"It is almost sadder -I thought-
to look at the life that begins
than to see the life that ends."
Ramón de Campoamor.
The work of the Asturian poet Ramón de Campoamor is divided between the two halves of the 19th century, that is, between Romanticism and that second stage that has been generically called post-Romantic. His long life (let's not forget that Campoamor was born in 1817, that is, the same year that Zorrilla or Enrique Gil were born, and about twenty years before Bécquer or Rosalía de Castro) means that his not insignificant poetic production participates both in the Romantic current itself, from which he will nevertheless depart before it has begun its decline, as well as in several others that emerged in the second half of the century, with his most significant works being inscribed in these last fifty years.
Ramón de Campoamor was born in Navia on September 24, 1817. His primary education was in charge of severe teachers. Later he studied humanities in Santa María del Puerto and Santiago de Compostela. Transferred to Madrid, the Asturian poet began medical studies that he would quickly abandon. Having chosen the path of law, a routine entry at the time for high positions in the administration and politics, he did not take it to its end either. By these years he had already begun to give vent to his literary vocation. His first poetry dates from 1837. He collaborates in romantic publications such as El Alba and No me olvides. In 1840, at the height of Romanticism, his first book of poems, Ternezas y flores, was published. In that year, Espronceda, Zorrilla, García Gutiérrez and the Duke of Rivas also made their first publications known. His legislative studies and his successes as a poet led him to be appointed civil governor of Castellón, from where he went on to occupy the same position in the province of Alicante and later in Valencia.
During his stay in Alicante he married Guillermina O'Gormanm, owner of a not inconsiderable fortune in those lands. Campoamor held important political positions, including Director General of Beneficence and Health and State Councilor, being a Deputy and Senator for the Moderate Party. He was elected member of the Royal Spanish Academy in 1861. He died in Madrid on February 2, 1901.
In Ayes del Alma (1842), his second poetic collection, a purpose of distancing himself from the romantic aesthetic is already announced, in which he probably did not believe and to which he predicted a rather problematic future, however, this collection still responds too faithfully to the assumptions of Espronceda's seal. Campoamor will publish another booklet of poems which he titled Fábulas in which the three genres that are to be cultivated by the poet and are to give him personality and renown are already prefigured and with their essential characteristics; that is, his very personal "doloras", "small poems" and "humoradas", which have little or nothing to do with the eminently romantic nature of Ternezas y flores, and which the poet himself defined as follows: "What is a humorada? An intentional trait. And dolora? A humorada turned drama. And small poem? An amplified dolora".
His most representative work, the one that perhaps defines Campoamor's poetic work better than any other, appeared in 1846 under the very singular generic denomination of Doloras, being the object of a reception rarely granted until then to a printed work and promoting continuous controversies in the press. Campoamor himself defined the "dolora" as a poetic composition "in which lightness must be united with feeling and conciseness with philosophical importance". Even the neologism that titled them was put to discussion, thinking if in its election that painful feeling that so frequently inspires him was fundamentally counted.
Campoamor's next poetic collection saw the light more than twenty years after the publication of the Doloras; it was titled Pequeños poemas and appeared between 1872 and 1874, motivating to a greater extent if possible the interior publication, noisy debates in different newspapers for some of which the mere title of the book was censurable for constituting a flagrant Gallicism. The doloras are amplified according to Campoamor's own synthetic definition to become the Pequeños poemas, among which are some of his most celebrated compositions; this is the case, for example, of the very popular "The Express Train" or "The Three Roses". The third of the collections was titled Humoradas (1885-1888), described by Campoamor as an "intentional trait" is generally presented to us in couplets or quartets, have prolongations in some of the "sayings" of Juan de Mairena.
Campoamor's poetic work also includes a collection of more than a hundred compositions, collected under the title of Cantares and three extensive poems, Colón, El licenciado Torralba and El drama universal.
The most marked characteristics of Campoamor's poetic work are: an acute wit accompanied by a subtle irony and not without moments of fortunate humor; practical intentionality; a trait of clear conceptualist nuance; a more than accidental prosaism not always at odds, it is true, with details of high poetic quality; and, formally, little fortune in the handling of versification.
Campoamor must be read keeping him present in his time. He took the life around him and gave it a transcendental meaning by trivializing the anecdote, however small it may be.
Campoamor is a unique case in Spanish poetry. There can be no greater contrast between the glorification he achieved in life and his total exclusion from the pantheon of poetic deities in the times immediately after his death, that is, throughout our century. The phenomenon inclines to meditate. One does not casually pass from the applause and admiration of an entire era to total depreciation, to the denial of all poetic virtue.
"The Pequeños poemas -said Clarín- are among the best that has been written so far this century". "Campoamor is not only a great poet -said Azorín-, he is one of the greatest in all of Spanish literature ..." And Dámaso Alonso has told us: "I hope that a day will come when it is recognized how original his position was within the Spanish 19th century ..." . And as the poet said: "And it is that in the treacherous world / there is nothing true or false: / everything is according to the color / of the glass with which it is looked at".
Francisco Arias Solis
