The Spanish Republican Exile of 1939 in perspective in the correspondence in verse of Rafael Alberti and José Bergamín

Abstract

The Spanish Republican Exile of 1939 involved the forced relocation of around 500,000 people from Spain in the immediate aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. Rafael Alberti (1902-1999) and José Bergamín (1895-1983) were two of the protagonists-witnesses of this process that lasted, for many artists, poets and writers like them, more than thirty years. After having been side by side during the Spanish conflict, leading the Alianza de Intelectuales Antifascistas, Alberti and Bergamín had to go into exile in America, where they were intensely active in the cultural and editorial spheres in Argentina and Mexico, mainly. Since their first meeting, back in the 1920s, the two always maintained contact, but in 1971, they resumed a regular dialogue that would turn into a series of letter-poems entitled De X a X, sent while Alberti lived in Rome, and Bergamín, in Madrid. This study focuses on the analysis of some fragments of these letter-poems in order to confront the poetic appropriation of the exile of each correspondent, insofar as these compositions allow the poets to cultivate a polemical dialogue and examine themselves and the other, reviewing their lyrical-political trajectory in exile, created by the poetic word.