Abstract:

This article examines poetry written during the Spanish Civil War that reflects on the modern character of the conflict: the novel tactic of aerial bombing civilian populations as it was disseminated through the mass media. A comparative reading of this body of poetry written by Spanish, British, and American authors allows for the examination of the range of aesthetic paradigms employed to represent the Spanish war in different languages, even as most writers shared a similar purpose of mobilizing readers. Such an approach permits the analysis of two tendencies in the representation of air raids: as an aggressive tactic to instill terror, and as a horrific vision of the resulting human carnage. In both, the civilian victim is represented by the figure of a child: a universal symbol whose death can constitute a sublime image, which is at times effective as propaganda to legitimate the struggle. The theme of Guernica illustrates the way the images of human destruction function as an allegory of a cruelly novel war that foreshadowed disasters beyond Spanish borders.