Re-establishing Intellectual Networks Through Letter Writing in Exile: Max Aub’s Correspondence and the Emergence of Social Poetry in Spain

For those Spanish Republicans who were forced into exile in 1939 as well as for those who were trapped within Franco’s Spain, letter writing became an act of personal and cultural survival. It was a way to counteract loss and nostalgia through the simulacrum of presence that correspondence entailed. Despite the physical displacement, exiled intellectuals quickly resumed contact with their counterparts in Spain in the early 1940s. This chapter explores the role of letter writing in re-establishing the intellectual networks apparently severed after 1939 by looking at the correspondence of Max Aub with dissident voices publishing poetry under Francoism, particularly the main protagonists of so-called social poetry. Aub's prolific letter writing served, among other things, as a means of gathering information for a series of talks and articles that were collected years later in the volume Poesía española contemporánea (Contemporary Spanish Poetry, 1969). Despite of the negative impact that his interpretation of the social poetry written in Spain in the 1950s had on the literary historiography of exile, this compilation constitutes one of the first studies on contemporary Spanish poetry to include the voices of both exiled and peninsular writers. Furthermore, it represents an early, pioneering attempt to overcame national fissures and cultural distance through the creation of an inclusive literary space.