Spanish Poetry

[stlukesguild]

I've already started two threads on non-English language poetry, one of French Symbolism and the other on German Poetry. I really ought to set about reviving both of those with some new postings, but instead I thought I'd start a new thread.:goof:

My passion for poetry truly began when I first discovered and devoured the works of a number of fascinating poets who had not been imposed upon me or even introduced to me in any class I had taken in school. The first of these poets were the great French Symbolists: Baudelaire, Gautier, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarme, Valery, etc... After these there were the Spanish poets.

I first came upon Spanish poetry in some depth some 10+ years ago while living in New York. Actually, it was New Jersey... Jersey City to be precise... but I lived right on the Hudson River... across from the New York Skyline and the World Trade Center while the Twin Towers were still standing and the real estate in Jersey City was actually affordable.

Jersey City had a great Hispanic population and the neighborhood I lived in was predominately Puerto Rican and Polish. Sunday we would would have breakfast at Tanya's... French Toast made with Challah bread and Russian tea, while Klezmer, polkas, and waltzes played... followed by folding sheets and shirts to Conga music at the laundromat across the street. Many of my closest artist friends were Hispanic... Mexican, Puerto Rican, Guatemalan... and a number of them shared a love of reading and of poetry. Through them I was first introduced to not only Pablo Neruda and Federico Garcia Lorca... but also Juan Ramon Jimenez, Vicente Aleixandre, Jorge Guillén, Miguel Hernandez, Antonio Machado, César Vallejo, Octavio Paz, Rafael Alberti, and certainly most important: Jorge Luis Borges. I suspect that as a result of the large Hispanic population many of the local independent book stores carried a decent collection of Spanish poetry... in translation even. I was able to buy a few volumes including one by Neruda, one by Garcia Lorca, and couple more... but I was quite the starving artist at the time and extra cash was slim.

My passion for Spanish poetry, however, remained once i had returned to Ohio and as my financial outlook improved, so did the size of my collection of Spanish-language poetry in translation. I even began to explore the work of earlier writers: Luis de Góngora, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, The Poem of the Cid, and especially San Juan de la Cruz. I even began to explore the work of Arab Andalusian poets... as well as the great Spanish Hebrew poets of the medieval period (Abraham ibn Ezra, Moses ibn Ezra, Solomon Ibn Gabirol, Yehuda Halevi, Shmuel haNagid). The art, music, and poetry of this Islamic-Spanish Renaissance has since held a special place in my affections. My passion for Spanish-language poetry remains with me today. At this moment I am reading a volume entitled Eyes to See Otherwise: Selected Poems by Homero Aridjis.

I throw this post out there for anyone to post any favorite Spanish-Language poets and poems. With several Latin-American members we may just get an interesting dialog going. I'll start myself with a favorite selection from Pablo Neruda who (to get that old dispute going) just may be the greatest poet of the last century. Neruda was clearly inspired by the French Symbolists (in this instance... the prose poem suggests especially Rimbaud... most obviously The Season in Hell) as well as Walt Whitman... but certainly took these influences to a far more Surrealist manner throwing out one fascinating (visual) image after the last:

The Night of the Soldier

I play the night of the soldier, the man without melancholy... I see myself with stupid and gay comrades, who smoke and spit and drink horribly, and who suddenly fall down deathly sick. Because where are the aunt, the bride, the mother-in-lay, the sister-in-law of the soldier? Perhaps they die of ostracism or malaria, they grow cold, yellow, and they emigrate to a star of ice, to a cool planet, to rest, at last, among girls and glacial fruits, and their corpses, their poor fiery corpses will go guarded by alabaster angels to sleep far from the flame and the ash.

Through each day that falls, with its twilight obligation to succumb; I walk, performing an unnecessary watch, and I pass among Mohammedan merchants, among people who adore the cow and the cobra, I pass, unadorable and common faced. The months are not unalterable, and at time it rains; from the heat of the sky falls an infusion as silent as sweat, and over the great vegetables, over the backs of fierce beasts, along a certain silence, these moist feathers interweave and lengthen. Waters of the night, tears of the monsoon wind, salt saliva fallen like the horse's spume, and slow to augment, poor in splash, astonished in flight...

Then from time to time, I visit girls with young eyes and hips, beings in whe hair shines a flower yellow as the lightning. They wear rings on each toe, and bracelets, and bangles on their ankles, and besides, colored necklaces, necklaces that I remove and examine, because I want to discover myself before an uninterrupted and compact body, and not to mitigate my kiss, I weight with my arms each new statue, and I drink its living remedy with masculine thirst and in silence. Stretched out, looking up at the fugitive creature, climbing up over her naked being to her smile; gigantic and triangular above, raised in the air by two global breasts, fixed before my eyes like two lamps with light of white oil and gentle energy. I commend myself to her dark star, to the warmth of her skin...

excerpted from The Night of the Soldier, Residence on Earth
tr. Donald D. Walsh

And then there's Gonzalo de Berceo's (c. late 12th/early 13th c.) The Praise of Spring translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

The Praise of Spring

I, GONZALO de Berceo, in the gentle summertide,
Wending upon a pilgrimage, came to a meadow's side;
All green was it and beautiful, with flowers far and wide,--
A pleasant spot, I ween, wherein the traveller might abide.

Flowers with the sweetest odors filled all the sunny air,
And not alone refreshed the sense, but stole the mind from every care;
On every side a fountain gushed, whose waters pure and fair,
Ice-cold beneath the summer sun, but warm in winter were.

There on the thick and shadowy trees, amid the foliage green,
Were the fig and the pomegranate, the pear and apple seen;
And other fruits of various kinds, the tufted leaves between,
None were unpleasant to the taste and none decayed, I ween.

The verdure of the meadow green, the odor of the flowers
The grateful shadows of the trees, tempered with fragrant showers,
Refreshed me in the burning heat of the sultry noontide hours;
Oh, one might live upon the balm and fragrance of those bowers!

Ne'er had I found on earth a spot that had such power to please,
Such shadows from the summer sun, such odors on the breeze;
I threw my mantle on the ground, that I might rest at ease,
And stretched upon the greensward lay in the shadow of the trees.

There soft reclining in the shade, all cares beside me flung,
I heard the soft and mellow notes that through the woodland rung;
Ear never listened to a strain, for instrument or tongue,
So mellow and harmonious as the songs above me sung.

[JBI]

Tell me, is there a definitive translation (or a public domain translation for that matter) of St. John of the Cross's poetry (or prose for that matter)? You seem like you would know about that.

[stlukesguild]

Another thread on the poetry board asked about Octavio Paz. I had forgotten just how good he is and how much I was enamored of his writing... especially of his magnificent book-lengthed poem, Sunstone:

a crystal willow, a poplar of water,
a tall fountain the wind arches over.
a tree deep-rooted, yet dancing still,
a course of a river that turns, moves on,
doubles back and comes full circle,
forever arriving...

a reign of green that knows no decline,
like the flash of wings unfolding in the sky...

a sudden presence like a burst of song,
like the wind singing in a burning building...

body of light filtered through an agate,
thighs of light, belly of light...

I travel my way through galleries of sound,
I flow among echoing presences...
through arches of light I travel into
the corridors of a diaphanous fall

I travel you body like the world,
your belly is a plaza full of sun...
my glances cover you like the ivy,
you are a city the sea assaults...

dressed in the color of my desires,
you go your way naked as my thoughts,
I travel your eyes like the sea,
tigers drink their dreams in those eyes,
the hummingbird burns in those flames,
I travel your forehead like the moon,
like the cloud that passes through your thoughts,
I travel your belly like your dreams...

your skirt of corn ripples and sings,
your skirt of crystal, your skirt of water...

I travel your length like a river,
I travel your body like a forest...

I search
I search without finding, search through a moment,
a face of storm and lightning flashes,
racing through the trees of night...

I've forgotten your name, Melusina,
Laura, Isabel, Persephone, Mary...

lady of the flute and lightning flash...

I burn without end, I search for water,
in your eyes there's no water, they're made of stone...
your mouth tastes of dust, your mouth tastes
like poisoned time, your body tastes
like a well that's been sealed...

I find myself at the end of time
with bad eyes and a cough, rummaging through
the old photos,
there's no one, you're no one,
a heap of ashes and a worn-out broom...

Madrid, 1937
in the Plaza del Angel the women were sewing,
and singing along with their children,
then: the siren's wail, and the screaming,
houses brought to their knees in the dust,
towers cracked, facades spat out,
and the hurricane drone of the engines:
the two took off their clothes and made love
to protect our share of all that's eternal,
to defend our ration of paradise and time,
to touch our roots, to rescue ourselves,
to rescue the inheritance stolen from us
by the thieves of life centuries ago,
the two took off their clothes and kissed
because two bodies naked and entwined,
leap over time, they are invulnerable,
nothing can touch them, they return to the source,
there is no you, no I, no tomorrow,
no yesterday, no names...

and all that we touch,
phosphoresces, and the tombs of luxury,
with their portraits nibbled, their rugs unraveling,
and the traps, the cells, the enchanted grottoes,
the birdcages and the numbered rooms,
all are transformed...

all is transformed, all is sacred,
every room is the center of the world,
it's still the first night, and the first day,
the world is born when two people kiss...

to love is to battle, if two kiss
the world changes, desires take flesh,
thoughts take flesh, wings sprout
on the backs of the slave, the world is real...
to love is to battle, to open doors,
to cease to be a ghost with a number
forever in chains, forever condemned
by a faceless master;
the world changes,
if two look at each other and see,
to love is to undress our names...

the world
grows green again, when you smile
eating an orange,
the world changes
if two, dizzy and entwined, fall
on the grass...

selections excerpted from Octavi Paz' Sunstone
tr. Eliot Weinberger 1987/1991

[stlukesguild]

Tell me, is there a definitive translation (or a public domain translation for that matter) of St. John of the Cross's poetry (or prose for that matter)? You seem like you would know about that.

There are several reputable translations (usually published under the Anglicized variant of his name: St. John of the Cross) Willis Barnstone, John Frederick Nims, and Roy Campbell. I have both of the latter and prefer Campbell's translation. He was a strong poet (admired by T.S. Eliot and Dylan Thomas, among others) and a particularly strong translator from Spanish who produced translations for Eric Bentley's editions of European drama in translation. Nims is also highly regarded. More recent translations have not fared so well: literal and "correct" but flat and not poetry.

[mortalterror]

I'm not a big fan of Paz. He's not bad, but he seems very mannered to me. Paz, Montale, Rilke, and Pasternak have this tendency to exaggerate metaphors and images, which I feel moves them away from real emotions, real ideas, and real situations. Neruda and Pessoa seem less artificial to me. Take that Sunstone poem of Paz's: doesn't it feel like he's using too many examples without drawing out and embellishing any in particular?

[stlukesguild]

Of course your own predilection for solid realism and linear narrative has long been established, while I certainly lean (in an equally prejudicial manner) more toward metaphor and image... Surrealism, Magic Realism, and the fantastic. Intriguing, is it not, that I have never been able to fully appreciate that true masterpiece of Modernist artifice, Finnegan's Wake? From Gongora and San Juan de la Cruz, Spanish poetry has long seemed to embrace the metaphor... the symbol... the Surreal image. This evolved even further with the influence of French Symbolism and later Surrealism... yet where Surrealism in French art and literature often seems to be something of an intellectual game, with Spanish art and poetry it seems real and part of the culture. One might merely compare Breton to Neruda or Garcia-Lorca, Cocteau to Buñuel, or André Masson, René Magritte, and Yves Tanguy to Joan Miro, Picasso, and Salvador Dali.

[mortalterror]

I was reading the Wikipedia entry on Italian Literature today and one passage in particular caught my eye. It seemed somewhat relevant to what we are talking about with regards to the most recent trends in literature.

"This period is known in the history of Italian literature as the Secentismo. Its writers resorted to exaggeration; they tried to produce effect with what in art is called mannerism or barocchism. Writers vied with one another in their use of metaphors, affectations, hyperbole and other oddities and draw it off from the substantial element of thought."

When I read something by those writers I've already mentioned above, the thought occurs to me that Frost, Auden, or Eliot would never make those particular types of errors. Their poetry has more structure, more development, more depth, more order; which is one of the things I admire in my poets. With Leopardi, Baudelaire, or Tu Fu there's never any blurting. Their passages are fully formed thoughts cut to measure. There's this control and pace to everything they say, which makes this flashy crowd look chaotic and undisciplined. It's the difference between having something to say, and having something to describe, between having a philosophy and having a technique.

Let me try, if I might, to put my remark into context. Sometimes, when I read Roman poetry, I'll get to a passage and think "That's enough mythological allusions. I got the point five examples ago. I don't need to hear about every person in literature who ever drowned. I get it. You had an education." Sometimes, I'll be reading works from the enlightenment and think "Okay, you didn't need that many rhetorical figures to prove your point." The same thing happens when I read Romantics "Christ! Everything reminds this guy of a tree or flower he once saw." Surely, you didn't enjoy Rabelais' endless lists of synonyms, or adverbs, or parlor games. These are all just silly affectations of the times.

[Petrarch's Love]

Hi St. Luke's--Nice idea for a thread. I don't know Spanish poetry terribly well, so I'll be interested to see what you and others share here. I thought the Paz you posted was interesting and some of that imagery was quite beautiful. I'll have to admit to being a bit perturbed part way through when he got to the line about not remembering her name (typical macho Mexican/South American poet type!), but when it got to the end of that section and it becomes clearer that these are images of memory, and idealized memory...it became quite moving and I love the way his use of the imagery throughout the excerpt you selected works in the same way that the mind and memory tend to produce images.

Speaking of images, I was reading this line: "tigers drink their dreams in those eyes," and it occurred to me that you might be someone with some insight into this seeming obsession that many 20th century Mexican/Central/South American poets seem to have with dreams and tigers. Is this something they're all doing in imitation of a particular writer (Borges?) or is it something ingrained in the folklore or culture of the Spanish speaking Americas? Just something I wonder about.


Let me try, if I might, to put my remark into context. Sometimes, when I read Roman poetry, I'll get to a passage and think "That's enough mythological allusions. I got the point five examples ago. I don't need to hear about every person in literature who ever drowned. I get it. You had an education." Sometimes, I'll be reading works from the enlightenment and think "Okay, you didn't need that many rhetorical figures to prove your point." The same thing happens when I read Romantics "Christ! Everything reminds this guy of a tree or flower he once saw." Surely, you didn't enjoy Rabelais' endless lists of synonyms, or adverbs, or parlor games. These are all just silly affectations of the times.

Mortal--Certainly we've all run into over-wrought poems and, as someone who spends a great deal of time with Renaissance literature, I can empathize readily with the burden of trying to slog through a piece of poetry heavy laden with pointless conceits, allusions and imagery. Usually, however, these "silly affectations of the times" become silly affectations because they did work well at some point, in some context. The problem is often not so much in a particular style or the technique, but in the bad or injudicious execution of the same. If we had throw out poetry based on its use of the styles popular in its time period, we'd have to throw out quite a bit of good poetry. I bring this up because of the claim with which you end the previous paragraph:


When I read something by those writers I've already mentioned above, the thought occurs to me that Frost, Auden, or Eliot would never make those particular types of errors. Their poetry has more structure, more development, more depth, more order; which is one of the things I admire in my poets. With Leopardi, Baudelaire, or Tu Fu there's never any blurting. Their passages are fully formed thoughts cut to measure. There's this control and pace to everything they say, which makes this flashy crowd look chaotic and undisciplined. It's the difference between having something to say, and having something to describe, between having a philosophy and having a technique.

Though I certainly see what you mean about the beautifully formed structure of a Frost, Auden or Eliot and also share your enjoyment of such practitioners of the "fully formed" passage, I can't help but wonder about your claim that such authors are superior being based upon "having something to say" versus "having something to describe." I don't know that poetry that favors description, or is less "cut to measure" necessarily has less to say. It may just be saying something in a different way in the same way that an impressionist landscape says things in a different way than a 17th century Dutch still life, but is not necessarily either better or worse as a work of art. Similarly, image laden poetry which may be less linear or distinctly cut may not necessarily be deficient in either philosophy or form, but may simply be a very different sort of form and a different way of presenting the author's thought. It may have the ability to suggest things in a way that a different mode of composition could not.

This may, however, be simply a matter of personal taste, which is often, I suspect, also linked to personal ways of thinking. I think it cannot be an accident that St. Luke's as an artist enjoys visual imagery in his poetry and someone like him, who has a natural inclination toward a visual means of thinking in addition to years of visual training, may also have a greater facility in parsing what a poet is doing with visual images more readily--thereby receiving more immediate enjoyment from the poem. I know that I am sometimes conscious that a poem resonates with me because it mirrors or is similar to the way my own mind makes sense of the world (though at other times, of course, the appeal of a poem may be in the way it suggests a mental process quite different from my own).

[JBI]

I was reading the Wikipedia entry on Italian Literature today and one passage in particular caught my eye. It seemed somewhat relevant to what we are talking about with regards to the most recent trends in literature.

"This period is known in the history of Italian literature as the Secentismo. Its writers resorted to exaggeration; they tried to produce effect with what in art is called mannerism or barocchism. Writers vied with one another in their use of metaphors, affectations, hyperbole and other oddities and draw it off from the substantial element of thought."

When I read something by those writers I've already mentioned above, the thought occurs to me that Frost, Auden, or Eliot would never make those particular types of errors. Their poetry has more structure, more development, more depth, more order; which is one of the things I admire in my poets. With Leopardi, Baudelaire, or Tu Fu there's never any blurting. Their passages are fully formed thoughts cut to measure. There's this control and pace to everything they say, which makes this flashy crowd look chaotic and undisciplined. It's the difference between having something to say, and having something to describe, between having a philosophy and having a technique.

Let me try, if I might, to put my remark into context. Sometimes, when I read Roman poetry, I'll get to a passage and think "That's enough mythological allusions. I got the point five examples ago. I don't need to hear about every person in literature who ever drowned. I get it. You had an education." Sometimes, I'll be reading works from the enlightenment and think "Okay, you didn't need that many rhetorical figures to prove your point." The same thing happens when I read Romantics "Christ! Everything reminds this guy of a tree or flower he once saw." Surely, you didn't enjoy Rabelais' endless lists of synonyms, or adverbs, or parlor games. These are all just silly affectations of the times.

You do realize how comic you sound, holding up Du Fu as an example of someone clear cut and without lavish allusions, and intense rhetorical difficulty and such? Hell, Leopardi too is so densely covered in allusions (at least in his early and middle period) that it is pretty much impossible to read him without some quality footnotes (about 2/3 of the page in my standard Italian Garzanti edition is filled with footnotes, for instance, which don't seem to make it into the English translations). Baudelaire, well, I'm not to versed in his works, and haven't read them closely enough in the original to comment (then again, I haven't read all that much Du Fu in the original) but perhaps what you say is right.

I think the problem is these conventions haven't developed into the mainstream - there is a greyish area, similar to Montale's in Paz that takes unstable images and groups them together to create a picture - the meaning may be blurred, but I think it is a good technique in the way that he uses it.


I made an argument in an essay I wrote, for instance, that a couple passages from a poem by contemporary poet Jan Zwicky were far too direct, that they caused the previous half of the poem to lose its flavor - the same can be applied to a lot of your so called "refined" poets.

Personally though, I just think your tastes are drastically scholastic in the older sense of the word. It seems more idiosyncratic than anything else, in the sense that my taste is eccentric as well, and obsessed with certain preoccupations.
Straight to the point and rigid may work for some poets, but then again, it may not for others.

[stlukesguild]

Hi St. Luke's--Nice idea for a thread. I don't know Spanish poetry terribly well, so I'll be interested to see what you and others share here. I thought the Paz you posted was interesting and some of that imagery was quite beautiful. I'll have to admit to being a bit perturbed part way through when he got to the line about not remembering her name (typical macho Mexican/South American poet type!), but when it got to the end of that section and it becomes clearer that these are images of memory, and idealized memory...it became quite moving and I love the way his use of the imagery throughout the excerpt you selected works in the same way that the mind and memory tend to produce images.

Yes. It seems that the Spanish-Language poetry... perhaps even the literature in general... is deeply enthralled with metaphor and symbol and image. Perhaps it is something of a tradition of the visionary (which certainly shows up in the art... especially that of El Greco, Goya, Miro, Picasso, etc... with Velasquez as the great realist exception). The visionary tradition certainly dates back to the Arabic/Sufi visionary influence of poets and mystics such as Ibn Arabi. There is also a connection with the Spanish Hebrew experience... especially with the development of the mystical and esoteric teachings of the Kabbalah... and Moses de Leon, the supposed author of the Zohar, the most important text of the Kabbalah. Add to this the Spanish Catholic obsessions with Revelations, the works of San Juan de la Cruz and Saint Teresa of Ávila, and the Inqusition and you have a culture laden with visionary and mystical fervor.

Speaking of images, I was reading this line: "tigers drink their dreams in those eyes," and it occurred to me that you might be someone with some insight into this seeming obsession that many 20th century Mexican/Central/South American poets seem to have with dreams and tigers. Is this something they're all doing in imitation of a particular writer (Borges?) or is it something ingrained in the folklore or culture of the Spanish speaking Americas? Just something I wonder about.

Interesting question. Of course, one of Borges' greatest books was the slim anthology, El Hacedor, selected by Borges during his stay in the US. El Hacedor or "The Maker" was entitled Dreamtigers in the English-language edition. There are several fictions and poems in which the tiger is a central image. It seems that Borges was fascinated with the tiger as a child and went to see them frequently at the zoo, in encyclopedias, and did repeated drawings of them. The tiger shows up in his writings as a symbol of absolute physicality, sensuality, sexuality, and power that lives entirely in a world without language. For the book-wormish and eventually sightless Borges the tiger certainly was something of a dream... representing all that he was not. As the obsessive reader and the lover of Dante (about whom he had written numerous essays, tales, poems, etc... Borges was most assuredly aware of the similar symbolism attached to the Tiger at the beginning of the Comedia. It is quite possible that the image of the "Dream Tiger" that arises frequently in Latin-American literature owes much to Borges' use. Of course we have any number of Latin-America members who may offer further speculation and information to which we are not privy.

Though I certainly see what you mean about the beautifully formed structure of a Frost, Auden or Eliot and also share your enjoyment of such practitioners of the "fully formed" passage, I can't help but wonder about your claim that such authors are superior being based upon "having something to say" versus "having something to describe." I don't know that poetry that favors description, or is less "cut to measure" necessarily has less to say. It may just be saying something in a different way in the same way that an impressionist landscape says things in a different way than a 17th century Dutch still life, but is not necessarily either better or worse as a work of art. Similarly, image laden poetry which may be less linear or distinctly cut may not necessarily be deficient in either philosophy or form, but may simply be a very different sort of form and a different way of presenting the author's thought. It may have the ability to suggest things in a way that a different mode of composition could not.

There is also the possibility that what the author/artist is attempting to convey through a more indirect means is something fleeting... almost intangible... something that avoids expression through direct linear narrative means. Symbolism in literature was closely tied to music and many Symbolist poets swore by Walter Pater's notion that all art strove toward the state of music in which form and content were one... in which there was no "meaning" possible separate from the whole. This concept carried over into Modernism in poetry and the visual arts. Paul Klee, Kandinsky, and others sought to achieve an art in which visual elements such as line, shape, color, etc... were employed in a manner just as abstract as the elements of music are employed. Just as we can not define a "meaning" to Mozart's Clarinet Quintet or Debussy's Preludes one realizes that Paz, Neruda, Garcia-Lorca, Mallarme, Rimbaud, etc... often defy attempts at defining meaning".

This may, however, be simply a matter of personal taste, which is often, I suspect, also linked to personal ways of thinking. I think it cannot be an accident that St. Luke's as an artist enjoys visual imagery in his poetry and someone like him, who has a natural inclination toward a visual means of thinking in addition to years of visual training, may also have a greater facility in parsing what a poet is doing with visual images more readily--thereby receiving more immediate enjoyment from the poem. I know that I am sometimes conscious that a poem resonates with me because it mirrors or is similar to the way my own mind makes sense of the world (though at other times, of course, the appeal of a poem may be in the way it suggests a mental process quite different from my own).

Welcome back, Petrarch!

[Petrarch's Love]

Yes. It seems that the Spanish-Language poetry... perhaps even the literature in general... is deeply enthralled with metaphor and symbol and image. Perhaps it is something of a tradition of the visionary (which certainly shows up in the art... especially that of El Greco, Goya, Miro, Picasso, etc... with Velasquez as the great realist exception). The visionary tradition certainly dates back to the Arabic/Sufi visionary influence of poets and mystics such as Ibn Arabi. There is also a connection with the Spanish Hebrew experience... especially with the development of the mystical and esoteric teachings of the Kabbalah... and Moses de Leon, the supposed author of the Zohar, the most important text of the Kabbalah. Add to this the Spanish Catholic obsessions with Revelations, the works of San Juan de la Cruz and Saint Teresa of Ávila, and the Inqusition and you have a culture laden with visionary and mystical fervor.

Yes, I hadn't really thought about the relation to Sufi poets, but I can see that that combined with the other mystical and catholic traditions could really have contributed to what has evolved in modern Spanish language literature.


Interesting question. Of course, one of Borges' greatest books was the slim anthology, El Hacedor, selected by Borges during his stay in the US. El Hacedor or "The Maker" was entitled Dreamtigers in the English-language edition. There are several fictions and poems in which the tiger is a central image. It seems that Borges was fascinated with the tiger as a child and went to see them frequently at the zoo, in encyclopedias, and did repeated drawings of them. The tiger shows up in his writings as a symbol of absolute physicality, sensuality, sexuality, and power that lives entirely in a world without language. For the book-wormish and eventually sightless Borges the tiger certainly was something of a dream... representing all that he was not. As the obsessive reader and the lover of Dante (about whom he had written numerous essays, tales, poems, etc... Borges was most assuredly aware of the similar symbolism attached to the Tiger at the beginning of the Comedia. It is quite possible that the image of the "Dream Tiger" that arises frequently in Latin-American literature owes much to Borges' use. Of course we have any number of Latin-America members who may offer further speculation and information to which we are not privy.

Thanks. Yes, my guess would have been that this was something stemming from Borges, but I did wonder if there might be more there than that.


Welcome back, Petrarch!

Thanks! Nice to be back, St. Luke's.

[Petrarch's Love]

No estas solo San Lucas! Don't want to think of you lonely and desolate, lagrimas dolorosas pouring from your eyes to stain the ink of your copy of Neruda as you think to yourself, "Porque?! Oh why, alas, have I ensconced myself in a solitary niche far from the possibility of conversation with others of my species?" After all, we know that the inevitable fate of a Spanish poet who lusts after the beauties of art is to fade far away, dissolve and quite forget by quite literally becoming a puddle of tears and melting into the Tagus:

Hermosas ninfas que, en el rio metidas,
contentas habitais en las moradas
de relucientes piedras fabricadas
y en colunas de vidrio sostenidas:
Agora esteis labrando embebecidas,
o tejiendo las telas delicadas;
agora unas con otras apartadas,
contandoos los amores y las vidas;
dejad un rato la labor, alzando
vuestras rubias cabezas a mirarme,
y no os detendreis muchos, segun ando;
que o no podreis de lastima escucharme,
o convertido en agua aqui llorando,
podreis alla de espacio consolarme.

~ Garcilasso de la Vega (1501-1536) soneto XI

[the only translation I could find relatively easily online]

Beautiful nymphs who through the river pass,
living in contentment on your own
in your mansions built of shimmering stone
and upheld by columns made of glass:
now, one embroiders lovely trifles a
another weaves a cloth of delicate tone;
and now, a few of you go off alone,
each telling of the life and loves she has;
for a while, put your work aside
and lift your golden heads to look at me,
and I won’t keep you long, I confide;
you’ll be too sad to listen, or I’ll be
changed to water crying at your side,
and then there will be time for sympathy.

[JCamilo]

I may be wrong, but Borges Tigers are not that influential as much as would be Blake or Kipling Tigers (from where Borges tigers came from).
He was not that influential as poet - Neruda and Garcia-Lorca much more influential about this and mostly, for south americans, Ruben Dário (who by the way, already mentions a tiger ) is the main name.
Spanish language is indeed excessive or at same point baroque, somehow atracts the excess of effects, which is probally why Poe and Whitman are so influential for south america. Borges is a different history, he is anglo-saxon by heart and had a strong obssession with economy and precise metaphors.

[JCamilo]

Estival by Rubén Darío

I

La tigre de Bengala
con su lustrosa piel manchada a trechos,
está alegre y gentil, está de gala.
Salta de los repechos
de un ribazo, al tupido
carrizal de un bambú; luego a la roca
que se yergue a la entrada de su gruta.
Allí lanza un rugido,
se agita como loca
y eriza de placer su piel hirsuta.

La fiera virgen ama.
Es el mes del ardor. Parece el suelo
rescoldo; y en el cielo
el sol inmensa llama.
Por el ramaje oscuro
salta huyendo el kanguro.
El boa se infla, duerme, se calienta
a la tórrida lumbre;
el pájaro se sienta
a reposar sobre la verde cumbre.

Siéntense vahos de horno:
y la selva indiana
en alas del bochorno,
lanza, bajo el sereno
cielo, un soplo de sí. La tigre ufana
respira a pulmón lleno,
y al verse hermosa, altiva, soberana,
le late el corazón, se le hincha el seno.

Contempla su gran zarpa, en ella la uña
de marfil; luego toca,
el filo de una roca,
y prueba y lo rasguña.
Mírase luego el flanco
que azota con el rabo puntiagudo
de color negro y blanco,
y móvil y felpudo;
luego el vientre. En seguida
abre las anchas fauces, altanera
como reina que exige vasallaje;
después husmea, busca, va. La fiera
exhala algo a manera
de un suspiro salvaje.
Un rugido callado
escuchó. Con presteza
volvió la vista de uno a otro lado.
Y chispeó su ojo verde y dilatado
cuando miró de un tigre la cabeza
surgir sobre la cima de un collado.
El tigre se acercaba.
Era muy bello.
Gigantesca la talla, el pelo fino,
apretado el ijar, robusto el cuello,
era un don Juan felino
en el bosque. Anda a trancos
callados; ve a la tigre inquieta, sola,
y le muestra los blancos
dientes; y luego arbola
con donaire la cola.
Al caminar se vía
su cuerpo ondear, con garbo y bizarría.
Se miraban los músculos hinchados
debajo de la piel. Y se diría
ser aquella alimaña
un rudo gladiador de la montaña.
Los pelos erizados
del labio relamía. Cuando andaba,
con su peso chafaba
la yerba verde y muelle,
y el ruido de su aliento semejaba
el resollar de un fuelle.
Él es, él es el rey. Cetro de oro
no, sino la ancha garra,
que se hinca recia en el testuz del toro
y las carnes desgarra.
La negra águila enorme, de pupilas
de fuego y corvo pico relumbrante,
tiene a Aquilón: las hondas y tranquilas
aguas, el gran caimán; el elefante,
la cañada y la estepa;
la víbora, los juncos por do trepa;
y su caliente nido,
del árbol suspendido,
el ave dulce y tierna
que ama la primer luz.
Él la caverna.
No envidia al león la crin, ni al potro rudo
el casco, ni al membrudo
hipopótamo el lomo corpulento,
quien bajo los ramajes de copudo
baobab, ruge al viento.

Así va el orgulloso, llega, halaga;
corresponde la tigre que le espera,
y con caricias las caricias paga,
en su salvaje ardor, la carnicera.

Después, el misterioso
tacto, las impulsivas
fuerzas que arrastran con poder pasmoso;
y, ¡oh gran Pan! el idilio monstruoso
bajo las vastas selvas primitivas.
No el de las musas de las blandas horas
suaves, expresivas,
en las rientes auroras
y las azules noches pensativas;
sino el que todo enciende, anima, exalta,
polen, savia, calor, nervio, corteza,
y en torrentes de vida brota y salta
del seno de la gran Naturaleza.

II

El príncipe de Gales va de caza
por bosques y por cerros,
con su gran servidumbre y con sus perros
de la más fina raza.

Acallando el tropel de los vasallos,
deteniendo traíllas y caballos,
con la mirada inquieta,
contempla a los dos tigres, de la gruta
a la entrada. Requiere la escopeta,
y avanza, y no se inmuta.

Las fieras se acarician. No han oído
tropel de cazadores.
A esos terribles seres,
embriagados de amores,
con cadenas de flores
se les hubiera uncido
a la nevada concha de Citeres
o al carro de Cupido.

El príncipe atrevido,
adelanta, se acerca, ya se para;
ya apunta y cierra un ojo; ya dispara;
ya del arma el estruendo
por el espeso bosque ha resonado.
El tigre sale huyendo,
y la hembra queda, el vientre desgarrado.
¡Oh, va a morir!... Pero antes, débil, yerta,
chorreando sangre por la herida abierta,
con ojo dolorido
miró a aquel cazador, lanzó un gemido
como un ¡ay! de mujer... y cayó muerta.

III

Aquel macho que huyó, bravo y zahareño
a los rayos ardientes
del sol, en su cubil después dormía.
Entonces tuvo un sueño:
que enterraba las garras y los dientes
en vientres sonrosados
y pechos de mujer; y que engullía
por postres delicados
de comidas y cenas,
como tigre goloso entre golosos,
unas cuantas docenas
de niño tiernos, rubios y sabrosos.

[stlukesguild]

Gacela of Love Unforeseen

No one understood the perfume
of your belly's dark magnolia.
No one knew you tormenting
Love's hummingbird between your teeth.

A thousand Persian ponies fell asleep
In the moonlit plaza of your forehead
as four nights through I hugged
your waste, snow's enemy.

Between plaster and jasmines your glance
was a pale seed-branch.
I searched my heart to give you
the ivory letters saying always.

Always, always; garden of my agony,
your body eluding me forever...

extracted from translation by Edwin Honig

Federico Garcia-Lorca was unquestionably the central figure of the 20th century Renaissance of Spanish poetry. Lorca clearly built upon the lush lyricism of French Symbolism, but to this he brought the visionary facets of the Spanish poetic tradition dating back to San Juan de la Cruz and St. Theresa of Avillia to say nothing of the Spanish/Sephardic Hebrew poets . Perhaps the defining element, however, was his discovery of the Anadlusian culture of Islamic Spain and the tradition of Arabic lyric poetry. The uncluttered metaphoric and symbolic elements of this poetry... merged with aspects of Symbolism and Spanish mysticism to create a poetic art that was Surrealistic in a certain manner... but far form the self-conscious Surrealism of Breton and the official Parisian school of Surrealism.

[JCamilo]

Borges would kill you for making Garcia-Lorca central of anything :D

[stlukesguild]

Probably true... but then Borges great rival (Neruda) would almost certainly agree... if he didn't nominate himself for the post.:hand:

[JCamilo]

Their fight actually started with Garcia Lorca, Borges was against the Garcia Lorca Fashion, Neruda visited Buenos Aires and remarked something about it and well... :D

[JBI]

If I were to try and get a big anthology of Spanish verse, could any of you point me to a comprehensive one (the thicker the better), and preferably one similar to what the Norton is to English, or the Columbia anthologies are to East-Asian literature.

[JCamilo]

I do not know any with all spanish works, but Borges compilled (with Marguerita Guerreiro if I am not mistaken) one, focused in latin-american poets, which is very useful for less know poets and guachesque poetry. Probally the one you will find easily in Canada.

[DanielBenoit]

From air to air, like an empty net,
I went wandering between the streets and the atmosphere, arriving and saying goodbye
leaving behind in autumn's advent the coin extended
from the leaves, and between Spring and the wheat,
that which the greatest love, as within a falling glove,
hands over to us like a large moon.

(Days of live brilliance in the storminess
of bodies: steel transformed
into the silence of acid:
nights unraveled to the last flour:
assualted stamens of the nuptial native land.)

Someone waiting for me among the violins
found a world like a sunken tower
digging its spiral deeper than all
the leaves the color of hoarse sulfur:
and deeper still, into geologic gold,
like a sword sheathed in meteors,
I pulnged my turbulent and tender hand
into the most genital terrestrial territory.

. . . .


Btw, I know that this is a Spanish-language poetry thread, but can anybody recommend me a good translation of Pessoa? Preferably one of his Book of Disquiet.

[JCamilo]

Sorry, I have only translations of Pessoa to portuguese :D

[stlukesguild]

*bump*

[stlukesguild]

Luis de Góngora

Romances

I.

The loveliest creature
in all our town,
but yesterday married,
now widowed, alone,
seeing that her lover
to the wars is going,
says to her mother,
who hears her complain:
Give me leave to cry
on the seashore.

Mother you gave me
away so soon
to such brief pleasure,
to such long pain;
since you bound me
to one who's gone,
taking the keys
that end my freedom,
Give me leave to cry
on the seashore.

Let my eyes from now on
to tears convert
the agreeable practice
of looks that enchant,
for what occupation
can they have more,
since he who was peace
is gone to the war?
Give me leave to cry
on the seashore.

Don't seek to stop me,
or hold me to blame,
one may be just
but the other's extreme;
if truly you love me,
why do me this harm?
Or would you prefer me
dead or struck dumb?
Give me leave to cry
on the seashore.

Who wouldn't cry,
sweet mother of mine,
even had she
a heart of stone,
who wouldn't shout
to see wither and wane
the greenest years
of my youthful seasons?
Give me leave to cry
on the seashore.

Let the nights hide away,
since the eyes are gone
that kept mine always
open 'til dawn,
let the nights not see
me so alone,
now half my bed's
not needed again.
Give me leave to cry
on the seashore.

from Romances
Luis de Góngora, 1561–1627
tr. John Dent-Young

[mortalterror]

VIII

When I behold the blue horizon merge
And lose itself afar within a gauze
Of restless, golden dust, my fancies urge,
That I could break all ordinary laws
And it seems possible to tear away
My eager spirit from this wretched clay,
To float with golden mists, dissolved in bright
And myriad atoms of celestial light.

When I behold, at night, the trembling stars
Within the dark recesses of the sky,
So that my fancy vividly compares
Their lustre with an ardent, burning eye,
It then seems possible to wing in flight
To where they shine and bathe within their light,
To kindle with them in a blazing sea
And in a kiss confound identity.

Although within a sea of doubt I plash
And spurn beliefs, which with my reason clash,
Yet they proclaim, these anxious doubts of mine,
A certain trace of origin divine.

-From The "Rimas" of Gustavo A. Becquer, tr. Jules Renard 1908

[JCamilo]

Stukles, that is a bad translation I think... The very first like, transforming niña to creature sounds odd...

La más bella niña
de nuestro lugar,
hoy viuda y sola,
ayer por casar,
viendo que sus ojos
a la guerra van,
a su madre dice,
que escucha su mal:

No me pongáis freno
ni queráis culpar,
que lo uno es injusto,
lo otro por demás.
Si me queréis bien,
no me hagáis mal,
harto peor fuera
morir y callar,

Dejadme llorar
orillas del mar.

Dejadme llorar
orillas del mar.

Pues me distes, madre,
en tan tierna edad
tan corto el placer
tan largo el pesar,
y me cautivastes
de quien hoy se va
y lleva las llaves
de mi libertad,

Dulce madre mía,
¿quién no llorará,
aunque tenga el pecho
como un pedernal,
y no dará voces
viendo marchitar
los más verdes años
de mi mocedad?

Dejadme llorar
orillas del mar.

Dejadme llorar
orillas del mar.

En llorar conviertan
mis ojos, de hoy más,
el sabroso oficio
del dulce mirar,
pues que no se pueden
mejor ocupar,
yéndose a la guerra
quien era mi paz,

Váyanse las noches,
pues ido se han
los ojos que hacían
los míos velar;
váyanse y no vean
tanta soledad,
después que en mi lecho
sobra la mitad,

Dejadme llorar
orillas del mar.

Dejadme llorar
orillas del mar.



And someone like Yeats should have translated Becquer...

RIMA XXXVIII

Los suspiros son aire y van al aire!
Las lágrimas son agua y van al mar!
Dime, mujer, cuando el amor se olvida
¿Sabes tú adónde va?

..........

Sighs are air and go to the air!
Tears are water and go to the sea!
Tell me, woman, when love's forgotten
Do you know where it goes?

[stlukesguild]

JCamillo... yes, the original reads far more poetically... even without access to anything near a grasp of Spanish. That's, of course, what my initial rant was about: the lack of access to great Spanish poets... at least the older ones. Now San Juan de la Cruz seems to have been well served by Nims and Roy Campbell and there are outdated and out of print volumes with some decent poetic translations such as the example MortalTerror drew upon (from an online source?). I have a number of e-books of foreign poetry in translation because they are not anywhere else available in actual bound copies.

Longfellow offers this intro to one such anthology:

SONG

by: Gil Vicente (c. 1470 - c. 1536)

IF thou art sleeping, maiden,
Awake and open thy door.
'Tis the break of day, and we must away
O'er meadow, and mount, and moor.

Wait not to find thy slippers,
But come with thy naked feet;
We shall have to pass through the dewy grass
And waters wide and fleet.

--Translated by H.W. Longfellow

[JCamilo]

San Juan is not easy to find even in spanish, I must tell. I do not know translations in portuguese either. The thing about spanish to english is that spanish poetry is too figurative, symbolic, with a strong baroque side. That is a bit of the importance of Borges and even Neruda, they are much more clear, polished, classical...

Now, Gil Vicente wrote more in portuguese than spanish, as much at the time the languages are very close. Quem tem Farelos, from where came this song, is considered portuguese, not spanish. Both him and Camões worked in both languages, but today they belong to the portuguese tradition.

In the case of Gongora, I did not like some of vocabulary options, Gongora is a bit exagerated at some points, the search for effect considerable, and the translator seems to have tried to give fluidity to it... the effect is quite different.

[stlukesguild]

Yes... I remember reading a book on Mannerism some many years back in which Gongora was described as something more of a Mannerist than a Baroque poet... employing intentionally convoluted vocabulary and structures and exaggerated leaps in symbolism and metaphor... not unlike John Donne's odd comparisons to the flea. Oddly enough, in older English poetry it is the neo-classicists of the 18th century such as Pope and Gay and Swift... and even the earlier Dryden... that are far less popular than the more Baroque Shakespeare, Donne and Spenser... or the later Romantics.

[JCamilo]

Dryder, this is a guy who make me think it would translate well spanish poetry. Donne too... or even, the guys like Donne if they were catholic. Swift could translate Quevedo.
It is pretty much the entire controversy that Borges caused with Quixote, he was defending an english path more closer to english path. But that is somehow a spanish tradition, to consider their language not good enough, prefering portuguese, as if spanish is mundane. I am studying arabic and starting to think a good translator of arabic would be good of spanish.

[PSRemeshChandra]

You may ask me why I do not
Sing about the beautiful
Flowers, rivers, volcanos and
Mountains of my native land;

You come to the street and see the blood of
Children flowing through the streets.

From Third Residence On Earth.
(Slightly edited and recast in the true poetic
form to facilitate singing.)

[gmoffettv]

Thank you for appreciating the great lore of Spanish-language poetry.
I am from Peru and would like to invite anyone who can read Spanish to read the following poets from my country: Eielson, Westphalen, César Moro and Martín Adán. They are fantastic poets, but not very famous outside Peru. Peru has a great poetic tradition.
Thank you for a wonderful forum.

[cafolini]

I was reading the Wikipedia entry on Italian Literature today and one passage in particular caught my eye. It seemed somewhat relevant to what we are talking about with regards to the most recent trends in literature.

"This period is known in the history of Italian literature as the Secentismo. Its writers resorted to exaggeration; they tried to produce effect with what in art is called mannerism or barocchism. Writers vied with one another in their use of metaphors, affectations, hyperbole and other oddities and draw it off from the substantial element of thought."

When I read something by those writers I've already mentioned above, the thought occurs to me that Frost, Auden, or Eliot would never make those particular types of errors. Their poetry has more structure, more development, more depth, more order; which is one of the things I admire in my poets. With Leopardi, Baudelaire, or Tu Fu there's never any blurting. Their passages are fully formed thoughts cut to measure. There's this control and pace to everything they say, which makes this flashy crowd look chaotic and undisciplined. It's the difference between having something to say, and having something to describe, between having a philosophy and having a technique.

Let me try, if I might, to put my remark into context. Sometimes, when I read Roman poetry, I'll get to a passage and think "That's enough mythological allusions. I got the point five examples ago. I don't need to hear about every person in literature who ever drowned. I get it. You had an education." Sometimes, I'll be reading works from the enlightenment and think "Okay, you didn't need that many rhetorical figures to prove your point." The same thing happens when I read Romantics "Christ! Everything reminds this guy of a tree or flower he once saw." Surely, you didn't enjoy Rabelais' endless lists of synonyms, or adverbs, or parlor games. These are all just silly affectations of the times.

I disagree.

...
I burn without end, I search for water,
in your eyes there's no water, they're made of stone...
your mouth tastes of dust, your mouth tastes
like poisoned time, your body tastes
like a well that's been sealed...

I find myself at the end of time
with bad eyes and a cough, rummaging through
the old photos,
there's no one, you're no one,
a heap of ashes and a worn-out broom...