Narciso en tres poetas españoles del medio siglo: reivindicando el derecho al amor

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 association 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.