SOURCE: Bruton, Kevin J. “‘La Mirada’ in the Poetry of Luis Cernuda—The ‘Hedgehog on the Prowl.’” Annals of Contemporary Spanish Literature 21, nos. 1-2 (1996): 27-40.

In the following essay, Bruton emphasizes the traditional, Romantic nature of Cernuda's poetry, underscoring the poet's focus on a single object to introduce universal themes.

The second half of the title of this article is taken from a fascinating 1981 study by Roger Cardinal entitled Figures of Reality. A Perspective on the Poetic Imagination in the course of which Cardinal examines some common ideas among poets of the Romantic and post-Romantic era. He argues that for many poets of this era—and Cernuda is no exception—not just any or every object is likely to be chosen by the poet as the starting-point of his contemplation, but that the individual poet tends to be drawn to a limited range of elective objects and sensations...