SOURCE: “Phenomenological Traces in Vicente Aleixandre's Sombra del Paraíso,” in Symposium, Vol. 47, No. 1, Spring, 1993, pp. 36-49.

In the following essay, Poust examines Aleixandre's notion of the evolution of unity in his poetic works.

Vicente Aleixandre's understanding of the intertextual dynamics of his works stresses Sombra del paraíso's key role in ensuring the coherence of his poetic creation. Soon after the work's completion in 1944, Aleixandre described it as “el último eslabón de una cadena evolutiva” initiated in 1928-29 with Pasión de la tierra (2: 523). Twelve years later, a retrospective glance at Sombra del paraíso revealed to the poet signs of the existential concern developed most fully in his recent work, Historia del corazón (1954) (2: 552). In addition to recognizing Sombra's role in maintaining the evolutionary flow of his poetry, Aleixandre attributes to it the restoration of his prodigal first work, Ambito (1928), to the otherwise...