other writers to produce his own text. But in so doing, the issues of artistic creativity, intertextuality, and representation are brought sharply into focus. With Cante hondo (1916) and Sevilla y otros poemas (1918), Machado superimposes the rhythms and ambience of his native Andalusia

––––––––   925   ––––––––

upon his verse. But once again, he insures that the reader will be aware that his text is only a description of reality, and not reality itself. For example, the poet himself includes a prose prologue to explain his derived art form, thus establishing a frame for his portrait, his artistic interpretation of reality. And in Ars moriendi (1921), he reproduces a representation of himself in the text entitled «El poeta de "Adelfos" dice, al fin...» Likewise, this same technique is used in «Nuevo autorretrato» of the collection Phoenix (1935). In all these cases the poet places the focus of his attention on representation, and how one medium or another, one artist or another, addresses the issue of art versus life. And all echo Machado's earlier meditations on the relationship of visual to verbal art, as seen in his Alma, Museo, and Apolo. Teatro pictórico. Other examples could be mentioned, but the pattern is clear.

This brief foray into Manuel Machado's work can in no way do justice to his creativity or his imagination. But it is clear that the totality of his poetic production is eerily in harmony with the concerns of contemporary poets and critics alike, with its overt metatextual focus, and preoccupation with the limits of language and artistic representation. Moreover, these features firmly align the poetry of Manuel Machado with other Modernists such as Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, and Ezra Pound¹²². This similarity suggests the need for a reconsideration of his poetic production, as well as that of his contemporaries, in order to explore the possibility of further affinities with the broader European tradition¹²³.

Alonso, Dámaso. «Ligereza y gravedad en la poesía de Manuel Machado». In his Poetas españoles contemporáneos. Madrid: Gredos, 1952.

Bergmann, Emilie. Art Inscribed: Essays on Ekphrasis in Spanish Golden Age Poetry. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979.

Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.

Brotherston, Gordon. Manuel Machado: A Reevaluation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968.

Bryson, Norman. Vision and Painting. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983.

Carballo Picazo, Alfredo. Introduction. Manuel Machado, Alma. Apolo. Madrid: Ediciones Alcalá, 1967.

Celma Valero, María Pilar and Francisco J. Blasco Pascual. Introduction and notes. Manuel Machado, La guerra literaria. Madrid: Narcea, 1981.

Chaffee, Diane. «Visual Art in Literature: The Role of Time and Space in Ekphrastic Creation». Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 8.3 (Sept., 1984): 311-20.

Culler, Jonathan. Structuralist Poetics. Ithaca: Cornea University Press, 1975.

Darst, David H, Imitatio (Polémicas sobre la imitación en el Siglo de Oro). Madrid: Editorial Orígenes, 1985.

Debicki, Andrew P. Poetry of Discovery: The Spanish Generation

––––––––   926   ––––––––

of 1956-71. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1982.

Diego, Gerardo. Manuel Machado, poeta. Madrid: Nacional, 1974.

D'Ors, Miguel. «Manuel Machado: "Ciertas inexactitudes..."». In Estudios sobre literatura y arte dedicados al profesor Emilio Orozco. A. Gallego Morell, Andrés Soria y Nicolás Marín, eds. Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1979, 437-53.

Frank, Joseph. «Spatial Form in Modern Literature». Sewanee Review 53 (1945): 221-41, 433-56, and 643-53.

Gayton, Giban. Manuel Machado y los poetas simbolistas franceses. Valencia: Editorial Bello, 1975.

Krieger, Murray. «The Ekphrastic Principle and the Still Movement of Poetry; or Laokoön Revisited», in his The Play and Place of Criticism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967, 105-28.

López Estrada, Francisco. Los «primitivos» de Manuel y Antonio Machado. Madrid: Cupsa Editorial, 1977.

Machado, Manuel. Obras completas. Madrid: Editorial Mundo Latino, 1923. Vols. I-IV.

——. La guerra literaria. Ed. María Pilar Celma Valero and Francisco J. Blasco Pascual. Madrid: Narcea, 1981.

Pérez Firmat, Gustavo. Literature and Liminality: Festive Readings in the Hispanic Tradition. Durham: Duke University Press, 1986.

Perloff, Marjorie. The Poetics of Indeterminacy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981.

Phillips, Allen. «Decadent Elements in the Poetry of Manuel Machado». In Waiting for Pegasus: Studies on the Presence of Symbolism and Decadence in Hispanic Letters. Roland Grass and William R. Risley, eds. Macomb: W. Illinois University Essays in Literature, 1979, 65-76.

Pleynet, Marcelin. Painting and System. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.

Sánchez Cantón, F. J. The Prado. 1959. London: Thames and Hudson, 1966.

Siebermnann, Gustav. Los estilos poéticos en España desde 1900. Madrid: Gredos, 1973.

Spires, Robert. Beyond the Metafictional Mode. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985.

Spitzer, Leo. «The "Ode on a Grecian Urn" or Content vs. Metagrammar». Contemporary Literature 7 (1955): 203-66.

Steiner, Wendy. The Colors of Rhetoric. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.

Hispania [Publicaciones periódicas]. Volume 72, Number 4, December 1989