Antonio Machado (y Ruiz)

Poet and playwright, born in Seville, SW Spain. He studied at the Sorbonne, became a French teacher, and wrote lyrics characterized by a nostalgic melancholy, among them Soledades, galerías y otros poemas (1907), and Campos de Castilla (1912). With his brother Manuel (1874–1947), he also wrote several plays.

Antonio Machado y Ruiz (July 26, 1875 – February 22, 1939) was a Spanish poet and one of the leading figures of the Spanish literary movement known as the Generation of '98.

Machado was born in Seville one year after his brother Manuel.

Whilst completing his Bachillerato in Madrid, economic difficulties forced him to take several jobs including working as an actor. These encounters cemented Machado's decision to dedicate himself to poetry.

In 1901 he had his first poems published in the literary journal 'Electra'.

In the same year Machado was offered the job of Professor of French at the school in Soria. Here he met Leonor Izquierdo, daughter of the owners of the boarding house Machado was staying in. Early in 1911 the couple went to live in Paris where Machado read more French literature and studied philosophy. Machado was devastated and left Soria, the city that had inspired the poetry of Campos, never to return. Here he wrote a series of poems dealing with the death of Leonor which were added to a new (and now definitive) edition of Campos de Castilla published in 1916 along with the first edition of Nuevas canciones

While his earlier poems are in an ornate, Modernist style, with the publication of "Campos de Castilla" he showed an evolution toward greater simplicity, a characteristic that was to distingush his poetry from then on.

Between 1919 and 1931 Machado was Professor of French in Segovia.

When Francisco Franco launched his coup d'état in July 1936, launching the Spanish Civil War, Machado was in Madrid. Machado was evacuated with his elderly mother and uncle to Valencia, and then to Barcelona in 1938. It was here, on 22 February 1939 that Antonio Machado died, just three days before his mother.

Machado is buried in Colliore where he died;

His phrase "the two Spains" — one that dies and one that yawns — referring to the left-right political divisions that led to the Civil War, has passed into Spanish and other languages.

Perhaps his most famous work is two verses from "Proverbios y cantares XXIX" in Campos de Castilla.

Caminante, son tus huellas el camino y nada más; Al andar se hace el camino, y al volver la vista atrás se ve la senda que nunca se ha de volver a pisar. Caminante no hay camino sino estelas en la mar

This however, is but an excerpt of a longer and less hopeful poem, which speaks about a poet dying far away from his country with little hope other than treading his small path in life.

The popular Spanish singer Joan Manuel Serrat interprets this poem as a song that has brought Machado's work greater diffusion.