Poetic and Academic Justice for the Machados

"When the lights go out, talent disappears, but that wasn't the case with the Machados," said Sevillian Alfonso Guerra, commissioner of 'Family Portrait', the historic and illuminating 'Machadian' exhibition hosted by the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) until July. The former government president inaugurated it hours before Antonio Machado's acceptance speech, 'What is Poetry?', was read again at the Learned House. José Sacristán and Juan Manuel Serrat gave voice to it this time at the noble institution that cleans, fixes, and gives splendor to our language. 'The Machado Brothers, in the Academy'. Their double rescue.

The reading of the speech and the exhibition, spread across all the premises of an RAE that has moved furniture and altered spaces, mark a milestone in the institution that does academic and poetic justice to "two great poets who were never at odds," according to Guerra. "Never before has such a great tribute been made in the tricentennial history of the house," celebrated another Machado, the director of the RAE, Santiago Muñoz Machado, unrelated to the honored poets "unequivocally republican" whom he praised. "It's an exhibition to rekindle the love for poetry," Guerra emphasized.

The historic embrace of the Machados took place in the same RAE to which both were so closely linked. Manuel was a full academic and holder of chair N from February 1938 until his death in 1947. Antonio, elected on March 24, 1927, to occupy chair V, never read his acceptance speech, the original of which, written in 1931, is displayed in the exhibition, and was read for the first time at the RAE in 1989, by poet José García Nieto and responded to by the then director, Manuel Alvar.

This time, José Sacristán read with emotional serenity the words of Machado, who argued that "poetry has not yet surpassed the Baroque moment." "Literally, it is still wit and rhetoric, a labyrinth of images, a tangle of concepts, aesthetically perverse activity, which does not exclude morality, but does exclude nature and life," he wrote. "The genius remains silent because it has nothing to say when art turns its back on nature and life, the wits invade the stadium and engage in all sorts of superfluous exercises," he concluded.

The academic and playwright Juan Mayorga responded with an apocryphal text by José Martínez Ruiz, Azorín, in a solemn academic act that filled the auditorium of the noble academic mansion, now "the house of Machado forever." The signature was put by Joan Manuel Serrat, a singer-songwriter who linked his talent to Antonio Machado in the 1960s and has taken the verses he sang at the RAE around the world, accompanied on the piano by Ricardo Miralles, such as 'Portrait', 'Coplas for the Death of Don Guido', or the famous 'The Saeta'. He couldn't avoid an encore demanded with applause and emotionally sang "Traveler, there is no path, the path is made by walking... step by step, verse by verse" from 'Proverbs and Songs'.

The exhibition, free of charge, opens on the eve of the celebration, on July 26, of the 150th anniversary of the birth of the author of 'Fields of Castile' and according to Guerra "responds to three fundamental ideas: to highlight that the Machados are two great poets, not one great poet and another lesser; to emphasize the decisive influence for Manuel and Antonio of a fantastic family of scientists and intellectuals and to reaffirm that the brothers, both republicans, were never at odds."

Coordinated by Eva Díaz Pérez, it includes more than two hundred pieces, among which the manuscript of the legendary 'Self-Portrait' by Antonio Machado stands out, letters from both brothers, first editions of their poetry collections, books and dramas, photos, publications, plastic works, audiovisual installations, and personal objects.

It brings together two "priceless" 'Machadian' heritages, that of the Unicaja Foundation, focused on Antonio, and that of the Royal Burgense Academy of History and Fine Arts, more 'Manueline'. It is completed with funds from institutions such as the Prado Museum, the Royal Seville Academy of Good Letters, and the University of Seville, as well as fifty lenders including the Machado family itself.

It begins the journey through the life and work of the brothers through the personal and intellectual legacy, of the grandparents (Antonio Machado y Núñez and Cipriana Álvarez Durán), of the parents (Antonio Machado y Álvarez, 'Demófilo', and Ana Ruiz), and of the brother José Machado Ruiz. Pieces that explain the literary origins of Manuel and Antonio and their vital and creative journey, from their first home, the Sevillian palace of Las Dueñas with the courtyard and the clear orchard where the lemon tree of their childhood ripens, to maturity, the war, and their painful final journey to Collioure, among a tide of losers and to meet death on February 22, 1939.

The exhibition, which opens windows to all the Machadian universes, begins under the last verses written by Antonio - "these blue days and this sun of childhood" - scribbled on a piece of paper that his brother José found in the pocket of an old coat.

Among the many personal objects of the Machados present at the RAE, the canes of both stand out, which are a clear reflection of their personality. "Manuel's is dandy-like, of someone who wants to carry an elegant one, and Antonio's is pastoral, that of a lover and observer of nature," according to Alfonso Guerra. Also present is the abacus with which both learned to read in their Sevillian home at the palace of Las Dueñas, Manuel's inkwell, his modernist letter opener, and the documents of both.