Pedro Salinas: the war, the bomb, the letters, the love

Abstract

During the years of the American exile, Pedro Salinas follows with concern and interest the dramatic events that involved the European continent and the whole world. His rich correspondence, as a matter of fact, offers important reflections on the sad fate of Francoist Spain, on the Second World War and on the relations between the forces in the field, on the Cold War and, above all, on the atomic bomb. In a world increasingly clearly divided into two opposing blocks, the existence of a device capable of killing hundreds of people in an instant mark, for the poet, the beginning of a new era of terror.
The second part of the contribution is dedicated to the analysis of the work entitled La bomba increíble which allows the poet to sublimate atomic anxiety and to represent the anguish linked to a present in which peace is based on a permanent state of war. Furthermore, in shaping this dystopian world, Salinas draws on themes and images from the most diverse literary traditions (from Rabelais to Federico García Lorca).