In this passionate collection of poems by Luis Cernuda, one of the foremost poets of the group known as the Generation of '27, surrealism is seen as a movement of personal liberation.
Luis Cernuda was the first avant-garde poet who understood and interiorised the true significance of surrealism as a movement of liberation, a rebellion against the established order, and which he applied to his own destiny –accepted and experienced freely– and in this case, to his homosexuality.
Love is the overriding theme of this collection of poems, in which Cernuda outlines his view of pleasure and solitude as contradictory and yet complementary elements. The poems in 'Forbidden pleasures' refer to love as a disproportionate, total, organic emotion always stalked by tragedy, which in the end becomes practically inevitable.
However (or at the same time), love is also the inevitable complement to a life, the thing which gives life its raison d'être. Love and suffering are therefore two sides of the same coin.
