Narcissus in the three Spanish poets of the mid-twentieth century: vindicating the right to love

Abstract

In the wake of Luis Cernuda, some of the Spanish poets of the 1950s had recourse to the well-known myth of Narcissus in order to vindicate a love which did not conform to the prevalling Catholic morality of the Franco period. This re-working encompassed San Juan de la Cruz’s mystical image of the Beloved’s eyes reflected in the water, as well as later influences, and even included the associa- tion of the beloved man with the figure of Narcissus. This resulted in compositions such as «Respuesta» by Ricardo Molina, «Narciso» by Pablo García Baena y «Causa del amor» by Francisco Brines, in which the authors revealed an unnameable and forbidden love within the space of the poem.