Cernuda in exile. Memory of places and topical structures’ change in Como quien espera el alba (1941-1944).

Abstract

Through the analysis of two poems from Como quien espera el alba (1941-1944), one of the most exemplary books of Cernuda’s exile, the present work studies the poetical representation of real places lying in the poet’s subjective memory, demonstrating its divergence with respect to descriptive, post-Romantic constants, as defined by Francesco Orlando in his Gli oggetti desueti (1993). On the other hand, this study attempts to highlight a possible new function of the spatial aspect in the transformation that the paradigms of memory suffer at the turning point marked by the Spanish Civil War.