SOURCE: “La destrucción and Mundo a solas,” in Vicente Aleixandre, Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1970, pp. 81-98.

In the following essay, Schwartz examines major themes in Destruction or Love and World Alone.

I La Destrucción O El Amor

Manuel Machado, Gerardo Diego, and Dámaso Alonso were members of the jury which awarded the National Prize to La destrucción o el amor (Destruction or Love). In granting the award they found “the novelty is in the themes, in the landscape, in the image—many times, nevertheless, more reducible to reality than that of the previous book: a total renovation of the expressive means of language, which characterizes the entire work of the poet. …”¹

One may view Aleixandre's poetry as both a reply to nature and a call to the original forces of life. The poet offers us a visionary transfiguration of the world in flux, a world...