Civil Tragedy and Metamorphosis of Reason in María Zambrano

Abstract

The Civil War was a decisive experience in the evolution of María Zambrano’s thought. Understood and lived as a tragedy whose subject is the Spanish people, a personification of the most elemental of the human condition in its struggle against fascism, this experience abolished any idealistic reason. In its place, and in intimate dialogue with the poetry of Antonio Machado, Zambrano will elaborate a loving reason that takes up her reflection before the war and projects it towards a poetic reason that, already in exile and faced with the impossibility of a redemption from the tragedy, will have to be oriented towards a radical interiority.