Antonio Machado
Antonio Machado was born in Seville in 1875 into a large family and spent part of his youth in very modest circumstances. His brother Manuel, who was a year older than him, was also a poet and playwright, while his brother José worked as a painter. Two longer stays in Paris (1899 and 1902) were formative for Antonio, where he got to know the new artistic trends and discovered Verlaine's poetry for himself. He later worked as a French teacher in small, then quite remote towns such as Soria (Castile) and Baeza (Andalusia) and finally in Segovia, not far from Madrid. In 1936 he left Madrid, where he worked for the republican government to renovate the popular theatre. In January 1939 he fled across the border to France, where he died shortly afterwards in Colliure.
