«Partidario de la felicidad»: el horizonte de la Ilustración en la poesía de Luis García Montero

Abstract

The most celebrated book of Luis García Montero, Habitaciones separadas (1994), includes a dramatic monologue starring the figure of Jovellanos. Far from an anectodal fact, the presence of the asturian intellectual in this point of the lyric biography of García Montero comes to ratify the importance that the enlightened tradition has acquired in the poetic system of the author from Granada, main theoretical mentor of the so called poetry of experience. Following the reading suggested by Luis García Montero, we systematize the enlightened foundations of this aesthetic trend, which would find its modern roots in some capital notions of the eighteen century doctrine. Furthermore, we attempt to show how far those enlightened categories finally conform an axiological canon and reinforce García Montero’s theoretical opinion in favour of the value of the trade as an effective intervention of the poet in the social order. Finally, we suggest an interpretation of the «El insomnio de Jovellanos» in the light of the enlightened reading of the Modernity that the poet postulates in his essayistic discourse, a Modernity aimed to the transformation of the present against the repeated decrees of the end of History.