SOURCE: “Pure Poetry, Phenomenology and Vicente Aleixandre's Ámbito,” in Revista Hispanica Moderna, Vol. 45, No. 1, June, 1992, pp. 45-59.

In the following essay, Poust argues that Ámbito represents common ground between purist poets and phenomenologists.

Vicente Aleixandre's ambivalence with regard to the relationship of his first book, Ámbito (1928), to his poetic creation as a whole, centers on his interpretation of this work as “traditional” (“A la segunda edición de La destrucción o el amor,” Obras 1442). According to Aleixandre, the “revolutionary” second work, Pasión de la tierra (written in 1928-29, published in Mexico in 1935), broke with the traditional, initiating a poetic evolution that left Ámbito behind and somewhat marginalized, that is, until the appearance of Sombra del paraíso (1944) (1442-44). Sombra del paraíso's reformulation of themes, structures and concerns first seen in Ámbito, confirmed, for the poet, the latter work's place within his poetic evolution and...