Juan Gil-Albert, though attracted to Mediterranean antiquity and landscapes, is not a simple emulator of the ancients. His imagination does not seek merely to retrace and relive the myths of antiquity. As he writes of the shifting permanence of human relationships to reality, he uncovers the present relevance of the classical writers' understanding of those relationships. As he says in Concierto en "Mi" menor (Concerto in E Minor, 1964), "Los mitos lo son porque se acoplan expresivamente a nuestras realidades.... Los mitos son verdad porque se están encarnando permanentemente" (Myths are such because through their expression they match our reality.... Myths are true because they are being permanently incarnated).

Beauty, for Gil-Albert, is the highest expression of life, and to perceive it is the human means of self-affirmation. Only solitude will afford the poet the means of fully realizing the fleeting beauty of reality and of achieving...