Background
Machado Ruiz was born on July 26, 1875, in Seville, Spain, where his grandfather was rector of the university. When he was eight years old he moved with his family to Madrid.
(Campos de Castilla, es la obra principal de Antonio Macha...)
Campos de Castilla, es la obra principal de Antonio Machado. Está elaborada entre 1907 y 1917, y tiene 2 partes diferenciadas. La primera, 1907 1912, se caracteriza por el profundo amor a la naturaleza, y es de una descripción lírica emocionante, pues el autor nos hace partícipe de su palpitar en la tierra Soriana, llevándonos por cada uno de sus rincones. Igualmente el poeta comparte sus inquietudes existencialistas y finalmente el dolor por la amada Leonor Izquierdo, que conocerá la publicación de su obra pocos días antes de morir. La segunda parte (1912 1917), una vez ya muerta la esposa amada, se caracteriza por la melancolía y las meditaciones filosóficas, donde el poeta encuentra en parte alivio por la tristeza del hachazo recibido.
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Machado Ruiz was born on July 26, 1875, in Seville, Spain, where his grandfather was rector of the university. When he was eight years old he moved with his family to Madrid.
Antonio Machado received his education at the Institución Libre de Enseñanza, an educational center founded in 1875 by a group of university professors who had given up their official positions because they would not swear fidelity to the Crown and the Church. The Institución exerted an extraordinary influence on the intellectual renascence in Spain at the end of the nineteenth century; it produced not only writers such as Machado, but also leaders in politics, diplomacy, and science.
The guiding spirit of the Institución was Francisco Giner de los Rios (1840 - 1915), and from him Machado acquired his taste for philosophy and his obsession with moral rectitude. There, together with an extreme austerity, were his salient characteristics.
In 1899 Machado went to Paris, where he served for some time as vice-consul of Guatemala, and it was during this period that he met Rubén Darío and other Modernist poets.
From 1907 to 1910 he was professor of French at the Instituto of Soria, a rather lifeless city in the poorest section of the Castilian plateau.
After a second trip to Paris, where he studied under the philosopher Bergson at the Collège de France, Machado returned to Madrid and graduated from the College of Letters of the University of Madrid. He then devoted himself to teaching, first French in Baeza from 1912 to 1919, and then both French and Spanish literature in Segovia from 1919 to 1932.
In 1932 he was given an Instituto professorship in Madrid and was presently elected to the Spanish Academy. During the civil war in Spain (1936 - 1939) Machado, like most of the Spanish intelligentsia, opposed the repressive policies of fascist elements and remained loyal to the republic.
When the republic fell he fled to France, where he died a few days after his arrival in Collioure, February 22, 1939.
Antonio Machado was the great poet of the "generation of '98. " He did in verse what Unamuno and "Azorín" did in prose. He did not exert the influence of an originator of a school, as did Rubén Darío and Juan Ramón Jiménez, Jimenez, but he calls to mind two figures out of the Spanish past: the poet Jorge Manrique, by his nobility and dignity; and the painter Velásquez, by his simplicity and depth.
(Campos de Castilla, es la obra principal de Antonio Macha...)
He met Leonor Izquierdo, daughter of the owners of the boarding house Machado was staying in. They were married in 1909: he was 34; Leonor was 14.
On 1 August 1912 Leonor died, just a few weeks after the publication of Campos de Castilla.