This disseriation has been microfilmed exactly as received g 8-1 5 ,2 8 8

BEENS, Gabriel, 1928- VIOLENCE AND POETIC EXPRESSION: A STUDY OF THE POETRY OF MIGUEL HERNANDEZ. [Portions of Text in Spanish].

The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1968 Language and Literature, modem

University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan

© Copyright by

Gabriel Bems

1968 VIOLENCE AND POETIC EXPRESSION:

A STUDY OF THE POETRY OF MIGUEL HERNANDEZ

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By

Gabriel Bems, B.A., M.A.

*******

The Ohio State University 1968

Approved by dU Martha Frosch Adviser Department of Romance Languages VITA

February 5, 1928 Born - New York City

1948 ...... B.A., University of Wisconsin

1 9 5 1 ...... M.A., University of Wisconsin

1951-52 .... Graduate Assistant, Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of Wisconsin

1952-53 .... San Josd, Costa Rica U. S. State Department Grantee and Instructor at Bi-National Cultural Center

1953-1956 . . . Madrid, Spain Teacher of English as Foreign Language Translator-Interpreter and Adminis­ trative Assistant at the Torrejdn Air Base

1959-61 .... Instructor, Ohio Wesleyan University Delaware, Ohio

1961-1965 . . . Instructor, The Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio

1965-1968 . . . Acting Assistant Professor University of California Santa Cruz, California

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Fields: Latin American Relations (B.A.)

Spanish Literature and Romance Languages CONTENTS

Chapter I - Poetic Force and Direction 1

Chapter IX - Violence, Familiar and Natural (The Neo-gongoristic Period) 34

Chapter III - Impersonal and Threatening Violence 71

Chapter IV - A Turning Away from Violence 120

Chapter V - Conclusion 151

Appendix 158

Bibliography 166

/

iii CHAPTER I

POETIC FORCE AND DIRECTION

1 CHAPTER I

The poetic process is psychologically an escapist process.

Wallace Stevens ("The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words")

In this study of Miguel Hemdndez, we are dealing with a poet who has become for most of his exegetes and biogra­ phers something of a symbol for a martyred Republican Spain, brutally allowed to die a premature and, consequently, unnatural death. The currently sparse, but slowly expanding critical bibliography on Miguel Herndndez is generally con­ sistent in manifesting an undercurrent of intimacy with the poet himself and this criticism evidences an often annoying tendency to return to the theme of the poet-shepherd, who then becomes Miguel, in his native village of Orihuela, striving to overcome his humble beginnings, his lack of for­ mal education, his uncomprehending family and all those ♦ restrictive forces which might threaten to silence his poetic voice. Many of the critics, often poets in their own right, who have written about Herndndez, were acquainted

2 with him during his lifetime or later became acquaintances of the surviving members of his family and circle of friends. What sometimes results from this situation is a dramatization of a tragic existence often mingled with political overtones. The appalling circumstances sur­ rounding the poet's final years of pursuit and imprisonment which led most directly to his death in a prison hospital at the age of thirty-one in the year 1942, undoubtedly create an aura of tragic absurdity around the figure of

Miguel Hemdndez and the historical moment in which he lived. His usually inspirational, but also occasionally desperate, letters to his wife and family written from the ever-shifting prison cells, are filled with an almost child­ like nobility which awakens in any sensitive reader the horror felt in the presence of a wasting away of a man and

of a talent.The better biographies of the poet convey, by means of factual information with minimal commentary,

how the final years were fraught with a senseless inhu­ manity, the source of which seems impossible to trace.

There is undoubtedly something Kafkaesque in the existence

1/ See selection from some of these letters in Appendix, p. 158. of nameless and invisible powers which appear to be obsessed in their desire to incessantly bring home to the prisoner the hopelessness of his situation. When one reads in the

"official" version of what transpired during these years that the poet was treated with special consideration in prison and that if he had not died when he did, "con toda probabilidad habria sido libre poco tiempo despuds acogido 2 a una de las muchas amnistfas concedidas por Franco...,"— / the situation becomes almost unbearably ludicrous.

The tragedy of Miguel Herndndez, so sensitively described by Concha Zardoya in her excellent study, which

2/ Juan Guerrero Zamora, Miguel Herndndez, poeta (Madrid, ~ 1955), p. 15. I have somewhat facetiously referred to this study as the official version due to the circum­ stances under which it was published. It appeared in Spain four years after it was originally planned for publication by the author, as attested by the following quotation. The quote is taken from the second proilogue which appeared in the 1955 edition and refers to a first prologue, also included, which had been written in 1951. It is all quite bewildering, particularly in light of the fact that this work was the first complete critical and biographical treatise on Miguel Herndndez to be published in Spain since his death in 1942: Las palabras que han antecedido fueron escritas mediando el aflo 1951. Entonces, pese a mis propdsitos y quidn sabe si por una razon de pertinencia, la publicacidn de esta obra fud aplazada hasta momento mds oportuno, editdndose sdlo un breve adelanto suyo: mi "Noticia sobre Miguel Herndndez." Ahora voy a ofrecer el texto fntegro, levemente revisado. (p. 13) 3/ is still the best to date on the poet's life and work,— has had the effect of awakening in those not so immediately involved in the events of Spain during the period of its violent civil war, nor so closely associated with the mem­ bers of the poetic generation actively engaged in the struggle, a response similar to the one created and nour­ ished by the early pseudo-critical works oiL_another poet,

Federico Garcia Lorca. The natural, albeit rather acritical, reaction to the mysteriously shrouded aspects of an artist's life and, in particular, his death, is to discover in almost everything which was composed prior to the fatal outcome, a reflection of what was inexorably to come to pass. As late as 1957, twenty-one years after the murder of Garcia Lorca, Luis Cemuda prefaces his remarks on this poet's works with the following statement:

Es dificil todavia, sobre todo aventurado, intentar acercarse objetivamente a la obra de Lorca, porque ciertos obstdculos acaso impidan apreciar su valor

3/ Concha Zardoya, Miguel Herndndez (1910-1942): Vida y obra. Bibliografia. Antologia, (Hispanic Institute, New York, 1955). With only slight modifications and a shortened version of the study on the poet's dramatic writings, the second part of this excellent work (II. Obra) appears in the author's Poes la espaflola contempordnea (Madrid, 1961) under the heading: "El mundo podtico de Miguel Herndndez," p. 641 ff. real. Entidndase que dicha dificultad no provlene tanto de la obra misma, que en s£ no es mds dificil que la de cualquler otro poeta diffcil de su genera- cidn, sino por un lado, de las clrcunstancias en que murid, y por otro, de la significacidn que esa muerte ha podldo prestar a la obra. Cualquler apreciacidn que de ella se haga ahora, prescindiendo del estado actual de opinion, basado sobre todo en cdmo murid el poeta, parecerfa injusta; pero aceptar sin mds dlcha opinidn va resultando cada dla mds precarlo. _Z'

Miss Zardoya's first complete study appeared in 1955, a mere thirteen years after the death of Miguel Herndndez and the events were still much too recent and too painful,

it would be supposed, for the author not to be somewhat

influenced by them. Her erudition and perception generally win out over her tendency to personalize and subjectivize,

and many of her pertinent critical comments contained in the

second section of her monograph will be cited and, hope­

fully, expanded upon in the pages to follow. Nevertheless,

in her appraisal of the poet's "neo-gongoristic" work,

Perito en lunas (1933), one notes that Miss Zardoya is not

able to entirely resist the temptation to define the poetry

of this collection against the stifling atmosphere which

she felt was closing in on the poet during this stage of

4/ Luis Cemuda, Estudios sobre poesia espaflola contem­ pordnea (Madrid, 1957). There is also a short section in this volume on Miguel Herndndez, pp. 225-229. his creative life. It is interesting, I feel, to speculate as to whether or not the following explanation would have been utilized by the distinguished author had there not been the final searing tragedy in the life of Miguel Herndndez:

Cuando Miguel escribe este libro estd superando una tragedia: la del poeta sin cultura que aspira a las formas mds elevadas del pensamiento y del arte. Ningdn crftico ha advertido en este libro lo que hay en dl de drama humano. Si hubieran visto la casa en que vivid Miguel, habrian comprendido dsta su primera reaccidn contra el estidrcol que le rodeaba. 5/

Perhaps I, too, am guilty of reading into this passage an interpretation which could possibly have its origin in my knowledge of later incidents in the poet's life, but I nonetheless feel that such statements exemplify how a sub­ jective and biographical approach to the poet is often made

only at the expense of the poetry itself. The poet con­

stantly reacts to his surroundings, although the form in

which such reactions may be expressed is not always the

same. What interests me primarily here is the way in which

the poet gives full expression to his reactions. What I

will only briefly mention here but hope to elucidate in

another section of this study, is that in the poetry of Miguel Hernandez one can rather consistently discover this reaction to a reality or, again borrowing a term from

Wallace Stevens, to "the pressure of reality," without this necessarily constituting an opposition to or a "reaccidn contra" such pressure. It is highly relevant to note here that Miss Zardoya cites a short prose work composed by the poet during this early period— to substantiate her views as expressed in the above passage and her feeling that from

this time forth, "toda la vida de Miguel serA un constante

esfuerzo por elevar hasta su dignidad interior y hasta ese

6/ I feel that this question is of sufficient importance for the analysis of the poetry of Miguel Hernandez to quote the prose passage here in its entirety. In addition to its being included in the above cited work, it will also be found in Miguel HernAndez: Obras Completas (Editorial Losada, S. A., Buenos Aires, 1960), p. 957. I will subsequently refer to this work as 0C with the corresponding page reference when quoting from the works of Miguel Hernandez: j Tod os.' los dias, elevo hasta mi dignidad las bAfiigas de las cuadras del ganado, a las cuales paso la brocha de palma y cafia de la limpieza. jTodos.1 los d£as, se elevan hasta mi dignidad las ubres a que desciendo para producir espumas, pompas transeuntes de la leche; el agua baja y baja del pozo; la situaciAn critica de la funciAn de mi vida mAs fea, por malponiente y oliente; los obstAculos de estiArcol con que tropiezo y que erizan el camino que va de mi casa a mi huerto; las cosas que toco; los seres a quienes concedo mi palabra de imAgenes; las tentaciones en que caigo, antonio. . . jTodos los dias.' me estoy santificando, martirizado y mudo .* piano de hermosura superior, todas las cosas feas y tristes que cercaron su existencia.^ This prose selection, which is significantly entitled Miguel — v mirtir, seems to express with adolescent eloquence and disjointedness a slightly false cry of anguish (false in the sense of being excessively self-pitying and rather rhetorical in tone), in which the component parts of the poet's real world at one particular moment are handled, even fondled and in an unexpected way exalted by the manner in which they are pre­ sented. These elements have the power to sanctify and martyrize the young poet, at least in his own eyes, and they are grouped so as to create an almost "crescendo" effect which helps to stress their forceful properties. The first paragraph is composed of two compound items which form part of the poet's daily existence and although these objects in themselves may not be particularly worthy of mention ("las bdfligas de las cuadras del ganado," "la brocha de palma y cafla de limpieza"), here, in addition, they are not modified by qualitative adjectives to make them seem especially unpleasant. Aside from the biblical connotations ("la palma," "las cuadras"), there is a certain elevation in both the literal and figurative sense through the use of the verb

"elevar" and the concluding noun, "limpieza." In the second paragraph, the same verb is repeated ("se elevan") and when the poet contrasts this action with a downward movement

("desciendo"), what he produces is a pure, slightly ephem­ eral thing of beauty which is, in effect, reality transformed.

The escapist tone suggested by Miss Zardoya's commen­ tary is deeply rooted in a reality and adheres to it. The objects, even where they are seen as obstacles, have a life-like pulsating quality ("los obstdculos de estiercol con que tropiezo y que erizan el camino que van de mi casa a mi huerto"). The familiar aspects of the poet's world together with the unremitting passing of the days all con­ stitute here a type of living tissue which is an extension of the poet and as much a part of his reality as is his own flesh. The mixture of a stark presentation and a softened metaphoric transformation, plus the way in which the biblical element is subtly interwoven into the passage (par­ ticularly in the final "me estoy santificando, martirizado y mudo"), combine to give these lines a poetic quality which is quite Hemandian in tone. The mode of expression would seem to be more important here than any biographical information which it might or might not contain. The approach to the objects of reality is indeed violent in these lines and it is that strain of forceful violence which is of primary significance since it is through an under­ standing of this aspect of the poet's form of expression that much of his poetry can be grasped by the reader.

Rather than indicating a desire on the part of the poet to overcome his "tragedy," the way in which these elements are presented has the effect of broadening the base of a reality which is never to be entirely absent in the poetry of Miguel

Herndndez. The almost primitive thrust aroused by a tellu­ ric, instinctive and even elemental relationship with the poet's real world may be turned outward, as in the prose passage we have just seen, or it may turn in upon itself (as often happens in the more neo-gongoristic works of the early period), or it may be filtered through a mesh of remem­ brances when Miguel Herndndez has to re-create his reality in the last poems composed during the long imprisonment and then published posthumously as Cancionero y romancero de ausencias^

8/ The subject of poetry and its '-interpretation as biography has been amply discussed by the New Critics and those who have followed them. As a result it is 12

In spite of at least one critic's suggestion that the poet had found himself in the violent poems of the civil war

no longer necessary to elaborately defend the point of view which I am taking here, i.e., the study of a poem or a poetic prose passage may help us to understand the mode of consciousness of a poet at the moment of crea­ tion, but it need not necessarily tell us anything essential about his life or his personality. T. S. Eliot has called poetry an "escape from personality" and C. S. Lewis (The Personal Heresy. London, 1965 /first published in 1939/) made the point that in the poem, we do not see the poet, but rather we see through him: "The poet is not a man who asks me to look at him; he is a man who says 'look at that' and points; the more I follow the pointing of his finger the less I can possibly see of him." (p. 11). It is true that the young poet may say "look at me," but in so doing he is really saying "look at me, the poet" and it is what he considers to be the originality of his expression that he wishes us to note. We, the readers, are of course interested in the poetic voice or the speaker in each poem, but we search for this as it is manifested in the work under consideration and then it is the poetic con­ sciousness which we discover, not merely biographical or autobiographical information. It is necessary to recognize that Concha Zardoya has written a study which she has entitled Vida y obra, but from a critical standpoint, it would be much more effective to maintain these two aspects as separate rather than to attempt to explain the one by means of the other. The following statement by C. S. Lewis may serve to clarify this point: _ It is his /the poet's/ business, starting from his own mode of consciousness, whatever that may happen to be, to find that arrangement of public experiences, embodied in words, which will admit him (and incidentally us) to a new mode of con­ sciousness. He proceeds partly by instinct, partly by following the tradition of his prede­ cessors, but very largely by the method of trial and error; and the result, when it comes, is for him, no less than for us, an acquisition, a years which were collected under the titles of Viento del pueblo (1937) and El hombre acecha (1937-1939)— ^, it would seem more valid to consider the forceful tone present in most of these poems to be violently outward bound. In this poetry, however, we are made aware not only of the direction itself, but also of the target at which the poet is aiming.

The essential tonality, that is, the sound and perspective, is related here to what T. S. Eliot considered to be "the second voice" of the poet, that is ". . . the voice of the 10/ poet addressing an audience, whether large or small."—

The tone is still basically one of force and primitive vio­ lence, but it is now the elemental quality of the earth from which the "pueblo" springs that serves not only as a source, but also as the receptacle for this poetry with its full sense of urgency and immediacy. There can be little doubt in the poet's mind as to the presence here of a vast audi­ ence to which he is directing his voice. In the often

voyage beyond the limits of his personal point of view, an annihilation of the brute fact of his own particular psychology rather than its assertion, (p. 27) 9/ J. A. Valente, "Poesia y realidad en Miguel Herndndez," Didlogos, VI (Mdxico, 1965), pp. 27-30. 10/ T. S. Eliot, The Three Voices of Poetry (New York, 1954) p. 6. 14 quoted dedication to Vicente Aleixandre which prefaces

Viento del pueblo, Miguel Herndndez clearly states this personal creed:

Nuestro cimiento serd siempre el mismo: la tierra. Nuestro destino es parar en las manos del pueblo. Sdlo esas honradas manos pueden contener lo que la sangre honrada del poeta derrama vibrante. . . . Los poetas somos viento del pueblo: nacemos para pasar soplando a travds de sus poros y conducir sus ojos y sus sentimientos hacia las cumbres mds hermosas. Hoy, este hoy de pasidn, de vida, de muerte, nos empuja de un imponente modo a ti, a mi, a varios, hacia el pueblo. El pueblo espera a los poetas con la / oreja y el alma tendidas al pie de cada siglo.—

How similar this statement is in many respects to

Unamuno's ideas on the intimate relationship which exists between the poet and the people.' The sense of expectation aroused by the final "al pie de cada siglo" also seems remi­ niscent of the Unamunian theory of eternal tradition or "lo intrahistdrico." In En tomo al casticismo, Unamuno had speculated not only on the importance of language as repre­ sentational of the total experience of a people, but he developed this theme even further by stressing the meta­ phoric quality of their language: "La lengua es el receptdculo de la experiencia de un pueblo y el sedimento

11/ OC, P. 263. 15 de su pensar; en los hondos repliegues de sus metAforas (y lo son la inmensa mayorfa de los vocablos) ha Ido dejando sus huellas el espfrltu colectivo del pueblo, como en los terrenos geoldgicos el proceso de la fauna viva. De antiguo, los hombres rlndleron adoracldn al verbo, viendo 12/ en el lenguaje la mis divina maravllla."— ' When Miguel

Herndndez considers himself to be "el viento del pueblo," he is also convinced that only "el pueblo," In its most unsophisticated state of development, is capable of receiv­ ing vibrant messages emanating from the poet's voice. The emotions, sensations and to an extent even the language in its nascent state, are already present in the eternal tra­ dition of the people, but these fertile ingredients remain in a semidormant condition. It is within the poet's power and it often becomes his "raison d'etre" to awaken and ele­ vate this innate sensitivity to its highest point.

Carlos Blanco Aguinaga has devoted the final pages of 13/ a study on Unamuno and his theories of language— to a brief examination of this question of a poet and his

12/ Obras completas de Miguel de Unamuno, ed. Afrodisio Aguado (Madrid, 1958), III, p. 199. 13/ Carlos Blanco Aguinaga, Unamuno, teorico del lenguaje (Mexico, 1954). 16 relation to the people. The most significant quotation in this regard is taken from Unamuno's interesting "monodia- logistic" essay, "Los naturales y los espirituales," in which is stated the principle that there is "nada mds cerca de lo natural que lo espiritual, ni nada mis cerca del 14/ pueblo que el poeta."— ' In still another Unamuno essay cited by Carlos Blanco, the relationship is carried beyond this basic premise: "El genio es un pueblo individualizado. . . . El genio es, en efecto, el que en pura personalidad se impersonaliza, el que llega a ser voz 15/ de un pueblo. . . .ft— 'r In the poetic trajectory of Miguel

Herndndez, only rarely do we note such a total process of

impersonalization, since there are many indications that he possessed a strong need to consider himself and to be con­

sidered by others primarily as Miguel Herndndez, Poeta.

Nevertheless, he is also consciously— perhaps one could say

even a bit self-consciously--pueblo:

Me llamo barro aunque Miguel me llame. Barro es mi profesidn y mi destino que mancha con su lengua cuanto lame. 17/

14/ Ibid., p. 127 (and in Unamuno, PC, III, p. 831). 15/ loc. cit. (and in Unamuno, OC, III, p. 854). 16/ See letter to Federico Garcia Lorca and reply in Appendix, p. 158. 17/ From El rayo que no cesa, OC, p . 220. 17

The relationship which exists between the poetry of

Miguel Hernandez and the people might best be considered as one of Identification rather than something created through the impersonalization suggested by Unamuno, since Unamuno's affirmation would appear to posit a level of sophistication on the part of the artist which is only intermittently present in the case of Hernandez. His later poetry may have reached this level, but his ties with the people were much

too natural and too reciprocally nutritive to make any 18/ impersonal izat ion on his part at all necessary.— In this

instance it would be preferable to equate "pueblo" with

Ortega y Gasset's concept of "circunstancias" rather than

create the false impression that what is being considered here is nothing more than a variation on the German

Romantics' notions of "Naturpoesie"--the work of art com­ posed collectively by the people themselves and for "das

18/ Perhaps an objection might be raised at this point to my statements regarding Miss Zardoya's approach to Miguel Hernandez as "hombre del pueblo" since I may appear here to be agreeing with this concept. 1 wish to affirm that there is no doubt in my mind that Herndndez is "pueblo." What Miss Zardoya seems to emphasize is the poet's having to overcome not this incontrovertible fact, but rather that he was Miguel Herndndez, "poeta-pastor del pueblo." There is a difference, 1 think, between considering an artist as "pueblo" and seeing him as "hombre del pueblo." 18

Volk im Ganzen" (Schlegel) . The poetry of Miguel Hernandez constantly returns to what he feels to be jointly the Inti­ mate domain of both the people and the poet. As will be noted more fully later, his poetic imagery is never far removed from this focal point. There is a sense of identity with natural forces at the very core of the literary pro- 19 / duct ion— of Miguel Herndndez. Such are the poet's

"circumstances" as I view them and Herndndez, the creative artist rather than the "poeta-pastor," is both controlled by them and he is their dynamic center. His poetic imagination will often establish what Wylie Sypher calls "an abstract geography," but such abstractions will generally contain within them the pressure of these forces:

Anda, columnar ten un desenlace de surtidor. Principle por espuela. Pon a la luna un tirabuzon. Hace

19/ Ortega's dictum, "Yo soy yo y mis circunstancias" could be justly applied to the case of Miguel Herndndez and the relationship which I am attempting to establish here. The interpretation of this concept which 1 am utilizing is to be found in Josd Ferrater Mora, Ortega y Gasset (London, 1956), p. 27: "Far from being a trivial tautology, this phrase appears rather as an involved double assumption according to which 1 cannot conceive of myself without conceiving at the same time of my own circumstances and conversely, I cannot conceive of any circumstances without conceiving of myself as their dynamic center." 19

el camello mis alto de canela. Resuelta en claustro viento esbelto pace, oasis de beldad a toda vela con gargantlllas de oro en la garganta: . fundada en tl se Iza la sierpe, y cant a.— '

What appears at first to be a hermetically sealed

"octava" in which the poet has, through his imagery, broken completely with his own reality, becomes quite a different 21/ thing when we realize that a palm tree is being described——' and that the elemental force is present and made visible as the poet moves upward and downward along this living col­ umn--then somewhat out beyond it to the sky, the sea ("a toda vela") and the distant regions of the Orient. A biblical connotation is also suggested by the last line, although it is the brilliance of the visual images and the suggestion of the contrasting gentle sounds which are more immediately conveyed by the final couplet. Commenting in general terms on this collection of poems, one critic has utterly failed to see anything authentic in this type of

20/ Perito en lunas, Octava V, OC, p. 62. 21/ Juan Cano Ballesta, La poesia de Miguel Herndndez (Madrid, 1962), p. 57, fn. 70. All the titles of the poems are given here as they were supposedly dictated by the poet himself. In the Obras Completas, the poems are designated with roman numerals and in some of the anthologies, there is no designation whatsoever. 20

imagistic poetry: "Jamds un poeta se ha mentido tanto a si 22/ mismo como Miguel Herndndez en este libro.This poem is

comprised of a series of "juegos metafdricos," to cite the

description utilized by Juan Cano Ballesta to classify most

of the poetry contained in Perito en lunas. but it is not to

be assumed that such metaphoric expression is necessarily 23/ "mera ocurrencia.11— This is not the same poetic mode of

expression which Miguel Herndndez is to later employ when he

is more conscious of the second voice also possessed by the

poet; this is primarily the "first-voiced" Miguel

Herndndez--both as the budding poet and in accordance with

T. S. Eliot's interpretation— who has written a poem in

response to an "obscure impulse" (T. S. Eliot, op. cit.,

p. 29), to express in verse what cannot be explained in any

other form the force which is surging within him and which

he has sensed as existing in the object described.

The above poem is neo-gongoristic in tone and somewhat

"rebuscado" in the type of glittering imagery employed by

the poet and which tends to create a certain distance

22/ Arturo del Hoyo, Prologue to Miguel Herndndez, Obra Escogida (Madrid, 1952), p. 12.

23/ Juan Cano Ballesta, o£. cit., p. 58. 21 between the poet and what one might mistakenly consider to be his immediate reality, but the movement from one Image to the next, although not entirely progressive, is most defi­ nitely connective. The total impression is basically one of self-contained force and the use of such images as "claustro,"

"gargantillas" and "sierpe" tends to stress the enclosure and retention of the elemental force in spite of the sug­ gested outward movement. The imagery and the tenor of the poem revolve around a vertical central point which is estab­ lished by the "columna" image which immediately follows a verb form, "Anda," that both creates a sense of movement and constitutes an apostrophe to an apparently inanimate object.

It must be borne in mind that here, as in almost all the poems contained in Perito en lunas. Herndndez is describing an object or activity which is part of his everyday exist­ ence; after all, a palm tree is not any more exotic than a raindrop to an "alicantino." If this is to be interpreted as an expression of escapism, my contention is, and will continue to be throughout this study, that it is a breed of escapism of the type already mentioned, i.e., one which adheres intimately to the poet's reality and his identifi­ cation with natural forces. 22

I am not entirely in accord with the principle that, in general, the young poet is more interested in poetry than in life and that during the early stages of his creative activ­ ity he is more taken with words and the writing of poems 24/ than with the Great Themes.— Although the entire question of great themes is rather vague and the term imprecise in its application to different authors, it is my contention that in the case of Miguel Herndndez, what might rather be considered his great theme--ferment in its various manifes­ tations— stems from the forceful thrust of nature and from i the flowing aspects of this force; from fecundation, to ger­ mination, to growth, to love, to regeneration and to death.

There is validity in the thesis that the "vital, instinc­ tive . . . and uninhibited surges of energy" possessed by the fledgling poet in a primitive state are somewhat uncritical and untested, but I am not willing to accept the 25/ principle that this energy is undirected.— In the poetry of Miguel Hernandez, different directions can be detected and each has its own valid reason for existence and its own

24/ See Harry Berger, Jr., "Biography as Interpretation, Interpretation as Biography," College English, Vol. 28, No. 2 (November, 1966), pp. 113-125. 25/ Ibid.. pp. 118-119. 23 authenticity. These directions, as the poet expresses them imagistically or syntactically, can create the differentia­ tion which is evident in the total poetic output of Miguel # Hemdndez even though we are studying the work of a creative artist whose period of creation spanned not much more than ten years. The novelty or the uniqueness of the poetic expression is therefore contingent on the direction which the poet's intimate relation with the basic elemental force actually takes.

The very early poetry often takes flight and seems at first glance to soar above the source from which it springs, but the connecting cord which binds Miguel Hemdndez to the earth and its intrahistorical sediment is never entirely cut. The stretching of this bond at times seems to reach the point of maximum tension, but it is rarely completely severed. The tension itself created by this pulling out from the center is what may prove to be the very essence of that area in the poetry of Miguel Hemdndez which has been considered most difficult to fully penetrate. But the flights, in whatever direction they go, are as authentic as the probings and both forms of mobility appear to have as their starting point and receive their generative force from the roots mentioned by another "alicantino," Gabriel Mird, 24 whom Miguel Hemdndez considered at one point to be his favorite author "y el que acaso haya influido mds en 26/ mf. . . .n— Miro experienced and stated in more direct, but no less poetic, terms the tremendous sense of exuberance and strength which he derived from his contact with nature.

His expression of this sensation, it seems to me, is vir­ tually explosive: "Se me figura que tengo raices y que penetran en todo. iQud alegria la de los drboles enormes y centenarios; sentirse palpitar y estremecerse y vivir por 27/ la raigambre alejada."— The vital and spacial distance which separates the network of roots from the visible growth springing from them will tend to be the zone consciously sought out, explored and, in the most successful poems, cap­ tured by the poet, Miguel Hemdndez. Luis Vivanco has made an interesting series of statements which have some bearing on the question being considered here:

Lo tremendo en Miguel Hemdndez y lo que ha dado origen al llamado tremendismo de nuestra poesfa joven de pcstguerra consiste en tomarse elementalmente y universalmente a s£ mismo como unico tema sustantivo de poesia. . . . Tomarse uno a s£ mismo es tomarse con todo

26/ Zardoya, oj>. cit., p. 10.

27/ This quote appears in Jorge Guilldn, Lenguaje v poesia (Madrid, 1962), p. 195. el universo. Aleixandre se toma a s£ mismo para identificarse con lo cdsmico elemental. Hemdndez se toma a sf mismo para prevalecer como revelacidn trdgica o patdtica, es decir, humanizada de lo cdsmico.28/

It would seem that in his poetry, Miguel Hemdndez comes closer to Vivanco1s description of Aleixandre and that if it is true that the former considers himself to be the only substantive theme of his poems, it is primarily because the elemental force which permeates his world courses through him and is then transmitted through a series of poetic signals in the various directions which have been mentioned. The suggestion of the tragic or pathetic element indicated by Vivanco would again appear to me to be somewhat after the fact and made in the light of other circumstances, but not so the humanizing of what is cosmic as the poet's principal purpose. In a very early poem, the one which appears as the first entry in the Obras Completas, we can note this blending of different natural forces (again some­ what mingled with the exotic) which all converge in the person of the poet and by means of the poetic expression

\ itself:

Oh limdn amarillo, patria de mi calentura.

28/ Luis Felipe Vivanco, Intro due ci<5n a la poes£a espaflola contemporanea (Madrid, I'vsJ), p. 542. 26

Si te suelto en el aire, oh limdn amarillo, me dards un reldmpago en resumen.

Si te subo a la punta de mi indice, oh limdn amarillo, me dards un chinito coletudo, y hasta toda la China aunque desde los dngeles contemplada.

Si te hundo mis dientes oh agrio mi amigo, me dards un minuto de mar.29/

This is a delightful poem in which the child's game and a poetic game are played simultaneously, but the result is neither of these two component parts. Nor do 1 believe that

29/ PC, p. 35 (Poemas de adolescencia). The copy I have reproduced here, however, is taken from a manuscript version published in Insula, Affo XV, Num. 168 (noviembre, 1960), p. 5. I have done this because I was struck by the way the rest of the poem was origi­ nally set off from the first two lines by the spacing as well as by the punctuation. The published versions which I .have seen of this poem do not indicate such a separation. 27

the poem can be simply considered as "un dibujo impresionista

en que . . . logra el poeta captar la realidad en pleno .30/ movimiento como una bailarina a lo Degas.'*— Just as in

the poem previously cited, the poet establishes in the first

stanza of this work an intimate relation to an object which

contains within it other vital although not immediately

visible substances or worlds. The relationship here, how­

ever, is more directly created through the naming of the

real object first and then introducing it again in meta­

phoric terms in the second line. The playful tone permeates

the poem and it becomes particularly obvious in the very

action of tossing, but the force with which the "limtSn-

patria" is hurled or released triggers almost instantane­

ously a counterforce that returns toward the earth as a

"relimpago." (The fruit here also constitutes a world for

the poet.) There is no magical transformation in this

imagery, since throughout the poem the lemon never actually

loses its original and recognizable form. Rather, it gives

another facet of itself: "me dar£s/ un reldmpago/ en

resumen." The velocity of the action and the sudden move­

ment from the first indication of this phenomenon to the

30/ Juan Cano Ballesta, oj>. cit. . p. 107. 28 second is emphasized by the short verses and the abruptness produced by the sharply prosaic "en resumen.11 This is a correlative form which suggests the effect of the lightning bolt and it serves to rend the atmosphere, almost splitting the object into its several component parts. The sense of luminosity and heat in the first two stanzas of the poem do bring to mind the fleeting quality of an impressionistic painting. These elements could conceivably relate to what 31/ Cano Ballesta terms "levantinismo,"— but a more inter­ esting commentary remains to be made here. There is the exciting sensation of violent separation followed by an equally violent rejoining which is characteristic of much of the poetry of Miguel Hemdndez. The "wrenching" quality will appear repeatedly in the poet's work and here the verb

"soltar" seems to establish this mood since one can only set free what has previously been tightly grasped. The "limdn amarillo" which in the first short introductory stanza is one with the poet, his "patria de calentura," becomes

31/ Ibid., pp. 105-106, fh. 97. The author's partial explanation of this concept is as follows: "Levantinismo es . . . una visidn perifdrica del inundo sin el trdnsito a la contemplacidn trascendente del paisaje. ..." I am convinced that there is a transcendence here, but there may not be a transcend­ ent contemplation. reunited with him in the third stanza. In fact, the intimacy is re-created as the object in its original form becomes an extension of his own body, raised "a la punta/ de mi indice.11 Immediate removal again ensues, but this time the direction is toward a child-like, game-like, distant world.

Finally, the absorbing of the object, the total penetration of this particle of reality by the poet himself is brought to its effective culmination as he sinks his teeth into its friendly, familiar bitterness and receives in return, "un minuto de mar." The submersion is momentary, but complete.

It would be an exaggerated form of pedantry to analyt­ ically extract from this simple poem a series of rigid

statements about the poet's vision of the world or even to utilize so early a work to explain any such vision. I have devoted the foregoing paragraphs to this analysis, however,

in an attempt to clarify what I meant to convey earlier in

this chapter by discussing the poet's relationship to his

reality, his circumstances and his position at the center of

those natural forces which swirl around and through him. In

the poem "Limon," the seemingly discordant images that

strike out at the reader are perceived, after a more pene­

trating examination, as possessing a centripetal pull and

there is an exhilarating synthesis expressed here in which a 30 natural object Is both the catalyst and the synthesizer. In this poem, however, all the sensations derived from this experience find their ultimate unity In the poet-speaker himself. When Miguel Hem&idez, In other poems, removes himself partially from the eye of the turbulence Inherent in nature, the language and Imagery which he employs will sub­ stitute for the person of the poet to express the interrela­ tion of the forces of nature and life itself. "Orinaban/ las aves/ el alba," are the opening lines of another early poem (Hermanita muerta, PC, p. 37) and here the poet has synthesized three disparate images into one unified state­ ment which immediately branches out again in three direc­ tions to express defilement, violence and premature death.

Those critics who have considered it possible to con­ geal the active ingredients of this poetry into a "trfptico 32/ temAtico" comprised of life, death and love— have rather simplified the matter. A recent article utilizes this three-fold classification and refers to the first part of a poem from Cancionero y romancero de ausencias. also cited by Cano Ballesta, to support this reduction:

Escribi en el arenal

32/ Ibid., p. 63. los tres nombres de la vlda: 33/ vlda, muerte, amor.— '

The author of this article sums up and subsequently retracts his original statement and in so doing he shows his awareness of the inefficacy of a rigid thematic approach to the poetry of Miguel Hemdndez: "Vida, muerte, amor. He ah£ los tres temas mayores de la poesia hemandina.

. . . Pero digo mal, puesto que no se trata de tres temas 34/ distintos sino de las tres facetas de un tema unico."—

This affirmation is not developed further and this single theme is not considered in any of its possibilities. That these three elements overlap and form the core of most lit­ erary endeavor is of course nothing new and perhaps an

elaboration of such a concept would not open any heretofore

closed doors which might lead to a fuller understanding of

the poetic expression of Miguel Hemdndez. It is signifi­

cant, however, that the question of impermanence and the

interaction of natural forces contributing to the phenomenon

are presented by the poet in the second and final stanza of

33/ OC, p. 364.

34/ Josd Angeles, "La poesfa de Miguel Hemdndez," Duquesne Hispanic Review. Ill (1964), pp. 25-26. 32 the same poem in three lines which are not cited in the above-mentioned article:

Una rdfaga de mar*

tantas claras veces ida,

vino y los borrd.

The sea can be suddenly violent as well as gently oscillating and its force here has destroyed and constructed.

Natural forces are, of course, traditionally both destruc­ tive and constructive or, expressed paradoxically, they are destructively constructive. This concept is at the very center of the literary expression of Miguel Hemdndez, and the different forms in which it becomes manifest in the poetry will be the primary object of this study. This approach will necessarily include an examination of the imagery of violence as a threat and the expression of force as the great link in the poet's personal view of the chain of being; in contrast, but totally related to the foregoing, will be the question of restraint or the slackening of the forceful thrust of nature, which in the case of Miguel

Hemdndez is often a prelude to the revitalized return of turbulence, and also the pressure of silence as a counter­ balance to the destruction intrinsic to these various forces. These will constitute the foci, but other 33 tangential directions may also be followed when it is felt that they will contribute to fathoming the "asombro" gen­ erally achieved by Miguel Hemdndez in his poetry and acknowledged as an essential characteristic of his poetic expression by his detractors, eulogists and apologists 35/ alike.-— ' The following statement made by one member of

the second group who has translated several poems of Miguel

Hemdndez into French, might well serve here as a valid

concluding and preliminary comment:

Four Miguel Hemdndez, poete instinctif, primitif et aussi autodidacte, la podsie est, avant tout, une question de force. Uhe poussde cordiale et elementaire. Tres lide aux symboles gdographiques de son pays levantin et h la simplicitd de la vie og/ familiale. Mais une force, la podsie-dlan.n— '

35/ Arturo del Hoyo, oj>. cit., p. 9. The complete sentence from which this excitingly vague word is taken reads as follows: "Miguel Hemdndez no consiguid siempre la perfeccidn, pero s£ el asombro."

36/ Jacinto-Luis Guerrefla, Miguel Hemdndez (Paris, 1963), p. 11. CHAPTER II

VIOLENCE - FAMILIAR AND NATURAL

(THE NEO-GONGORISTIC PERIOD)

34 CHAPTER II

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower Drives ray green age; that blasts the roots of trees Is my destroyer ....

The force that drives the water through the roots Drives ray red blood; that dries the mouthing streams Turns mine to wax ....

Dylan Thomas

The attachment to the dynamic aspects of nature may have as its corollary what might appear to be antagonistic to such a bond, and that is the fear of whatever could threaten to obliterate the vitality itself. The poetic

imagination which revels in the plenum of the present moment is capable of going beyond the here and now to a

time when such plenitude no longer exists. This type of vision may bring to mind the traditional Mubi sunt" theme, but what is being suggested here is basically in contrast

to a retrospective and despairing look at what has already been and no longer is. What I wish to consider is rather an emphasis on and an exalting of the ripeness as it relates

to and precedes decay. The highest point attained in the life processes when it is most dynamically described by a

35 36 particular poet, may naturally lead him to envision and give expression to the way in which the force of life can para­ doxically accelerate the force of destruction. Quevedo often expresses in his poetry one of the prevalent themes of baroque ideology, i.e., the presence of death in life:

Vivir es caminar breve jomada, y muerte viva es, Lico, nuestra vida, ayer al frdgil cuerpo amanecida, cada instante en el cuerpo sepultada.

Quevedo is not always quite so subdued as he dwells on the brevity of life in his writings, but in the above sonnet, death is in a quiescent state, buried alive in the living organism, a fragile body, and it presages what is to come.

As has already been briefly mentioned in the introductory chapter of this study, much of the poetry of Miguel

Hemdndez encompasses a vision in which the cyclical quality of natural forces plays a prominent role. Although the seeds of death or potential destruction may be contained within the cycle, the general mood is regenerative as long as the natural balance is not entirely disrupted. During

the period when his poetry has been considered by most

critics to be primarily mimetic and neo-gongoristic in form,

Miguel Hemdndez makes use of disparates, hyperbaton, con­ ceits and other rhetorical figures favored by the poets of 37 the Baroque who most definitely influenced him, to express the instantaneous effect of natural forces working on each other in a form of tense interplay. The inner structure and imagery of many of the poems which comprise Perito en lunas, for example, are explosive, but the rather restricting ver­ sification of the "octavas reales" restrains the visual and syntactical violence. This would also hold true for the sonnet form which the poet utilizes in El silbo vulnerado

(1934) and in El rayo que no cesa (1934-1935). In speaking of the permanence of the sonnet form in modern poetry and particularly in relation to the poetry of Vicente Gaos,

Ddmaso Alonso has made the following comment:

Resulta, pues, que el terrible manantial irrestafiable de su poesia se diria que naturalmente va a serenarse, a contenerse bullendo aun, pero con nitida transparencia, en el marco estrecho que se le ofrece o, mejor, que ella misma se busca._l/

This statement has some relevance to the early poetry of

Miguel Hernandez. The highly structured exterior framework does not necessarily quell the violence, but it does allow 21 it to "explode in a condition of easy and strict controls."— -

1j Damaso Alonso, Poetas espafioles contemporaneos (Madrid, 1958), p. 394. 2/ Frederick J. Hoffman, The Mortal No; Death and the M o d e m Imagination (Princeton, 1964), p. 87. A section of this often stimulating book is devoted to a study of violence in literature and the structural problems involved in expressing "sentimental violence" and impersonal violence" in m o d e m poetry and fiction. 3 8

In those poems Included in the above collections in which the poet is describing purely natural phenomena, there

seems to be a tendency for him to make the imagery and syn­

tax also serve to restrain the violence which is inherent in nature, since in his cyclical vision whatever has its origin

in natural phenomena is destroyed and comes back into being

through the very act of its destruction. In the following poem, the momentary lapse between death and life is

expressed imagistically by "puntos suspensivos,11 thus crea­

ting a sense of perpetuation:

Gota: segundo de agua, desemboca, de la cueva, llovida ya, en el viento: se reanuda en su origen por la roca, igual que una chumbera de momento. Cojo la ubre fruncida, y a mi boca su vida, que otra mata aum muerta, siento venir, tras los renglones evasivos . de la lluvia, ya puntos suspensivos.— '

This is primarily a poem of visual imagery, but as has

already been indicated elsewhere, Miguel Hemdndez in Perito

en lunas often goes beyond a mere word picture to express

qualities intrinsic to nature. The negative statement made

by one critic of this collection which claims that the words

of these poems Mcasi nunca se colocan en eficaz situacion

3/ Perito en lunas, XXVII (Gota de agua), OC, p. 69. 39 podtica'*-^ is not applicable to this work in which the poet has captured a series of progressive actions which are all held together by the underlying life-sustaining quality of the rain. The first word of the poem ("Gota") stands alone, but its position in the line creates a static or solidified image of the water which will be gradually dissolved as the poem unfolds. The initial density becomes immediately transitory as the visual Image is converted by the poet into a temporal one ("segundo de agua"). The physical and temporal elements, however, come together in this particle of time since the poet has effectively and quite simply established the relationship between the action of seconds following upon each other and that of drops of water fil­ tered through the rock. In my reading of the poem, I detect a slightly ominous tone in the way in which the first drop of rain emerges from a darkened zone -("de la cueva") after first having become a part of another element which is

4/ Juan Guerrero Zamora, op. cit., p. 204: ". . . las palabras casi nunca se coloean en eficaz situacidn podtica, se suceden como asociaciones y correlatos exoticos o extravagantes y cargan demasiado color en disminucidn de su sentido." However uneven the early poetry may be, this type of sweeping statement is not justified and shows a lack of critical insight into the tendencies of much of the m o d e m poetry of Spain and elsewhere written particularly since the 1920*s. present but not visible ("el viento"). The vaguely

threatening quality of these;first two lines is quickly

dissipated as the same drop, or a similar one, renews it­

self through the rock and its renewal causes the poet to bring forth an image of fecundity ("igual que una chumbera"),

which naturally suggests the generative quality of the

water. The formerly inert rock becomes an integral part of

the creative process and it is now an inexhaustible source

of this life-giving fluid ("la ubre fruncida").

Metaphorically, the poem reaches its zenith of vitality

as the poetic "I" enters as part of the natural scene,

grasps the pulsating object, drinks from it and senses

another life flowing through him. The persona of the poet

is metamorphosed and he is not only one with nature, he dLs

a natural object which draws in the water as would the roots

of a tree. It is at this point in the cycle when death can

most effectively be mentioned and with a total absence of

any aimihilative possibilities. It appears now in an ana­

phoric construction ("que otra mata aun rauerta"), but there

is no threat or feeling of dread involved here in the intro­

duction of what merely constitutes another aspect of life.

The poem has clearly conveyed the transmitting of the life

force from one object to another and the possibility of obliteration cannot exist at this juncture within the con­ text of the work as the drops of water are constantly reborn, and this rebirth is visually expressed by the open-ended series of spaced periods. The poet has placed himself at the center of the action, but only as a type of natural conductor of life. Through the medium of the poem itself, however, Miguel Hemindez can be seen as the creative syn­ thesizer working from without and he has been able to successfully convert the illusive and perhaps even poten­ tially menacing rain ("los renglones evasivos") into a con­

trolled movement which is in no way forbidding.—^

The imagery and structure of the poem clearly reflect a control on the part of the poet over the familiar forces of nature and it might be suggested that the visual quality of many of these images has the effect of stressing that

sense of familiarity which I feel is transmitted to the reader. Even the hyperbatic construction of the last four

lines, in addition to simulating the sound of the falling

5/ This poem recalls Coleridge*s view in which the mind is compared to a living plant, which absorbing into itself the atmosphere to which its own respiration has con­ tributed, grows out into its perception. See Robert Langbaum, The Poetry of Experience (London, 1957), pp. 210-235 and M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (New York, i93F)~ppr^a-fo:— ------42 drops of water, tends to slow down the movement. The Image

Itself ("puntos suspenslvos") contributes to this slackening of the action. In spite of our awareness of the poet throughout this poem, he Is not the reconciling agent of conflicting elements mentioned by Coleridge In the

Blographia Literaria. but has become rather a symbolic fig­ ure which contains within it the reality of a life force.

The level of reality on which the symbol is superimposed is not a material object but is instead an intangible aspect of the real world. However vague or undefined this spiritual force may be, it is nonetheless present in this and other poems of Miguel Hemdndez especially where the dynamic 6/ aspects of nature are described.— How different the mood is here from that awakened by the verses of Dylan Thomas cited at the beginning of this section.1 The "oneness" which

Thomas may feel with nature in that poem leads to a sense of terror as the poet considers himself to be an unwilling vic­ tim of the driving forces. The destructive aspect runs throughout that work and has some relationship to what F. J.

Hoffman calls the "landscape as assailant. This questim

6/ See Carlos Bousofio, La poesia de Vicente Aleixandre (Madrid, 1950), Ch. ii for a discussion of "el sindbolo y la imagen visionaria continuada." 7/ Frederick J. Hoffman, o£. cit., p. 156. 43 of victim, assailant and threatening violence in the poetry

of Miguel Hemdndez will be more closely examined in the

following section since it does form an important part of

the middle period of his poetic creativity, but 1 am pri­ marily interested in stressing here the exaltation of

familiar violence in the poet's early phase, the one which

has been correctly classified as being principally neo-

gongoristic.

Before ending our analysis of Gota de agua, we might

return briefly to the use of hyperbaton here and to examine

the general comment that the rhetorical figures employed by

Miguel Hemdndez in his initial period of creativity were 8/ purely and indiscriminately mimetic.— The influence of

Gdngora on the young poet and on the other members of the

poetic generation whose works he read and admired (Guilldn,

Alberti, Aleixandre, Lorca, etc.), was indeed pronounced.

Such influence was heightened by the fact that the year 1927

marked the tercentenary commemoration of the death of the

baroque poet of Cdrdoba. Carlos Bousoflo, Luis Cemuda, Cano

Ballesta and especially Dimaso Alonso stress this general

8/ Juan Guerrero Zamora, Noticia sobre Miguel Hemdndez (Madrid, 1951), pp. 36-38. Guerrero Zamora is only one of many who have made critical statements of this type especially in reference to Perito en lunas. - 44 influence and the last mentioned critic describes the admi­ ration felt for Gdngora by Alonso's own contemporaries in almost anecdotal form in his essay, "Una generacidn podtica

(1920-1936). '*-2/ Nevertheless, the influence of any one poet or group of poets on another is always filtered through a unique personality and personal vision and is therefore modified by the particular perspective of the individual artist. It is only partially valid to speak of imitation of one artist by another. It would certainly appear that

Hernandez was usually quite aware of how gongoristic tech­ niques and rhetorical figures, particularly hyperbaton, might be utilized to create various effects and to function differently, according to the type of poetic statement he wished to make. It is not highly useful for the critic to deal with the poet's intentions, which can never be fully known, but it is essential that he be willing to grapple with what occurs in the poems themselves. We have already observed how the inverted syntax in one short work tended to hold back the action and bring about a gentle flowing movement. In another poem from Perito en lunas, the’

9/ D^maso Alonso, o£. cit., pp. 167-192. 45 syntactical violence creates a flashing visual effect which is rather dazzling:

El mand, miel y leche, de los higos, lluevo sobre la luz, dios con calzones, para un pueblo israelita de mendigos niflos, moiseses rubios en cantones; Angeles que simulan las pasiones en una conjuncidn vana de ombligos, por esta, donde tiene, serrania tanta, pura la luz, cateeoria.10/

The poem is almost pure illumination from beginning to end and the color images of white and gold appear through­ out. But this is an active illumination and if we were to closely examine the last two lines where the structure becomes extremely disjunctive, we would be able to express the meaning in a logical and, consequently, less poetic form as follows: "por esta serranfa donde la luz pura tiene tanta categoria." But what is lost in such a reworking is the dramatic quality of the lines and the poet's apparent desire within the poem to portray a benevolent violence

10/ Perito en lunas. IX (Yo:Dios), PC. p. 63. Both Juan Cano Ballesta in oj>. cit., p. 112 and Marie Chevallier in her "Tentative d*explication de texte: 'Perito en lunas'" which appeared in Les Langues Ndo-lattnes, No. 150 (Paris, Juin, 1959), p. 44, use the form "lluevo" rather than "llueve" as it appears in the Obras Completas. This form also appears in the version included in Obra Escogida published by Aguilar in Buenos Aires, 1958. Bearing in mind the title which the poet apparently gave to this work, the first person singular seems more appropriate. 46 stemming from the purity of the natural light. This tech­ nique borrows from the baroque poetry of other centuries, but what is achieved is quite different from the effects created by the hyberbatic construction in the poem commented on previously. The poet's penchant in this first period often to astound and even perhaps to exploit the principle of suspense by the way the component parts of these lines are placed in juxtaposition to each other, has its anteced­ ents in Gongora, Quevedo and in baroque poetry outside the orbit of Spanish literature.— ^

Looked at individually, the recognizable words "higo,"

"ombligo" and "serrania" (there are others), have their place in a plane of reality and as a result of this they tend to keep the poem from "taking off" in flight high above the earth's surface. But the way in which such words are combined in contrastive and even playful tones ("man£, miel y leche de los higos," "dios con calzones," "moiseses rubios en cantones," "vana conjuncidn de ombligos") constitutes a

11/ See Lowry Nelson, Jr., Baroque Lyric Poetry (New Haven, 1961), Ch. 12. In a footnote to page 154 of this work, the author cites the first tercet of a sonnet by Marino which clearly states this aspect of the baroque: k del poeta il fin la meraviglia (parlo de l'eccellente e non del goffo): chi non sa far stupir, vada alia striglia.' basic linking of disparates which create jarring images that contribute to the general feeling of visual movement with kaleidoscopic overtones. The poem is filled with life and

light, but it is not a harmonious blend in which objects may

gently take on different forms or appearances. Reality,

therefore, is not absent but transfigured— even toyed with—

and simultaneously bathed in a light which causes the only

real physical action suggested in the poem (the tossing of

the figs to children below) to stand out in sharp focus.

There is irony in this poem tfiich seems to fit in with the

playful tone that is evident throughout. The "leche de

higo" has the special connotation of being food for simple­

tons and the ,(mandM rains down upon beggars. The ironical

twist of these images and the "dios con calzones" is not

only a type of conceptual word game, but the poet has also

been able to bring rather abstract concepts down to earth

and convert them into a lived reality. The non-physical

activity of the poem, and by that I mean the visual move­

ment, is not resolved in tranquility but, on the contrary,

it concludes in a burst of syntactical and "spotlighted"

violence. The poetic "I" is not the conductor of the spir­

itual force as was the case in the poem Gota de agua, but

is, rather, the sole cause of a purely physical action. His 48 position ("dios con calzones") furnishes the vantage point required for the descriptions which follow. The personal

''I” of the poet is not apparent within the poem and this human element is generally not present in the early neo- gongoristic style of Miguel HemAndez. Nonetheless, there is a "presence in absence" evident by the way in which the poetic vision of nature is presented in this poetry since the transfigured natural scenes are clearly perceived through one man's eyes or imagination (the poet's) and the reader can only attempt to see something of what the poet sees. In spite of the highly visual quality of these short works, it is only possible for us to sense the scene and feel the tension rather than to actually look, as it were, through the poet to see what he is pointing to. The tension is created by the centrifugal pull of the contrasting images in this poem and others:

Angeles que simulan las pasiones en una conjuncidn vana de ombligos (IX above)

jAl polo norte del limon amargo . desde tu arena azul, cociente higuera!— '

Agrios huertos, azules limonares, ^ , de frutos, si dorados, corredores-—

12/ Perito en lunas, XI (Sexo en instante), OC, p. 64.

13/ Ibid., XXI (Mar y rfo), OC, p. 67. 49 14/ A fuego de arena1 , frio de asfalto.—

Carlos Blanco Aguinaga has commented at length on a

type of abstract Identification with natural phenomena In

the early and late poetry of Emilio Prados In which the

"mystery of nature" is explored by a poet who belonged to a

slightly earlier generation than that of Miguel Hernandez.

It would be illuminating, I think; to quote here a rather

extended passage from Professor Blanco's study and also to

speculate on whether Miguel Hemdndez may not have been

familiar with the poetry of Emilio Prados written prior to

the outbreak of the Civil War and his subsequent exile to

Mexico in spite of the fact that Prados did not publish the

main body of his work until after the younger poet's death:

Podticamente se plantea Prados, desde el principio de su obra, el viejisimo problema. . . del Tiempo y su paso, del trdnsito, imperceptible en si, de la Nada al Ser y del Ser a la Nada. S<5lo que Prados-— y en esto es tambidn como aquellos griegos contempladores tambidn del agua— -no se rinde a la evidencia que parece radical, de la existencia de la Nada o de la Muerte porque frente a sus ojos (en la flor que va del pdtalo a la semilla y de dsta al pdtalo; en el mar que, al atardecer, parece fundirse y entrar por el cielo para salir de dl con la llegada del alba; en el dia que, en un instante de suprema quietud, entra por la noche para volver a salir de ella; o en el jardin que

- -14/ Ibid., XL (Negros ahorcados por violacion), OC, p. 73. 50

se entrega a la muerte para renacer a la vuelta de un ciclo corapleto del Tiempo), al alcance de los sentidos todos, se le ofrece, no la desaparicion definitiva de cada forma concreta del cuerpo de la realidad que observa, sino el trdnsito etemo de uno de los aspectos de su esencia a otra forma o cuerpo en los que participa del Todo y de los que, ciclicamente, vuelve a nacer sin que se pueda precisar en qud momento exacto, por qud razdn milagrosa.iJi'

This is a rather philosophical approach to the poet in its emphasis on Time, Being and Nothingness, but the cyclical aspects of the poetry of Prados discussedby

Professor Blanco have a relationship to the work ofMiguel

Hemdndez. It will certainly be noted, however, that the

images chosen to present the cyclical view present in the work of Emilio Prados all partake of a harmonious and fairly tranquii mood. The need to control or exalt a violence which may be inherent in what is basic to both poets--a firm belief in the regenerative cycle of natural phenomena--does not seem to form an integral part of the poetic vision as

it was for Miguel Hemdndez. The latter, either intuitively

or under the influence of neo-gongoristic tendencies, will

first have to pass through a period where natural violence

15/ Carlos Blanco Aguinaga, "Emilio Prados, Vida y Obra,11 Revista Hispanica M o d e m a . XXVI (julio-octubre, 1960), p. 27. 51 is all before he reaches, in Che final poems of Cancionero y romancero de ausencias, the type of subdued and harmonious expression found in an early poem (1926) of Emilio Prados:

todo vuelve a su ser, cuando acabada la muerte otra vez vuelve a nacer el agua en su misma fuente: . fuente que nunca ha de ver. — '

This tranquility of expression is similar to what one often finds in the Soledades of Antonio Machado, where the

"fuente serena" consistently symbolizes the passing of time and a sense of eternal recurrence. Emilio Prados in the above poem describes a fountain "que nunca ha de ver," but for Miguel Hemdndez, who wishes to penetrate nature's secrets--they are not really secrets, perhaps, but rather partially buried aspects of reality— the sense of sight is essential. It is a form of sight, however, which is often equivalent to the sense of touch and the visual images are

16/ Ibid., pp. 35-36, El misterio del agua. Carlos Blanco indicates that this poem appears in the Antologia of the poet's works published by Losada (Buenos Aires, 1954). 52 more often than not tactile ones.— ^ In the early poetry, there seems to be a tacit refusal on the part of the poet to fully accept the principle that not everything below the surface can be seen or brought to light in the poem. Even the supposedly invisible forces which are hidden from the eyes of most of those who contemplate nature, however closely they observe the world around them, will be brought into the visual plane by Miguel Hem&idez. For him, it is not enough for the poet to simply intuit the presence of a fountain, an underground stream, a flow of energy beneath the level of whatever may be plastic and visible outside of the poetic imagination; an attempt must be made to re-create these aspects visually in the poetry. Nothing in nature can

17/ Pedro Salinas expresses the tactile quality of light in his "Don de la materia" (Seguro azar. 1929)

De pronto, como una llama sube una alegria altisima de lo negro: luz del tacto. Llego al mundo de lo cierto.

For Salinas, however, sight is not always necessary for total possession. In another poem from this same col­ lection we note the importance of intuition:

Llevo los ojos cerrados. No te veo, ya te siento, ya te tengo. Mia. ("Busca, encuentro") 53 remain entirely subliminal or outside the range of vision for the poet in this type of approach to the natural world.

It is as if the outer covering which might prevent such a view must be stripped away to permit the vital underlying life-stream to show itself or be shown. The stripping away of the exterior layers, however, will not in the case of

Hemdndez give rise to a "poesia desnuda" in which only essences are described or captured in simple imagery. To make something known which prior to the poet's penetration was unknown or merely suggested, it is necessary to create a double image with one of the component parts having its basis in any sensitive observer's valid but incomplete view of things. So that not only is the removal of the hereto­ fore impenetrable covering in itself a violent action

(violent, but not destructive), but the previously unseen aspects of this potential energy must be related to what can be seen and given a recognizable name:

Dentro de esa interior torre redonda, subterrdneo quinqud, cafidn de canto, el punto,^no?, del rfo, sin acento, reloj parado, pide cuerda, viento.18/

The "ino?" which unexpectedly appears in the penultimate

line of this octave is the poet's rhetorical way of

18/ Perito en lunas, XVIII, "Pozo," OC, p. 66. convincing himself and the reader of the reasonableness of his assumption that the water at the bottom of this well is potentially alive and that it is a vertical point of the subterranean river (similar to the flame of the oil lamp) which, as a watch which has temporarily stopped ticking

(there is no sound but the known world is filled with things which should emit sounds and do not), needs to be fully brought to life. The watch which is stopped has potential movement or life and it asks to be wound as the river asks to be raised to the surface (the play on the word "cuerda" becomes obvious) and brought fully to life through its con­ tact with the breath ('Viento'1) of the earth1 s surface. Hew essential is the need for the poet to bring the interior or

subterranean aspects of nature into the light of day and to convert what is only momentarily silent (Msin acento") into

its more natural and complete state of movement and sound!

The explosive quality is also clearly present in the image

of light in darkness ("quinqud") and the description of the well as "cafidn de canto." There are numerous examples of

this desire on the part of Hemdndez to express this poten­

tial vitality and to give it its own voice:

Pdrr&fos de la mis hiriente punta, si la menos esbelta, como voces 55

de emocidn, ya se rizan, de la yunta: verdes sierpes ya tr£mulas de roces y rocfos. La mano que las junta, afila las tajadas, s£, las hoces, con el deseo ya, la luz en tomo; y enarca br£os, era, masas, homo.li'

The title of the work ("Surco") is highly significant for a fuller comprehension of what occurs in the poem. The poet has conceived a total evolution, using as his starting point something which is merely a suggestion of what is yet to be. We are not going outside the poem itself in such an analysis, since the title is an integral part of the work and this becomes clear as we follow the poetic progression to its final point. Marie Chevallier (op. cit., p. 49) interprets this poem to be a description of the harvesting of wheat and 1 feel that she is quite correct in her basic interpretation. But what is more essential seems to be that the gathering and transporting of the stalks is only one aspect of a chain of events which are implicit in the poem. The sword-like blades of wheat, which the poet sees as having the appearance of individual paragraphs with clus­

tered words, have already pushed through the furrows. The

"surco," then, is only a silent promise of the plenitude

19/ Perito en lunas, XX, "Surco," OC, p. 67. 56 which in the poem has already been reached and fully described. In addition to the moment on which Miguel

Hem&idez dwells (the gathering and cutting of the recently sown wheat), we are also projected into the future when the grain will reach its point of culmination in the light and heat of the oven. The anxious hand that binds the greenish stalks is already surrounded by the light which will soon become pure heat. What at first seems merely to be a har­ vest scene conceptually described, is in reality a full creative process; one which presents a cycle from birth to rebirth in eight short verses. The stalks of wheat are seen to be clamoring as if with voices filled with emotion for their finality which, in effect, is not a finality at all, but another beginning. From the third line on we begin to sense the evolutionary quality through the introduction of the first adverbial ’’ya" (Mya se rizan") and this construc­ tion appears two more times: "ya trdmulas de roces / y rocfos," and "con el deseo ya." This pushes the action ever

forward and creates as well a sense of expectation. The violence is created by this surging as well as by the

imagery ("hiriente punta," "voces de emocion," "verdes

sierpes"), and a certain amount of tension is also built up by the use of such verbs as "rizar," "afilar" and "enarcar." It is feasible to suppose that the straining quality noted in these eight lines is related to the need of all living things to reach their point of culmination within nature's design. The last line of the poem with its four apparently unrelated nouns ("brios, era., masas, homo") moves from the abstract to the more concrete until the wheat has become what it was destined to become. The wheat is also naturally a traditional symbol for bread and this, in turn, relates to

the idea of the host which symbolizes the body of Christ and

the concept of resurrection. Joaquin Gonzdlez Muela in his book on Jorge Guilldn mentions the evolutionary aspect of many images in Guilldn's poetry and he states that "la

evolucidn y el cambio no son caprichosos, sino siempre

fieles al ser (se evoluciona dentro de las posibilidades del 20/ destino)."— Although there may be more capriciousness in

this early poetry of Miguel Hemdndez, there is also this

tendency for things to evolve as they must within the natu­

ral scheme.

The special problems which arise in the interpretation

and analysis of these poems are generally created through

20/ Joaquin Gonzdlez Muela, La realidad y Jorge Guilldn (Madrid, 1962), p. 16. See also Carlos Bousofto, La poesia de Vicente Aleixandre, op. cit., p. 249 for a discussion of the adverbial "ya" in the poetry of Gongora and Aleixandre. the syntactical construction utilized by the poet and even to a greater degree by the demands which are made on the reader to "unscramble" the multiple metaphors. The publi­ cation of Perito en lunas without the inclusion of the titles of the octaves originally conceived by the poet was undoubtedly intentional. Miguel Hemdndez thus obliges us to focus on the interplay of images without his furnishing a key which might have facilitated our task, but which would also have had the side effect of causing the reader to move out of the poem to look at or think about the object described rather than to concentrate on the imagery it- 21/ self.— The capriciousness mentioned above is also intimately related to the poet's conviction that the natural world could be more totally described and captured anew by means of the most varied words and images being placed in relatively close sequence. The language which Miguel

Hemdndez chose to use in this poetry, however, had to be more than a medium for naming objects with the pristine

21/ There is also clearly manifested here in this system of numbering an imitation on the part of Miguel Hemdndez of the classical Spanish poets who exerted a great influence on him during these formative years. The critics are in general agreement in regard to such influence. 59 clarity sought by Juan Ramdn Jimenez in the following well- known poem:

jInteligencia, dame el nonibre exacto de las cosas.' . . . Que mi palabra sea la cosa misma, creada por mi alma nuevamente. . . .

Although the poet here is also involved in a type of

rediscovery of reality, the total equating of the word with

the object described will not be the mode of expression

utilized by Hemdndez during his neo-gongoristic phase. The

young poet is more concerned with the re-creation of a real

world in which mutability, transformations and boundlessness

are of particular significance and where aspects of everyday

life will usually be characterized by dynamic movement. In

order to create the "deslumbramiento" which might serve to

heighten the volatile and correspondential aspects of nature

conveyed in the poem, Hemdndez makes use of language and

imagery which runs the gamut from the archaic, exotic or

even neologistic to the vocabulary of his daily existence.

In the short eight-verse poems of Perito en lunas, this

range is naturally encompassed within the brief span of a

few lines:

Es demasiado poco maniqui, vivo al viento del mds visible trigo, 60

la cafia de la escoba para tl 2 2 / a la fuerza del pijaro enemigo . . . .— /

Aunque ptigil combato, domo trigo: ya cisne de agua en rolde, a navajazos, yo que sostengo estios con mis brazos, 2 3 / si tu blancura enarco, en oro espigo . . . .—

{Lunas.' Como gobiemas, como bronces, siempre en mudanza, siempre dando vueltas. Cuando me voy a la vereda, entonces / las veo desfilar, libres, esbeltas . . . .—

A long list of similar examples could be formulated from this collection of poems which would clearly indicate the linguistic and imagistic techniques which we are attempting to explore here. From the poetry already cited in this section, it should be fairly apparent how the poet moves in and out of the plane of reality with certain abruptness. The most significant result of this form of expression is a constant framing of the multiple perspec­ tives. It will be noted that the metaphoric construction

"cisne de agua en rolde," slightly reminiscent of Garcilaso in its idyllic quality and the oddly archaic "en rolde," becomes vitalized (while retaining much of its initial

22/ Perito en lunas, XIX, "Espantapdjaros," OC, p. 67.

23/ Ibid., XXII, "Panadero," OC, pp. 67-68.

24/ Ibid., XXIX, 1'Gitanas," OC, p. 70. 61 otherworldliness) by the violence of the short and abrupt

"a navajazos” which follows immediately. The second Image in the sequence becomes, in turn, even more explosive as a result of the contrast with the preceding one and thus both 25/ take on a new dimension within the line.— There is more involved here, I believe, than what Cleanth Brooks and other

New Critics consider to be the poet*s proclivity for dis­ ruptiveness and to have the terms within a poem continually modify each other. I feel that the framing of the images is equally significant and this technique is especially appli­ cable to the poems which we are examining here. Such a principle is not in opposition to the often discussed para­ doxical quality of poetic expression, but it is merely another way of viewing this concept so that the individual

25/ One might wonder why the second image is not somehow subdued by the first as well. The only explanation which occurs to me is that the extreme violence of the brief and "cutting image," placed at the end of the line and in a rhyming position, (set off by commas due to the inverted syntax) all cause it to exert more influence than it receives. In "Gitanas," however, the rather prosaic "Cuando me voy a la vereda" is not only the description of the peaceful stroll (although it is also that), but the action is speeded up by the swirling movement of the preceding "siempre en mudanza, siempre dando vueltas" and the following "las veo des- filar, libres, esbeltas." In the latter example there is not the imbalance mentioned above and the framing technique is more obvious. 62 metaphors or Images stand out in sharper relief while at the

same time often having a mutual effect on each other. The more clearly they are perceived in their individuality, the

greater the possibility of this interplay. In the case of

Miguel Hemdndez, this framing may become quite complex and

go beyond one line of verse:

Esta blanca y comuda sofiolencia con la cabeza de otra en lo postrero, ddcil, mds que a la honda, a la paciencia, tomaluna de mdsica y sendero. . . . 26/

I note the basic structure of these four lines to be

that of an outer convoluted frame which contains within it

a smaller and more linear one with the latter enclosing an

identifiable reality. The first and fourth verses almost

conqpletely remove us from the cold typicality of a scene which evidently depicts a single line of slow-moving sheep

ambulating along a country road. This is to say that the

setting described by fTblanca y comuda sofiolencia" and

"tomaluna de mdsica y sendero" is primarily unreal although

the individual words "comuda" and "sendero" are like mini­

atures of reality framed by the conceptual imagery which in

the first line both precedes and follows the word, and in

the second merely precedes it (the above fragment does not

26/ Ibid., XXVI, "Oveja," OC, p. 69 indicate that the final word "sendero" is followed by ellip­ ses which also constitute a type of vague enclosure). The

"blanca sofiolencia" and the "tomaluna de mdsica" possess a certain formless yet reflective quality that calls to mind the gilt frame which inspired one of Ortega y Gasset's most poetic essays, Meditacidn del marco. Ortega, in his insistence on the hermetic quality of the work of art, emphasizes the reflections which bounce off the "marco dorado" and thus convert it into a type of "espectro sin materia" or neuter object. Although for Ortega y Gasset, the framing serves primarily to keep reality outside the work of art, in the four lines of verse which we are ana­ lyzing here, the world of reality is only partially left outside the frame and it appears within the conceptual lim­ its created by the poet. The principle which is brought into play in this poetry, however, is nonetheless similar to the Ortegan concept even though here it may be func­ tioning somewhat in reverse. What is contained within the larger frame is more sharply conveyed since, although we may perfunctorily examine the outer enclosure for its own inter­

esting qualities, we are obliged to quickly pass over the reflections created by the imagery since such reflections do not require or even allow for deep penetration. If one dwells too long on the opening line of the poem, it tends to lose substance and begins to dissolve. The hard core of these four verses on which our attention becomes fixed begins with the second verse, "con la cabeza de otra en lo postrero" and we are projected into a more banal scene which startles by the suddenness of its appearance. But now, at least, we know where we are. The poet's use of the rather archaic "lo postrero" is, of course, in sharp contrast to the more prosaic "cabeza" which precedes it and there is comic irony in this juxtaposition which is similar to the effect noted in the "comuda-sofiolencia" relationship of the first line. (Reality must be almost immediately counter^ balanced by an aspect removed from reality in this conceptual poetry of Miguel Hemdndez. This is humorous and playfully violent at the same time.) The third line expresses a characteristic of the animal ("ddcil") w h ic h has been idealized (or at least partially removed from the real world), but with the introduction of the word "honda," we are back again in the reality of the shepherd and his trade. The slingshot is contained within the frame of

"(ddcil) a la paciencia" and this metaphor removes us abruptly from the banality and potential violence of such a reality. 65

The double perspective Is thus created in a fairly com­ plex system of boxes (images) within boxes and the dra- maticality of the poetic expression is heightened as a result of this structure. The contrastive images, self- contained as they are, have the general effect of conveying the idea of a complex relationship and, at the same time, of expressing a "thisness" and "hereness" through the inner

imagery which is in direct opposition to the "thereness" or

"thatness" established by the imagery present in what I have

called the reflective frames. In this analysis, I have con­

centrated on the first four lines of this octave since the

second half of this poem is almost totally conceptual and

is, in fact, purely reflective in the sense in which we have

attempted to define this term. The intricate framing struc­

ture has given way to the poet's attempt to develop and maintain the initial image of "blanca sofiolencia" in a style

reminiscent of Garcilaso (i.e., "amor salicio"). The imme­

diacy or "thisness" of the scene has disappeared and in

spite of the few striking images which are most definitely

Hemandian in their originality and contrastive force ("un

irbol en cuclillas," "un madero lanar"), this second half is

less interesting for itself. It does serve, however, to 66 show the poet's mimetic tendencies during this early period:

Ya valle de almidtSn en la eminencia de un drbol en cuclillas, un madero lanar, de amor sallicio (sic), galatea ordefia en porcelana cuando albea.

It may be concluded from this fragmentation of the poem that Miguel Hemdndez is most successful in the early poetry when he creates this sliding movement in and out of reality by means of dynamic, expressive and highly contrastive imagery. The mobility which often stems from the interplay of images and by the framing technique which has been men­ tioned gives the poetry a vital quality and causes it to be more than a mere game of words or syntactical juxtapositions.

The second section of the above octave is inferior to the first primarily because there is less of this movement in the last four lines and we find ourselves in a somewhat vapid, static realm which is almost all reflections and where there are only the slightest traces of reality present.

But, in general, the neo-gongoristic poetry of Miguel

Hemdndez is a type of preliminary statement on the myriad possibilities inherent in nature and in poetic expression.

There is a sense of an awakening and a feeling of wonderment on the part of the poet which are expressed through language and syntax that is often as startling and explosive as a 67

sudden discovery. Miguel Hemdndez here has almost inno­ cently stepped, as Wallace Stevens puts it, "barefoot into 27/ reality. This poetry presents the world as if it were being viewed for the first time by the speaker and yet the poet seems to be trying through imagery and structure to

express simultaneously the genesis of this world and a vague

awareness that it has potentially existed prior to his dis­

covery of it. The multiplicity of the natural world borders

on the chaotic and the surging power of natural phenomena

requires for its description a type of language which must

be stretched to the point of maximum tension. The octaves

in Perito en lunas are, in effect, "pdrrafos de la mds

hiriente punta" which connote the way in which the force of

nature constantly wounds the poet's sensibility. The many

images which have a piercing quality emphasize this general

mood of thrust and pain: "la luz. . . en ristre" (II),

"bisectora de cero sobre cero" (X), "domo trigo. . . a

navajazos" (XXII), "Tu blancor de seis filos" (XXV), "Frfa

prolongacidn, colmillos incluso, / de sus venas si instables

ya, de acero" (XXXVII), "su bayoneta, aunque incurriendo en

lanza, / en vano con sus filos se concita" (XLI1).

27/ "Large Red Man Reading," The Collected Poems (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1954), p. 4^3. Concha Zardoya (op. cit.. p. 53) makes mention of "un anhelo de fusion pantefsta" in this early collection of

Miguel Hemdndez. This would, seem to be a very apt expres­ sion to describe what does occur in many of these octaves, but the key word is "anhelo" rather than "fusion," since the latter is very rarely attained in the poems themselves. In fact, the desire is often expressed by the use of contras­ tive imagery which establishes first a state of confusion and then leads to a type of diffusion in nature. There is basically an opening up of nature's complexities rather than a true synthesis of its diverse elements in Perito en lunas.

The attainment of total fusion would have lessened the straining quality of this poetry and would have also con­ stituted a disruption of what Ricardo Gulldn terms the

"ininterrumpido ciclo de creacidn" as it is described in 28/ these poems.— An essential characteristic of these short works is one of a constant "becoming" (devenir) and the violence inherent in such a process is seen by the poet as an acceptable part of creation.

28/ Ricardo GullcSn, "El rayo de Miguel," Sue, No. 294 (1965), p. 91. 69

In an earlier poem, published prior to the publication 29 / of Perito en lunas,— Miguel Hemdndez had furnished a statement which might serve as a type of guide to the reading of the forty-two octaves which comprise this collec­ tion. Although less conceptual in structure and imagery, it will be noted that in this long poem there exist the same contrasts of light-dark, "maravilla-asombro" and fear- ecstasy which we have already noted in the poetry analyzed above. The poet wishes us to observe not only a static portrait of the natural world, but also to feel the violence

inherent in its becoming:

{Contemplad mi tierra.. . Mdgicos jar dines de belleza henchidos, verdes la circundan; musicas la ofrecen plumeos clarines; flores, resplandores y aromas la inundan.

Tipicos paseos no en silencios parcos; rotos paredones con enredaderas de azulados cdlices y con combos arcos hechos con los brazos de drabes palmeras.

Liricas acequias que el r£o brillante lanza por ocultos ldbregos caminos a la abierta huerta, mientras retumbante cae en cascades y hace retronar mo linos.

29/ This poem was first published in Destellos, No. 1, Orihuela, November 15, 1930, and is not included in the Obras Completas of Losada. It appears in Claude Couffon, Orihuela et Miguel Hemdndez. Centre de Recherches de 1*Institute d*Etudes Hispaniques, Paris, 1963, pp. 97-99. The entire poem may be found on p.163 of the Appendix to this study. 70

Cielo tan hermoso que de terciopelo, de cristales limpidos y turqui parece; cielo-maravilla, cielo-asombro, cielo que como ascua viva de oro resplandece.

Sol de gloria y triunfo, sol soberanos llamarazos igneos que mirar aterra, y ensoftante ambiente... jContemplad humanos.1 |Ah£ teneis el cuadro...! jContemplad mi tterra.' CHAPTER III

IMPERSONAL AND THREATENING VIOLENCE

71 Alto soy de mirar a las palmeras, rudo de convlvlr con las montaftas. . . Yo me vl bajo y blando en las aceras de una cludad espldndlda de araflas. Diflciles barrancos de escaleras, calladas cataratas de ascensores, jque lmpresldn de vacfo.1, ocupaban el puesto de mis flores, los alres de mis alres y mi r£o.

Yo vi lo mds notable de lo m£o llevado del demonio, y Dios ausente. Yo te tuve en el lejos del olvido, aldea, huerto, fuente en que me vi al descuido: huerto, donde me halld la mejor vida, aldea, donde al aire y libremente, en una paz larga y tendida. Pero volv£ en seguida mi atencidn a las puras existencias de mi retiro hacia mi ausencia atento, y todas sus ausencias me llenaron de luz el pensamiento.

Iba mi pie sin tierra, jqud tormento, vacilando en la cera de los pisos, con tin temor continuo, un sobresalto, que aumentaban los timbres, los avisos, las alarmas, los honfores, y el asfalto. {Alto?, |Alto?, iAlto.1, {Alto.1 I Or den.', jOrden.1 jQud altiva imposicidn del orden una mano, un color, un sonido.1 Mi cualidad visiva, jay.', perdia el sentido. Topado por mil senos, embestido por mis de mil peligros, tentaciones, mecdnicas jaur£as, me segulan lujurias y claxones, deseos y tranvfas.

From "El silbo de afirmacidn en la aldea"

72 CHAPTER III

"So, then people do come here In order to live; I would sooner have thought one died here. 11

Rainer Marla Rilke (The Notebooks of Malte Laurid Brigge)

It is significant that the explosive and impersonal violence which is to reach its fullest expression in El viento del pueblo and El hombre acecha, should first appear in the poet's early description of his experiences in

Madrid. The turbulence mixed with a feeling of dread origi­ nating from an unfamiliar and even indeterminate source which Miguel Hernandez is to express later in harsh bursts of metallic and scabrous imagery in the poetry of the war years, is clearly noted in the poem, "El silbo de afirmacidn en la aldea" (PC, pp. 182-187) composed during the period from 1933 to 1934. This is one of the few extensive poems written by Hernandez after the publication of Perito en lunas and works of such length are found again only in the two later collections mentioned above. The highly condensed structural form and concentrated imagery of the earlier

73 poetry gives way here to a lengthy personal diatribe directed against the confusion and obliterating tendencies felt by the poet to be present in the city. In the second (and shorter) section of this poem, this initial reaction is modified and contrasted by means of a panegyric on life in the village from which he looks back and almost relives the past experience. This other mood is glimpsed in the second stanza of the poem and interspersed throughout the first part, but it is not really developed until the fourteenth stanza. This is a personal poem, somewhat Wordsworthian in its tone and view of nature and it would seem that for a venting of pent-up emotions in an outburst of this sort,

Miguel Hemrfndez is not willing to use a constraining formal structure which might tend to limit the flow of both invec­ tive and praise.

The Horatian "Beatus ille" theme utilized by many authors of the Spanish Golden Age and exemplified particu­ larly in the Vida retirada of Fray Luis de Le<5n ("Qu£ descansada vida / la del que huye el mundanal ruido. . . "), is obviously the inspiration for the Hernandez poem.— ^

1/ Concha Zardoya, oj>. cit., p. 57, has indicated that the poet was also influenced in the "Silbos," particularly in the title of the collection El silbo vulnerado (1934), by San Juan de la Cruz and the latter*s "CAntico espiritual. 11 75

However, when the subject of the city is taken up by many poets of the Romantic and subsequent periods, the sense of horror which the poet feels when confronted with the stifling ambiance of the teeming metropolis is often expressed with greater intensity than the peacefulness and tranquility of the pastoral life, in spite of the seeming intention to glorify the latter mode of existence. It is as if the natural world could receive its highest praise

through a close and scathing description of its opposite.

Since the poet is displaced and threatened by the city, he,

in turn, employs destructive imagery to attack what he feels

to be causing his sense of disorientation. As a result, by giving full expression to his emotions, he has obliterated

temporarily that which was threatening to obliterate him.

Garcia Lorca's El poeta en Nueva York immediately comes to mind in this regard, but an earlier manifestation of this

sense of oppression and threat to the individual personality may be noted in a work outside the area of Spanish litera­

ture and composed by a poet whose name has already been

mentioned in relation to the poem which we are discussing

here. In Book Seven ("Residence in London") of The Prelude.

William Wordsworth describes an experience which is similar

to that of Miguel Hemdndez in Madrid and the English 76

Romantic poet, whose works often deal with the responsive- 2/ ness of Nature?— describes the confusion and oppressive atmosphere of the city most powerfully when he depicts an activity common to country life (although traditionally held in London), the St. Bartholomew Fair, which incongruously takes place in the heart of the city:

Oh blank confusion! true epitome Of what the might City is herself, To thousands upon thousands of her sons, Living amid the same perpetual whirl Of trivial objects, melted and reduced To one identity, by differences That have no law, no meaning, and no end— Oppression, under which even highest minds Must labour, whence the strongest are not free.

The point of reference is a country-type fair and yet 3/ here it becomes the epitome of life in the city.— As in the Miguel Hernandez poem, the sense of displacement is strengthened by a type of violent transplanting of one world into another and what is implied in the above lines is that outside the "mighty City" there are laws, individual iden­ tities, non-triviality of objects and a meaning in the

2/ See Geoffrey H. Hartman, The Unmediated Vision (New York, 1966), Chapter I. 3/ In the following Book Eight, Wordsworth lovingly degcr^efi a rustic fair where "gaiety and cheerfulness 77 4/ general scheme of things.— 1 hope to be able to show how

Herndndez in his poem imposes natural imagery on the city

and then either freezes or distorts the images in such a way

as to make the senseless movement everywhere appear to be a

violation of nature. Before embarking on a closer look at

the work, however, it might be interesting to turn to

another Spanish poet of the twentieth century, Ddmaso

Alonso, whose depiction of Madrid in nightmarish and sur­

realistic terms is given greater intensity by the inclusion

of images which relate to a natural world existing beyond

the confines of the city. In the short poem "Insoinnio" from

the collection Hijos de la ira (1944), Alonso presents us

first with a city which is a huge "pudridero" or fermenting

chamber (''Madrid es una ciudad de mds de un milldn de

4/ W. H. Auden in his discussion of the theme of the sea in Romantic literature has called the city "The Mechanized Desert" and makes mention of a Charles Addams cartoon which he sees as illustrating the urban situation in which individuality is lost. The cartoon "shows a residential street in New York. Along the pavement a motionless line of spectators is staring at a little man with an umbrella engaged in a life-and- death struggle with a large octopus which has emerged from a manhole in the middle of the street. Behind the crowd two men with brief-cases are walking along without bothering to turn their heads and one is saying to the other: 'It doesn't take much to collect a crowd in New York.'" This quote is from W. H. Auden, The Enchafed Flood (New York, 1950), p. 32. 78 caddveres /segun las tiltimas estadfsticas/") where the poet

In his niche has been putrifying during his lifetime there.

To express a desire to be free from this hideous enclosure, the speaker mentions a series of actions performed by him and that seem to equate him with natural forces or creatures which, in their frustration, are trying to break out of the confines which imprison them:

Y paso largas horas gimiendo como el huracdn, ladrando como un perro enfurecido, fluyendo como la leche de la ubre caliente de una gran vaca amarilla.

The hurricane, the maddened dog, the flowing milk are all straining to be let loose and they all connote a craving for an open space which is not available in the crowded landscape of the city-cemetery. The unnatural conditions of the metropolis itself and man's place there is visually strengthened by the image at the end of line of the farm animal "par excellence," but one whose color, in this case,

is all wrong. After a number of indirect questions made to

God about the putrefaction in the city and elsewhere in the world, the poet in his search for natural laws and meaning,

asks the divinity "point blank" just what plan could be behind it all:

Dime, $qud huerto quieres abonar con nuestra podredumbre? iTemes que se te sequen los grandes rosales del dia, las tristes azucenas letales de tus noches?

The only possible explanation Implied in these ques­ tions is one governed by natural laws and the incongruity becomes apparent when we note that in the poet's almost facetious questioning, the putrefaction could only serve to fertilize an orchard, rose bushes or lilies. Such, after all, would be in accordance with Nature's plan. These interrogations are filled with bitterness and an awareness of the impossibility of a satisfactory or even comforting answer, but it is important to see how the nature imagery functions in a way which makes the horror more total. Death and decay are everywhere in this vision: from the orchard to be fertilized, to the delicate roses whose existence is brief (one day) and finally, to the lethal, nightblooming lilies.

After this lengthy introduction, which hopefully has been able to place the poet Miguel Herndndez within the framework of traditional themes and modern poetic techniques, we may look more closely at "El silbo de afirmacidn en la aldea." The first two lines of the opening stanza of this poem suggest the poet's natural surroundings and he describes himself in a manner which is an affirmation of 80 his strength and superior bearing. The palm trees (which we have noted before in Perito en lunas) and the mountains of his native village have restored him to his previous state so that he can now look back on the dwarfing experience in

Madrid. The short but unequivocal statement of his vigour and brute strength precedes the description of his disinte­ gration, and this affirmation is necessary before the poet can "safely*1 and without loss of face offer a portrait which at times shows him to be an object (even a "trivial object") in the city at the mercy of impersonal and threatening forces. But this restoration is evident only in the fol­ lowing lines. His sense of place had been threatened in the city (and the memory of it still constitutes a threat), and this becomes apparent after the ellipses and through the change of tense of the third line. The "alto" and "rudo" of the present is transformed into the "bajo" and "blando" of the past and it is significant to observe how Hemdndez has compressed the first two verses into one by including the last two adjectives, with their suggestion of smallness and weakness, in the same line. This reinforces the destructive and reductive aspect of the poet's experience amidst the "aceras" of Madrid. 81

After the initial statement of the speaker's condition, either as he sees It or wishes It to be, the remaining por­ tion of the stanza rapidly proceeds to break down the original affirmation. And yet, in the poet's desire to recapture (thus to relive and even partially to destroy) the painful period of his residence in Madrid, he has utilized images of nature which are bi-membered and self-contradicting to describe the unnatural aspects of city life. Before reaching the point of total immersion and involvement in this past experience and to convey the feeling of dread which he recalls, Hernandez employs familiar images relating to the "now" of his vantage point ("arafias," "barrancos,"

"cataratas") and freezes them into static and almost life­ less metaphors. His immediate inspiration still seems to stem from the natural surroundings of his village and memory is returning slowly and with some difficulty, so that he offers us "una ciudad espl^ndida de arafias ("arafias" being conceptually conceived here as spiders and chandeliers),

"barrancos de escaleras" and "calladas cataratas de ascensores." The impression of emptiness— of a void— which all this conjures up in the poet's imagination is now filled with flowers and perfumed air ("los aires de mis aires"), both of which, together with the river, are his possessions. The hollowness felt to be there in the city was created by the absence of what the speaker could feel belonged to him.

In fact, the first person singular possessive in its adjec­ tival and pronominal forms is used extensively In the second stanza and later in the poem when Hemdndez describes the peace and revitalizing existence of his village. But first, as the poem progresses steadily toward the hallucinatory description of the city and its cacophonic iioises, this possessive will be used only to refer to the speaker's senses or parts of his body ("mi pie," "mi cualidad visiva") which were being mutilated by the new, unpossessed sur­ roundings that had a suffocating effect on him. The poet's use of the possessive pronoun with a noun object which is a part of the body ("pidfy, a construction which is contrary to common usage in Spanish, also serves to emphasize the sense of disorientation, as if the speaker must now convince him­ self that his own foot actually belongs to him. What he saw and heard acted on him, things were done to him ("Topado por mil senos, embestido/ por mds de mil peligros, tentaciones,/ mecdnicas jaurias,/ me seguian lujurias y claxones,/ deseos y tranvfas.") and by the fourth stanza, he has disappeared temporarily but completely in the confusion: {Cudnto labio de pilrpuras teatrales, exageradamente pecadores.' 83

ICudnto vocabulario de cristales, al frenesi llevando los colores en una pugna, en una competencia de originalidad y de excelencia! ]Qud confusidn! jBabel de las babeles.' {Gran ciudad.': {Gran demontre.': {Gran pufieta.': y su desequilibrio en bicicleta.'

The poem has been rapidly building up to this moment in which the speaker, frustrated and in a state of constant fear ("con un temor continuo, un sobresalto"), gives free rein to the natural instinct to "get back" at the impersonal city by means of the only effective weapon he possesses: his personalized language. His protective shield and his lance are forged with epithets which are meant to cut through the artificiality of this urban scenet, and opposed to the city dwellers' "vocabulario de cristales," which connotes a brittle hollowness of false reflections (while at the same time bringing to mind the absent crystaline waters of a river or the sea), he offers the vituperative language of one man. This is primarily a counterforce to the forces of destruction. Starting with a sarcastic affirmation of the city's view of itself, he continues with two severe verbal blows, the last of which is pure obscenity:

{Gran ciudad.': {Gran demontre.': {Gran pufieta.' and immediately after this outburst, the poet presents us with an image of immanent fall, of a precarious teetering on the brink of destruction:

jy su desequilibrio en bicicleta.1

Again we note the poet's penchant for incongruity which serves to startle with its unexpectedness, but here in the city the bicycle is both out of place and still a familiar form of primitive locomotion. The city reduces man by its impersonality ("{Ay, c6 mo empequeflece/ andar metido en esta muchedumbre.'") and the poet in turn reduces the city by having its equilibrium held in balance on a two-wheeled, non-automated vehicle, one in which man and machine are intimately related. In the following three stanzas, the violence of the city is seen clearly to be caused by the fact that nothing there is in accord with Nature's plan; even the vices are not vicious enough, since they are

"desdentados" as are the old ladies there who practice them:

Los vicios desdentados, las ancianas echdndose en las camas rosicleres, infamia de las canas, y aim buscando sin tuetano placeres.

Arboles, como locos, enjaulados: alamedas, jardines para destuetanarse el mundo; y lados de creacidn ultrajada por orines.

Huele el macho a jazmines, y menos lo que es todo parece, la hembra oliendo a cuadra y podredumbre. The defilement becomes progressively more total and complete until with the marrow or substance gone out of things, even the basic masculine and feminine distinctions are blurred. The procreative female in this unnatural envi­ ronment smells rather of decay since this is an atmosphere of death and corrupt ion, not of life. The natural objects to be found, as well as the human inhabitants of this world, are all untrue to their condition and the trees themselves are locked in, surrounded by their jail-like protective fences. The gardens and parks, enclosed as they are, do not receive strength and surging energy from their contact with the soil as did the palm tree in Perito en lunas. They too are destructive, even parasitic, and they appear to be feeding off the marrow of the universe. The trees are as

if maddened by all this perversion and it is natural that the speaker, later in the poem, identifies himself with a tree as he also feels himself to be enchained and threatened by his surroundings ("es la persona mia,/ como el drbol, un

triste anacronismo.").

There is much in this poem which has biblical overtones

and Miguel Herndndez is partially following in the tradition

of the ascetics who painted the most horrendous of pictures

to depict the wages of sin and debauchery and thus make them less appealing to the potential sinner. This concept, however, as it was visually portrayed by such painters as

Bosch and Brueghel was naturally somewhat didactic in tone.

In the case of the Miguel Hemdndez poem, the omnipresence of sin is tinged with a personal fear on the part of the speaker as he is confronted with unknown forces in an unfamiliar world. The apocalyptic vision has as its contra­ puntal accompaniment the verbal defensive blows of the poet-speaker as he tries to restore within the poem a state of balance between the impersonal assailant and the vic- 5/ tim.—5 The praise of the simple pastoral life is not sufficient, at least at the beginning of the poem, to accom­ plish this, since one form of existence is too far removed from the other. As a result, the poet brings forth his partial repertory of harsh-sounding, coarse words which are like death blows directed at the city. Obscenity is, in a way, a type of verbal violence, a violation of language, which is used here to counteract the violation of nature as

5/ This leads to a type of aggressiveness of expression which is common to much of the literature of the twen­ tieth century. In J. M. Cohen, Poetry of This Age (London, 1960), pp. 117-149, the author makes mention of the "shock treatment" which was recommended as a poetic device in the Futuristic Manifesto of 1909: "No work can be a masterpiece that has not an aggressive character." (p. 128) 87 it is witnessed in the city. Obscenity can also be con­ sidered as frustration verbalized and as such it is often employed in an attempt to lower the prestige of the source of this frustration.

One of the pivotal stanzas of this long poem (Stanza

1 1 ) constitutes an "all-out" effort by the poet to wipe out the threatening forces by pinpointing four features of the city and then, after reinforcing their existence by stating their names abruptly and without adjectival adornment, he proceeds to break them down and leave them in ruins so that he may return to a description of his world and his orchard.

The skyscrapers are destroyed by renaming them in an obscene fashion and then viewing them as an affront to God. The remaining urban features--elevators, subway and asphalt--are handled somewhat differently:

{Rascacielos!: {Qud risa.': jRa sea leches.1 {Qud presunci^n los manda hasta el retiro de Dios.' £Cu£ndo seri, Sefior, que eches tanta soberbia abajo de un suspiro? jAscensores.': |qud rabia! A ver, £cudl sube a la talla de un monte y sobrepasa el perfil de una nube, o el cardo, que, de mistico, se abrasa en la serrana gracia de la altura? {Metro.': jqud noche oscura para el suicidio del que desespera.': jqud subterrenea y vasta gusanera, donde se cata y zumba la labor y el secreto de la tumba.' 88

jAsfalto!: jqud impiedad para mi plants.' |Ay, qud de menos echa el tacto de mi pie mundos de arcilla cuyo contacto imanta paisajes de cosecha, caricias y tropiezos de semilla!

As in other sections of this poem, we note here what

Frederick J. Hoffman has brilliantly described and developed 6/ under the heading of "the assailant as landscape,"— in which the various features of a particular scene strongly

suggest hostility. But in this stanza we may also see the

biblical theme of "vanitas vanitatum" introduced to further

lower the prestige of the city. The movement goes in both

an upward and downward direction, but what ultimately

results here is a leveling action. The skyscrapers can be

destroyed by a sigh from God and the heights reached by the

elevators are dwarfed by the comparison made with the moun­

tain and the cloud. The mystic union suggested by the

burning thistle is immediately contrasted with the subway

and by the introduction of another mystical idea of "la

noche oscura," but this dark tunnel is a temptation for the

suicidal not for the mystic, and it is little more than a

6/ Frederick J. Hoffman, op. cit., p. 181. See also fn. 7 to Ch. II of this study. 89 premonition of the putrefaction of the tomb. — ^ Starting from the highest point in the urban landscape and rapidly descending to the nadir, the poet takes another upward glance at the level where human existence ordinarily estab­ lishes itself and generally feels most comfortably at home.

However, here even the ground on which the poet walks is hostile and causes him pain. There is no place in this vain, hellish, impersonal landscape for the protagonist; there are no relationships, spacial or personal, in the city where, as the poet states in the next stanza, "es pormayor la vida como el vicio. 11

It is not the threat of death which creates the feeling of violence and disorder in this poem, but rather the threat of extinction. In the second section of this "silbo," a long list of features of village life is presented, and among the small, intimate things which attract the speaker in such a setting there appears death:

Aqu£ la vida es pormenor: hormiga, muerte, carifto, pena,

7/ The short poem by Ezra Pound, "In a Station of the Metro" succinctly describes the unnatural and eerie quality of the subway: The apparition of these faces in the crowd: Petals on a wet, black bough. This poem is quoted by Paul Genestier in The Poet and the Machine (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1961), p. 60. 90

piedra, horizonte, rfo, luz, espiga, vidrio, surco y arena.

Just as all the other Items mentioned here, death Is some­ thing almost visible in this atmosphere of the village. All the images except those in the second line ("muerte, carifio, pena") are visual ones and, as a result, even these three seem to possess the same quality as the rest. They are familiar and therefore expected elements of the ambiance, and as such they are welcomed without fear. The naming of these component parts of the poet's existence is realized in this second phase of the poem with great emotional control and tranquility. There are few exclamations and, more important, there is no destructive renaming of objects since there is no need to re-establish the balance between unequal com­ batants as in the urban situation. In fact, the fear of the city can now be expressed openly and in non-belligerent terms since once he is outside of its orbit, the speaker no longer needs to rage against such a fear stemming from unknown or threatening forces. In retrospect, it was the entire city which gave rise to this emotion and now the poet does not have to wage a counterattack against specific objects as a form of self-defense:

Haciendo el hortelano, hoy en este solaz de regadio 91

de ml huerto me quedo. No quiero rads ciudad, que me reduce su visidn, y su mundo me da mledo.

The violence has gone out of the poetic expression here and this is a relatively rare phenomenon In the early poetry of Miguel Hernandez. As has already been noted in this study, poetic expression often seems to be equated in the case of Herndndez with violent expression of one kind or another and at the very end of this particular poem, we find that the poet's voice becomes silent when there no longer exists any need for him to cry out in wonder, fear or anger:

Lo que haya de venir, aqu£ lo espero cultivando el romero y la pobreza. Aquf de nuevo empieza el orden, se reanuda el reposo, por yerros alterado, mi vida humilde, y por humilde muda. Y Dios dird que estd siempre callado.

When the violent emotions are spent, the voice of the poet first becomes muted and then totally silenced. Order and tranquility rather than the humbleness of his condition give rise to the poet's muteness. The voiceless God here is one who reigns over a world that is in peace and in a state of balanced equilibrium. Once again we are made aware of the need for a powerful propelling force behind the poetic expression and it is as if the relaxing of the tension which appeared in the first section of this poem leads to the 92 silencing of what Miguel Hernandez might have considered during this period to have been his authentic poetic voice.

The restrained or internalized violence will later become the essential aspect of his poetry, but first Miguel

Herndndez will pass through a violently extroverted period of creativity during the time when he is actively engaged both as a man with a cause and as a poet in the Spanish

Civil War.

This long and exceedingly bloody struggle has been 8/ called "A Poets' War” by one author;— ' and F. J. Hoffman speaks of Spain's Civil War as one in which the authors and poets who tried to describe in literary form what they saw to be happening, gave expression to the full "shock of dis­ covering that men, however nobly inspired or deeply 9/ committed, cannot fight machines."— This reaction may

8 / Hugh D. Ford, A Poets' War; British Poets and the Spanish Civil War (Philadelphia, 1965). The question of the poet's identification with his audience or with the reader during this period is stressed by the author and the point is of interest here since we have already made mention of the important relationship between the poet and "pueblo" in the case of Miguel Herndndez: "The common ground between poet and reader had never been so great, or so fertile. If poets were ever to draw closer to their audience, in a unity based on shared experience, the Spanish war seemed made for the occa­ sion." (p. 2 0 ) 9/ Hoffman, op. cit., p. 230. Mr. Hoffman here is para­ phrasing from Alien Guttman, The Wound in the Heart: America and the Spanish Civil Wat (Glencbe. Illinois. Free Press, 1962). 93 be noted in the Hernandez poem "Recoged esta voz" (Vlento del pueblo, PC, p. 282), a work which turns out to be a strange mixture of battle hymn, propaganda for the loyalist cause directed to the world-at-large and, most important, a personal, subjective statement of the poet's identification with the wounded and suffering. All of Spain is bathed in blood and in the first part of this poem, death is not pre­ sented as either within Nature's scheme or even as a glorious end to be desired for the success of a cause:

El llanto que por valles y balcones se vierte, en las piedras diluvia y en las piedras trabaja, y no hay espacio para tanta muerte, y no hay madera para tanta caja. . . .

Sangre, sangre por drboles y suelos, sangre por aguas, sangre por paredes, y un temor de que Espafia se desplome del peso de la sangre que moja entra sus redes hasta el pan que se come.

Recoged este viento, naciones, hombres, mundos, que parte de las bocas de conmovido aliento y de los hospitales moribundos. . . .

Although not all of the poems in this collection par­ take of this mood of heavy desperation and subdued horror

(the weight of the blood, for example, is brought home by obsessive reiteration and the use of the verb "desplomar")

in which violence has gone too far to allow for further violent outcry on the part of the poet, Concha Zardoya is 94 partially correct in assessing this book as one in which we may note the beginnings of the style which is to character­ ize the last phase of the poetic expression of Miguel

Herndndez^^, a style where the theme of violence is still present but in which it is often expressed in non-violent terms. Here, as later in the poems of the Cancionero v romancero de ausencias, language and syntax are not consist­ ently "violated" to serve both as a description of and counterforce to a violent situation, a technique which we have already noted in "El silbo de afirmacidn en la aldea."

It is somewhat incongruous that these poems which have been pejoratively designated as "circumstantial poetry" and which were, it is true, written for the most part from the front

lines and during the heat of battle, should often show this new tendency of the poet to restrain his earlier affinity

for overtly violent expression. Neither Juan Guerrero

10/ "La guerra de EspafSa, con toda su seriedad y su tragedia, sirve inicialmente de fuerza depuradora, de decantador a travds del cual la inspiracidn podtica de Miguel Hemdndez se filtra de toda vana retdrica." (Zardoya, o£. cit., p. 72) 11/ Zamora (op. cit., p. 279) nor Guillermo de Torre— in their comments on Viento del pueblo fully recognize this new inwardness in many of the poems included in this collection, but it is most certainly present. It is also true, however, that not all of the poetry composed during these war years possesses this quality and there are many examples of the earlier syntactical techniques, of the former use of obscenity arising out of frustration and even of a new mode of expression for Miguel Herndndez which takes the form of rather hollow political poeticizing.

To return briefly to the topic of men versus machines

in order to see how this theme is handled by Herndndez in

11/ Guillermo de Torre, La metamorfosis de Proteo (Buenos Aires, 1956): "Contrariamente a lo que piensan y han escrito a1 gunos apologistas sectarios, predispuestos a asimilarse todo, no creemos que Miguel Herndndez alcanzara su verdadero clima podtico en la guerra. La soportd, supo conllevarla con hombria, perono extrajo de ella sus me jores notas, sus mds reveladoras poesias." (p. 102) Although there may be an uneven quality present in much of the poetry of the war years, it would seem that Miss Zardoya's statement has greater critical value. The true poetic climate for the devel­ opment of a poet is generally the one in which he finds himself. The poetry which followed this period and which receives high praise from this author, had its beginnings during the war and undoubtedly received its general tone from the wartime experience of Miguel Herndndez. 96

the poem under consideration, Part I is ostensibly a plea

for help from any source (note the desperate quality of the

third word in the line quoted above, "naciones, hombres, mundos" and its implosive position in the triad). The bombing planes constitute the impersonal force and they

cannot be appeased in their unnatural desire to separate

mothers from their children. These machines do not seem to

be either man-made or man-operated, but they are indeed voracious and cannot be stopped while a people die:

bajo los implacables aeroplanos que arrebatan terrible, terrible, ignominiosa, diariamente, a las madres los hijos de las manos. . . .

Un porvenir de polvo avecina, se avecina un suceso en que no quedard ninguna cosa: ni piedra sobre piedra ni hueso sobre hueso. . . .

In spite of the_apparent propagandists purpose of this

first part of the poem, it turns out to be more of a "low

key" description of a tragically unequal battle in which

indiscriminate devastation has assumed almost universal

proportions. It is a future and an event yet to come which

will affect all mankind, since Spain has already become a

cemetery:

Espafla no es Espafia, que es una inmensa fosa, que es un gran cementerio rojo y bombardeado. 97

The poet's muted voice stems from the awareness of and need to convey the depth of this tragedy as well as the pervasive violence. As a result, there is less pointing to individu­ alized items in the landscape (except for the death-dealing machinery), and instead we note how the poet dwells on bodily

images which are presented in a surrealistically distorted

fashion that conveys the pain and horror of the situation:

Abierto estoy, mirad, como una herida. . . .

Caravanas de cuerpos abatidos. Todo vendajes, penas y pafiuelos. . . .

Serd la tierra un denso corazdn desolado. . . .

In conjunction with this type of imagery, which _

expresses both physical and emotional wounds, the poet

here makes constant use of repetition: of adverbs

("terrible," "terrible"), verbs ("avecina," "se avecina")

and unmodified nouns ("piedra sobre piedra," "hueso sobre

hueso"). All this gives greater weight and substance to

the ultimate effect of the devastation while at the same

time paradoxically creating a sense of barrenness of lan­

guage to match and describe that of the land.

As frequently occurs in the poetry of Miguel Hemdndez

(this has already been noted in Perito en lunas), the sec­

ond part of this poem does not maintain the mood established in the first section but, rather, it becomes primarily an overblown panegyric on the superhuman traits of the youth of

Spain who will gloriously die as heroes in this struggle

("que morir es la cosa mds grande que se hace"). Although this latter idea has some tenuous relation to the death- rebirth theme in other poems of Miguel Hernandez, here it is more of a clichd within the framework of inspirational poetry comparable to the martial music which is meant to send men willingly into battle. Nevertheless, the highly lyrical images of the last two lines are extremely effective in underscoring the inequality of the forces involved in the struggle and they succinctly express how the arms of war to be utilized by the outnumbered heroic faction have lost their material aspect and have become almost entirely spir­ itual weapons, physically ineffectual, but spiritually potent:

Queder&i en el tiempo vencedores, siempre de sol y majestad cubiertos, los guerreros de huesos tan gallardos que si son muertos son gallardos muertos: la juventud que a Espafia salvard, aunque tuviera que combatir con un fusil de nardos y una espada de cera.

There are other examples of the poet's tendency to con­ vert the most unlikely matter into weapons in the poems comprising Viento del pueblo and El hombre acecha, but 99

Hernandez is not generally as successful as here in com­ bining imagistically two worlds in opposition. In "Sentado

sobre los lmlertos,, (Viento del pueblo. PC. p. 268), rifles

and other instruments of war are transformed, or parts of

the body constitute destructive weapons:

Acdrcate a mi clamor, pueblo de mi misma leche, irbol que con tus rafces encarcelado me tienes, que aqui estoy yo para amarte y estoy para defenderte con la sangre y con la boca como dos fusiles fieles. . . .

En su mano los fusiles leones quieren volverse para acabar con las fieras que lo han sido tantas veces.

Aunque te falten las armas, pueblo de cien mil poderes, no desfallezcan tus huesos, castiga a quien te malhiere mientras que te queden pufios, uftas, saliva y te queden corazdn, entraflas, tripas, cosas de vardn y dientes. . . .

In the above lines and again in the poem "Pueblo" (El

hombre acecha. PC, p. 334), the poet has offered substitutes

for weapons or has shown the latter to be straining to

become fierce and animate creatures. The most persistent

theme in the poems cited and in others which will be men­

tioned below, is the way in which the threatening violence and annihilation are to be met and dealt with. This may be accomplished by new weapons poetically conceived ("fusil de nardos," "espada de cera") against which there is no defense, or by means of what remains to a man even after hope is gone, his physical presence. Bodily images abound in the poetry of these two collections and they constitute the more usual forms utilized by Hemdndez to define the instruments which are to be used to ward off destruction. Simone Weil has defined force as "that x that turns anybody who is sub­ jected to it into a thing. . . . Somebody was here, and the 12/ next minute there is nobody here at all."— The abruptness of death and the "thingness" of a corpse are depicted by the poet in his "Elegia a Federico Garcia Lorca, Poeta," (Viento

del pueblo. PC, p. 265):

Atraviesa la muerte con herrumbrosas lanzas, y en traje de cafldn, las parameras donde cultiva el hombre raices y esperanzas, y llueve sal, y esparce calaveras. . . .

Federico Garcia hasta ayer se llamd: polvo se llama. Ayer tuvo un espacio bajo el dia que hoy el hoyo le da bajo la grama. . . .

In opposition to the totally impersonal force which leaves no traces of what it destroys, Miguel Hemdndez

12/ Simone Weil, The Iliad or The Poem of Force (Pendle Hill, Wallingford, Pennsylvania, 1967) p. 3. 101 constantly has parts of the body serve as both offensive and defensive weapons. In the face of obliteration, man will fight with what is most integral to him and in the poem

"Pueblo," already mentioned above, the poet rejects the efficacy of less personal weapons:

Pero £qud son las armas: qud pueden, quidn ha dicho? Signo de cobardfa son: las armas mejores aquellas que contienen el proyectil de hueso son. Mirate las manos. . . .

Las armas son un signo de impotencia: los hombres se defienden y vencen con el hueso ante todo. . . .

In a poem reminiscent of the Romancero gitano of Garcfa

Lorca ("Visidn de Sevilla," Viento del pueblo, PC, p. 290),

Miguel Hemdndez offers the vision of a city which has been

destroyed, literally stamped out, by indiscriminate violence

("la ciudad cristalina/ yace pisoteada") and to express the

emotional impact of such an event, bodily images are again

utilized by the poet. However, in this poem, what both Cano

Ballesta and Concha Zardoya have called "la fuerza

visionaria" of Hemdndez arises mainly from the inclusion

of corporeal imagery which is not purely visual. That is

to say that although parts of the body are actually men­

tioned, the horror is made more total by the fact that we

also note the emotional responses of the body in place of, 102 or in addition to, Its physical component parts. The muti­ lation of the city is reflected and sensitivized through the

imagery of bodily mutilation and, more significantly, by the

substitution of emotions where parts of the body ought to be. The destruction goes beyond the merely physical

(although that too is present) as the poet tells us to see and listen to the disfiguration:

Mirad, old: mordiscos en las rejas, cepos contra las manos, horrores relucientes por las cejas, luto en las azoteas, muerte en los sevillanos.

Cdlera contenida por los gestos, c a m e despedazada ante la soga, y ldgrimas ocultas en los tiestos, en las roncas guitarras donde un pueblo se ahoga.

Un clamor de oprimidos, de huesos que exaspera la cadena, de tendones talados, demolidos por un cuchillo siervo de una hiena. . . .

In an article which appeared in El Sol on January 2,

1936, Miguel Hemdndez reviewed Pablo Neruda's Residencia

en la tierra and in the process stated his enthusiasm for

chaotic and cataclysmal violence in poetic expression:

Estoy harto de tanto arte menor y puro. Me emociona la confusidn desordenada y cadtica de la Biblia, donde veo espectdculos grandes, cataclismos, desventuras, mundos revueltos y oigo alaridos y derrumbamientos de sangre. Me revienta la vocecilla minima que se extasia ante 103

un chopo, le dispara cuatro versltos y cree que ya est£ hecho todo en poesfa. 13/

This statement Is of primary importance as It relates to the poetry of Miguel Hernandez composed during the war years. One result of his desire to concentrate on and give full expression to this chaotic turmoil (present, but either more restrained or synthesized in the earlier poetry), is the surrealistic imagery already noted. But in addition,

Hernandez introduces into several of these poems the notion of Creation which emanates from confusion and devastation.

The act of birth, however, is almost everywhere tainted with the same aura of violence present in the act of destruction in spite of the poet's implication that the former activity is creative. One example of this appears in "La fdbrica- ciudad" (El hombre acecha, PC, p. 320):

Id conmigo a la fdbrica-ciudad: venid, que quiero contemplar con los pueblos las creaciones vidLentas, la gestaei^n del aire y el parto del acero, el hijo de las manos y de las herramientas. . . .

The hymn-like quality of this poem, with its obvious intent to sing the praises of an industrial city in the

U.S.S.R. which the poet visited during his tour of Russia, is evident in the above lines of the third stanza. But as

13/ This appears in Cuademos de Agora. Numeros 49-50 (noviembre-diciembre, 1960), p. 22. 104 the poem progresses, the creative violence becomes persist­ ently more apocalyptical until the vision Is scarcely distinguishable from those noted in the descriptions of war and destruction:

Fragor de acero herido, resoplidos brutales, hierro latente, hierro candente, torturado, trepidando, piafando, rodando en espirales, en ruedas, en mo tores, cabalio huracanado.

Una visirfn de hierro, de fortaleza innata, un clamor de metales probados, perseguidos, mientras de nave en nave se encabrita y desata con ddlmenes de espuma, chispazos y rugidos.

Es como una extension de furias que contienen su casco apasionado sobre desfiladeros, contra muros en donde se gastan, van y vienen, con llamas de sudor y grasa los obreros. . • .

In this poem, men are harnessing the surging energy, and for Miguel Hemdndez such an act in itself constitutes a type of violation, so that the imagery constantly reinforces the sense of persecution and domination. The frantic move­ ment is set in motion and also suspended by the abundance of participial verb endings in the first stanza above, with the result that we have a form of wild activity without direction. The remaining adjectives in this stanza are aggressive in tone ("herido," "brutales," "torturado,"

"huracanado"). There is suffering and forcibly induced transformation involved in this industrial process, but the ebullition of the natural world is also introduced into the vision mainly through the references to the spirited, untamed animal which is to be brought under control. In

addition to offering the visual-emotive image of a "caballo huracanado," Hemdndez has used various nouns and verbs which normally refer to animal activity: "resoplidos,"

"piafando," "se encabrita," "rugidos," etc. Whereas in the

Madrid of "El silbo ..." the innate energy present in

Nature had been described by the poet through bi-membered

images which abruptly congealed the potential movement (thus

suggesting destruction and a perversion oj[ values), in the

"factory-city" Hemdndez creates a scene in which everything

is in a state of flux and becoming. The creative force here

is to reach its culmination in the form of a gargantuan

birth (there are oblique references to Classical mythology

in this description) which the poet had originally called

upon us to witness, but the "labor pains" of such a birth

are described in extremely belligerent and explosive terms.

The violence of the battlefield is still very much with the

poet here in this war-like contest between opposing element^

and the threatening quality of such violence may be detected.

Highly relevant to this discussion is the love poetry

of Miguel Hemdndez, although this facet of his work will 106 not be analyzed in any detail in the course of this study.

Mention is made of it here, however, since it is intimately

related to the creative-destructive dichotomy under consid­

eration. In one unusual love poem of this period ("Cancidn

del esposo soIdado, 11 Viento del pueblo, PC, p. 301), both

the procreative instinct and sexual desire are fused with

the prospect of violent death. In the mind of the soldier-

speaker, the figure of the wife approaches in the same

coldly impersonal way in which the planes appear over the

countryside to spread destruction. The insatiable appetite

attributed to the machines ("Recoged esta voz") is here

applied to this voracious figure which looms as an immense,

hungry mouth:

Cuando junto a los campos de combate te piensa mi frente que no enfria ni aplaca tu figura, te acercas hacia m£ como una boca inmensa de hambrienta dentadura. . . .

Tus p iemas implacables al parto van derechas y tu implacable boca de labios indomables, y ante mi soledad de explosiones y brechas recorres un camino de besos implacables. . . .

The repeated use of the adjective "implacable" (three

times within a four-line stanza), further dehumanizes the

apparition of the wife and places her, as well as her rela­

tionship with the speaker, within the framework of war and

aggression. The natural violence inherent in the rhythm of 107 the life-death cycle, characteristic of almost every period of the poetic production of Miguel Hernandez, is often exac­ erbated in the poetry where the war serves as an intensely

immediate background. The introduction of the concept of procreation ("Tus piemas implacables al parto van derechas")

in the midst of the destruction and desolation of war, is

accomplished by Miguel Hemdndez through a form of expres­

sion which is clearly belligerent. Even the future vision

of a postwar love relationship is tinged with death and the

sound of battle:

Es preciso matar para seguir viviendo. Un d£a iri a la sombra de tu pelo lejano, y dormir£ en la s£bana de almid&i y de estruendo cosida por tu mano.

The act of love set against this backdrop of killing

(not merely death) distorts the natural cycle and thus the

figure of the wife-mother as she is presented in this poem

is a fearful one. Her hunger, together with that of the

speaker, is threatening and hallucinatory while, at the same

time, she holds out the promise of regeneration. She is in

no way personalized here but is, on the contrary, described

merely as a conglomerate of grotesque features. She is vic­

tim to an insatiable desire to give birth to the son who,

the speaker tells us, will be b o m "con el pufio c err ado." 108

Not life naturally springing from death, but violence born out of violence seems to be the poet's primary statement in this and other poems of the period. Not only is a human figure here portrayed in terms which are fiercely non-human, objects as well are threatening and ferocious, particularly those related to death. The poet brings love-making and the threat of annihilation into intimate contact with each other in the following stanza:

Sobre los atatides feroces en acecho, sobre los mismos muertos sin remedio y sin fosa te quiero, y te quisiera besar con todo el pecho hasta en el polvo, esposa.

In the opening poem of El hombre acecha ("Cancidn primera," OC, p. 315), the final lines state this love-death relationship in more direct and fatalistic terms: 'Hoy el amor es muerte,/ y el hombre acecha al hombre." But in the above stanza of the earlier work, the act of love-making is described as if it were an act of murder. Not men, but cof­ fins are in ambush and they, together with the unburied dead, serve as a bed for the couple in this nightmarish vision of a love scene. The woman would receive the kisses and the embrace of her soldier husband "hasta en el polvo," so that both lovers become one with the bodies strewn over the landscape. The final word of this stanza, the one noun 109 which contains within it the potential to personalize the feminine figure here, stands completely alone. Its auditory quality and its position in the short line contribute to 14/ creating the sensation of an exploding bomb.—

In a recent book, C. M. Bowra devotes several chapters to the question of the m o d e m poet and his response, in general, to public events and, in particular, to the wars of his century.— ^ He cites an unfamiliar poem by T. S.

Eliot published originally in 1942 as an example of this poet's views as to the proper realm of poetic expression

(war is not within this realm) and it will be noted that this attitude is very much in line with the statements by

14/ The theme of violence inherent in sexual desire often appears in the love sonnets of El rayo que no cesa as evidenced by the following quatrains from Sonnet XIV (PC. p. 220) but it will be noted that such violence does not constitute a threat— it merely heightens the power of the emotion:

Silencio de metal triste y sonoro, espadas congregando con amores en el final de huesos destructores de la regidn volcdnica del toro.

Uha humedad de femenino oro que olid puso en su sangre resplendores, y refugid un bramido entre las flores como un huracanado y vasto lloro.

15/ C. M. Bowra, Poetry and Politics (Cambridge, 1966). critics already quoted here in reference to the war poetry of Miguel Hemdndez:

War is not a life: it is a situation, One which may neither be ignored nor accepted, A problem to be met with ambush and stratagem, Enveloped or scattered.

The enduring is not a substitute for the transimt, Neither one for the other. But the abstract conception Of private experience at its greatest intensity Becoming universal, which we call poetry*, May be affirmed in verse.

Mr. Bowra proceeds to show how many poets were able to convert the public event into a private experience and with an intensity which is indeed universal, due primarily to the fact that they were so intimately caught up in the happen­ ings that their "insight into some small part of a vast 17/ event. . . reaches far beyond their own consciousness."—

Although this author had previously written on Spanish 18/ poetry— 1 and is undoubtedly quite familiar with the poetic currents of Spain in the twentieth century, it is nonethe­ less surprising to come upon a relatively lengthy reference

16/ Ibid., p. 72.

17/ Ibid., p. 75.

18/ See, for example, C. M. Bowra, The Creative Experiment (Oxford, 1948) for chapters on Lorca and Alberti. Ill to Miguel Hemdndez in this latest book. The author evi­ dently sees Hemdndez as belonging to that group of poets who were able to compose "authentic" poetry In the light of

their deep involvement in the public event that is war. In

the case of Hemdndez, the circumstance of war created

deeper vibrations of what constituted the core of his poetic

inspiration. The violence inherent in all life, always at

the center of his poetry, now explodes and becomes outer-

directed and even totally exteriorized in many of the poems.

When Hemdndez in his "Llamo a los poetas" (El hombre

acecha. PC, p. 336) says to the poets of his generation

"Siempre fuimos sembradores de sangre," he expresses his

awareness of this ever-present aspect of his poetry. It is

as if we were hearing a magnified echo, a public statement

of the personal view which appeared in an earlier poem,

"Sino sangriento" (PC. p. 239) composed between 1936 and

1937, where the poet sees the same destructive and life-

giving force primarily within himself, although also to some

extent extrinsic to him:

La sangre me ha parido y me ha hecho preso, la sangre me reduce y me agiganta, un edificio soy de sangre y yeso que se derriba dl mismo y se levanta sobre andamios de huesos. . . . 112

Me veo de repente, envuelto en sus coldricos raudales, y nado contra todos desesperadamente como contra un fatal torrente de pufiales. Me arrastra encarnlzada su corriente, me despedaza, me hunde, me atropella, qulero apartarme de ella a manotazos, y se me van los brazos detrda de ella, y se me van las anslas en los brazos. . . .

The dual nature of this force as it appears In the

above lines ("la sangre me reduce y me agiganta") Is not

often presented In the war poems where the balance tends

. naturally to be on the side of destruction. In addition,

the poet is able to clearly show that it is a form of

destruction jphose source is entirely external to him and to

Nature. The violence found in the poetry of Viento del

pueblo and El hombre acecha is not contained within any

object or subject, but it is everywhere diffused, and it is

this random quality of the phenomenon which heightens the

sense of threat. The earlier poetry was primarily an

attempt to describe the dynamics of the natural world within

a type of mold which the poet saw as having been established

by Nature itself. The form of expression in Perito en lunas

was conceptual and the images worked in on each other in

such a way as to heighten the sense of self-contained forces.

The syntax as well in these poems had the effect of turning

the reader's attention back to what had already been stated 113 and thus the poems were even more tightly sealed. The majority of the poetry examined in this section might rather be characterized as expressing the spreading out of forces which can no longer be held in check. The interior violence has broken loose and the surrealistic imagery which is so prevalent serves to emphasize the absence of a formally ordered universe.

Mention has already been made of an inwardness in some poems of this period which foreshadows the poetry of

Cancionero v romancero de ausencias. In two particular short works, this relenting of a frantic movement and a gen­ eral muting of the poet's voice may be clearly noted. In

,!E1 nifio yuntero" (Viento del pueblo. PC, p. 272), we are once again back in a world which operates within a natural scheme, although the poetic expression here is unadorned and somber:

Empieza a vivir, y empieza a morir de punta a punta levantando la corteza de su madre con la yunta.

Empieza a sentir, y siente la vida como una guerra, y a dar fatigosamente en los huesos de la tierra

Cada nuevo dfa es mds ra£z, menos criatura, que escucha bajo sus pies la voz de la sepultura.

Y como rafz se hunde en la tierra lentamente para que la tierra inunde de paz y panes su frente.

The final stanzas of the poem (not quoted above) con­

stitute a plea to save this child from his fate, but the end

seems to be only a means to bring this delicate "romance" within the framework of the war poetry. Nevertheless, it has a much closer relationship to the later poems of absence

and memory in its simplicity of expression and in its style

of understatement. The traditional meter and rhyme scheme

contribute to the sense of weighted gloom that is felt on

reading these stanzas as they revolve around the idea of a beginning which bears within it the seeds of its own

destruction and regeneration ("para que la tierra inunde/ de

paz y panes su frente").

The last poem of El hombre acecha ("Cancidn liltima,"

PC, p. 343) also exemplifies this new less extroverted tone

in which the forces of emotion are internalized both within

the poet and the poetic expression. There seems to be a

pushing in toward the center to create what Juan Ramdn 115 19 / Jimenez called "la fuerza hacla dentro."—' The tighter control of the emotional content, the shorter verse lines and the metaphoric decantation never totally obliterate the sense of violence, but Hernandez now concentrates on its essence after allowing the reader only a brief surface glimpse:

Pintada, no vacfa: pintada estd mi casa del color de las grandes pasiones y desgracias.

Regresard del llanto adonde fud llevada con su desierta mesa, con su ruinosa cama.

Florecerdn los besos sobre las almohadas. Y en t o m o de los cuerpos elevard la sdbana su intensa enredadera nocturna, perfumada.

£ 1 odio se amortigua detrds de la ventana.

Serd la garra suave. Dejadme la esperanza.

19/ Juan Ramdn J imdnez, "El unico estilo de Eugenio F lor it," Revista Cubana. VIII (abril-junio, 1957) p. 14: "El dstasis pesa mds que el movlmiento. El verdadero dinamismo es dstasis, fuerza hacia dentro, hacia el centro, fuerza que no se pierde, fuerza que nos da enerjfa bella fundamental.11 This is quoted in Sabine R. Ulibarri, El mundo podtico de Juan Ramdn (Madrid, 1962) p. 47, fn. 8. 116

The passion has not gone out of the poetic expression,

It has simply been relegated to a less visible position.

The predicate adjective "pintada" in the first two lines is used to contrast with the concept of emptiness ("vacia"), and

thus the poet has suggested the interiority of these strong

emotions. The intense vine-like sheet will enfold the bodies of the lovers and so block off the passions from view

in the same way as hate is still present but is now muffled behind the transparent window. The violent and destructive

claw remains, but it too is hidden beneath a softened exte­

rior. The last line then seems to call out simultaneously

for a less visible form of emotion and for its continued presence beneath the visible surface. The poetry of Miguel

Hemdndez from this point on will continue to show the

poet's tendency to veer away from the description of an

active violence and its more obvious manifestations in order

to capture instead the passionate inner reverberations.

It seems readily apparent from the foregoing, that a

type of progression may be noted in the poetry composed by

Miguel Hemdndez during the period from 1933 to 1937. The

poet cries out against the impersonalization of the city in

"El silbo de afirmaci<$n en la aldea" and turns to the inti­

mate, familiar reality of his village for a confirmation of self. The affront to Nature, which he describes in this poem by means of a poetic technique that is essentially a prolonged, outer-directed, high-pitched shout against the threatening forces which the poet discovers in the urban landscape, actually constituted an attack on the poet- speaker himself. The entire poem is a form of reaction to such an attack and Hemdndez is able to resolve the problem and overcome the obliterating forces poetically by balancing these forces with (or against) the known and consoling aspects of what is paradoxically both his former and present existence. The lessening of the tension is expressed in the second part of the poem through a muting of the poet's voice, a relenting of the pounding and disjunctive rhythms, and a type of withdrawal into a quiescent world of Nature.

By the end of the poem, this process has led to an almost total interiorization of emotion and a subsequent silencing of the poetic voice.

The poetry of the war years, as attested by the poems included in El viento del pueblo and El hombre acecha, is primarily a return to the form of expression and the poetic vantage point assumed by Miguel Hemdndez in the first sec­ tion of "El silbo de afirmacidn en la aldea," but without the possibility of attaining the equilibrium which we noted 118 in the earlier poem. In addition, there is now a greater consciousness on the part of Miguel Hemdndez of his role as a "public" poet, and his outcry against the impersonal destruction is not tinged with the fear of his own loss of individuality or identity. Although the violence of the destructive forces is depicted through surrealistic imagery, repetition, synesthesia, aggressive verbal and adjectival forms and other poetic techniques which had been utilized previously, there is nonetheless a sense of depersonaliza­ tion in these poems. By being so consistently aware of his audience (even to the point of directing many of these poems

to listeners or viewers of the scenes described), Hemdndez has converted the threat into a public evil, rather than

showing it as a personal attack. The speaker stands apart and, at times, above the action so as to be able to point

out the horror of the scenes to those whose involvement is

too immediate to allow them to see more than a mere fragment

His own existence is only in jeopardy to the extent that he

identifies with and partakes in the activity which he

describes, but his position as the poet-spokesman of the

outnumbered heroic faction establishes his self-identity

firmly and unequivocally. 119

In some of the poetry of the above period, however, and in the last poems to be examined in the following section, the process of depersonalization takes on a new direction.

As the poet gradually sheds the role of spokesman, the poetry becomes more intimate and internalized. The physical world, which was shown to be in various stages of disinte­ gration in the war poems, no longer enjoys the position it once had in the poetic expression of Miguel Hemdndez. The poet can no longer relate to it nor find his consolation in

Nature, through a personal identification with the natural phenomena which had once served him as inspiration and guide. This personal relationshipJias disappeared and he now begins to commune with an inner world which he himself must first bring into being.

/ CHAPTER IV

A TURNING AWAY FROM VIOLENCE

120 CHAPTER IV

Lejos til, lejos de ti, yo, m&a cerca del mf mfo; afuera tu, hacia la tierra, yo hacia adentro, al infinite.

Los soles que til ver£s, ser£n los soles ya vistos; yo verd los soles nuevos que sdlo enciende el espfritu.

Juan Ramdn Jimenez

In the Cancionero v romancero de ausencias, Miguel

Hemdndez has both narrowed his field of vision and broadened its scope. Most of the ninety-eight poems which comprise this collectionr-^ are extremely brief and would qualify for classification under Poe’s category of ’*minor

1/ Concha Zardoya makes mention of sixty-three poems in the Cancionero y romancero de ausencias and she has apparently based this figure on the contents of the Aguilar edition of Miguel Hernandez, Obra Escogida (Madrid, 1952). The Lautaro edition of Cancionero. . . (Argentina, 1958) numbers the poems through one hun­ dred three, but the editors have at least in one case made two poems out of what is obviously only one (Number 2 in PC) and they have also included some of the last uncollected poems as part of the Cancionero v romancero de ausencias.

121 122 2/ poems."— - But rather than offering descriptions of natural phenomena In their visible and invisible becoming, as in the

short single stanza works of Perito en lunas. the poet here

attempts to discover the essence of objects which are

removed from him in time and space. The essential aspect of

things is indestructible and after a period of frantic

activity and movement, Hernandez enters the more tranquil

realm of contemplation in his desire to bring into existence

that which cannot be destroyed by physical violence. Such a

world can only be constructed from the center out if it is

to be uncontaminated by what already exists or has existed

previously. Not so paradoxical, then, is the fact that

absence and memory will be the primary ingredients for such

a rebuilding. What is paradoxical, however, is that in this

constructive process, there will consistently appear the

element of reduction since the poet is ever searching for a

way to enclose his new world and seal it off from whatever

2/ In "The Poetic Principle," Poe states the following: TBy 'minor poems' I mean, of course, poems of little length. . . . I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, 'a long poem,' is simply a flat contradiction in terms." Poe's influence on Spanish and Spanish American poetry has been mentioned frequently. See J. E. Englekirk, Edgar Poe in Hispanic Literature (New York, 1934). 123 may be extraneous to It. Absence, of course, makes It pos­ sible for the poet to disregard particular physical aspects of what Is being re-created and It can also help him to find a type of permanence In the solidification of memories.

The first poem in the Canclonero Is aptly a brief poetic statement on birth arising out of contemplation, and we are Immediately made aware of the interiority as well as the newness of the poet's vision:

De la contemplac idn nace la rosa; de la contemplacidn el naranjo y el laurel; tif y yo del beso aqudl. (OC, p. 361)

The very gentle, song-like quality of the above lines

is obvious and it is also plain that here we are listening

to a voice of Miguel Hernandez which we had not heard before, at least not in quite this way. We have in this

short poem an introduction to a world which is being created

anew but it does not come into being out of nowhere. It

springs from remembrance and begins by bringing into exist­

ence only the recalled perfection of nature. The poet then

closes in on a past incident which may be either real or

only imagined. It is most likely the latter, but that is

unimportant now that it takes on a new reality in the poet's 124

Imagination. The final word of the poem ("aqudl) sets up a series of vibrations which go deeply into the past without abandoning the present. It has already been noted that the theme of birth is of great importance and significance in the poetry of Miguel Hernandez, but in this brief poem, the physical aspect of such an event is absent. Growth or merely continued existence can be assured by such absence and only a contemplative re-creation may be this selec- 3/ tive.— The poet here carefully avoids action or movement which migfct disturb the delicate balance and the verb (in

the present tense) is used only once; it is not even plu- ralized to accommodate the plurl subjects. In addition to the unifying effect of such a technique, the single verb

serves to sustain the suspended quality of a purely mental action.

Many of these poems are addressed to the absent loved

one, but this is love poetry which is both physical and

3/ Many statements have been made in relation to the reductive aspect of memory, but one of the clearest and most poetic is that of Max Eastman who wrote: MActual things are never isolated and framed for our enjoyment as things are in revery. Things in memory are finely focalized and made seizable, unified, and indeed per­ fected, by the narrowing of their space and time extent, and the omission of whatever opposes or dero­ gates from the feature chosen to be the apex of our attention to them." This quote is taken from Enj oyment of Poetry (New York, 1939), p. 40. 125 metaphysical in Its approach to the beloved. The person to whom the poet directs his voice, the "tii" which appears throughout, is usually more than only the absent object of his longing. She is represented as a symbolic figure who constitutes an almost tangible form containing within the now highly concentrated universe of the poet. In order to stress the all-encompassing and still reductive nature of this symbol, Hemdndez shows her as being able to open and then subsequently close off the exterior world:

La cantidad de mundos que con los ojos abres, que cierras con los brazos.

La cantidad de mundos que con los ojos cierras, que con los brazos abres.

La cantidad de mundos que con el cuerpo abres inunda las ciudades.

La cantidad de cosas que con el cuerpo quemas hacen de ml la hoguera. (OC, p. 361)

This poem, of course, may be seen on two levels:

(a) the purely physical with the accompanying erotic conno­

tations and, (b), one which transcends such a limited view

to become the poet's cryptic but poetic affirmation of his new, deeper vision. Although both levels have their degree 126 of validity* it would seem that (a) only allows for a par­ tial interpretation. The poet's use of "mundos" and

"ciudades" opens out the horizon of the poem to go beyond the relationship between himself and the object of his desire. The last two stanzas* with their references to flood and fire* seem to suggest a purification which goes beyond one man's passion, and it is important to note that in a poem of obsessive repetition* there are significant variations. In the final stanza* the verb form "quemas" replaces the "abres" of the first and third stanzas and the

"cierras" of the second. Since one would expect to find the "cierras" form again in the fourth stanza to accord with the preceding pattern* the new verb form "quemas" bears within it the additional idea of closing off or shutting out. The burning of the "things" contained in the many worlds is then related to keeping them out of this new cosmos. The fire into which the speaker is converted may be that of passionate desire* but it is also most probably

the purifying element through which the poet-speaker will eliminate whatever does not belong in this new world of essences and absence. In another poem which uses the same

"abrir y cerrar" motif* the speaker is only passively

i involved as observer and the closing of the world over the 127 eyes of the beloved receives no explicit comment:

Negros ojos negros.

El mundo se abrfa sobre tus pestaflas de negras dlstanclas.

Dorada mlrada.

El mundo se clerra sobre tus pestaflas lluviosas y negras. (OC, p. 361)

Although Hemdndez has not developed or varied the

Image in the above poem (and its charm lies mainly in the understatement and the possible imp1 leations), in the con­ text of the preceding poem and, indeed, of the entire

Cancionero y roroancero de ausencias, it would appear that it is the visible world which is being shut out and that something more meaningful and more complex is to be dis­ covered when that world is no longer "in the way." The closing off, in addition, is a present action in this poem, whereas the world which was seen only through open eyes filled with light ("Dorada mirada") is now viewed as a thing of the past ("se abria," "de negras distancias").

The shutting out of light and visual images consti­ tutes a form of blindness, but it is a blindness which, in the poetic expression, is here equated with absence in that 128 both types of "non-presence" create what could be called a more penetrating In-sight. In one poem (OC, p. 364),

Hemdndez describes the "presence of absence" in everything, and all his senses convey this feeling to him, although it

is again the symbolic form of the beloved which embodies the

"ausencia":

Ausencia en todo veo: tus ojos la reflejan.

Ausencia en todo escucho: tu voz a tiempo suena.

Ausencia en todo aspiro: tu aliento huele a hierba.

Ausencia en todo toco: tu cuerpo se despuebla.

Ausencia en todo slento. Ausencia. Ausencia. Ausencia.

Absence thus becomes almost incarnate as it is seen, heard, breathed and touched through the existence of the

physically distant "td" whose sensual presence, however,

permeates the atmosphere. In such a vision, spacial dis­

tance and spiritual depth are joined and even come to mean

the same thing:

Sangre remota. Remo to cuerpo, dentro de todo. (OC, p. 368) 129

In this love poetry, the poet's intimate identification with the absent beloved makes It possible for there to be a

funneling in of the exterior world so that it may be con­

tained totally within the "td y yo":

El ndmero de sangres que el mundo ilumind en dos desembocaba. Td y yo.

El ndmero de sangres que llevo alrededor en dos desembocaba. Td y yo.

El ndmero de sangres que es cada vez mayor en dos ha de quedar. Td y yo. (OC, p. 365)

The past, present and future are successively mentioned

in the three stanzas above as the reductive flowing-in is to

find its ultimate destination in the two lovers. It is sug­

gested that all creation has come to reside within this "td

y yo" and all that existed outside the speaker and the loved

one is now to remain below the surface where it may become

more highly concentrated. The "ndmero de sangres" has

increased ("es cada vez mayor") and the poet implies that

as this force becomes internalized, it becomes more intense.

Hemdndez makes constant use of the idea of a flowing

movement which has become less active on the surface, and the 130

Image of water appears in many of these poems. What is essential in such water imagery is the suggestion of depth which it may convey. It is also often related to a form of

sight which looks within to see more clearly:

En el fondo del hombre, agua removida.

En el agua mds clara, quiero ver la vida.

En el fondo del honbre, agua removida.

En el agua mds clara, sombra sin salida.

En el fondo del honbre, agua removida. (OC, p. 368)

The water is not completely still, but it has an inner movement ("agua removida") which conjures up memories as it

suggests the existence of activity below the surface. The

organs of sight and deeply-felt emotions are also shown to

contain this hidden vitality which may even reach the point

of violence: "Tus ojos parecen/ agua removida./ iQud son?"

(OC, p. 371), "el corazdn es agua/ que se remueve, arrolla,/

se arremolina, mata" (OC, p. 374). The sea, as well,

appears often in this poetry as a traditional image of

death: "El mar tambidn elige/ puertos donde morir./ Como

los marineros./ El mar de los que fueron" (OC, p. 363), or 131

In a form even more reminiscent of Jorge Manrique, "Tanto rio que va al mar/ donde no hace falta el agua" (OC, p. 366) and "tomd el camino del mar/ es decir, el de la muerte'1 (OC, p. 380). But a particularly original use of this image is

one in which the poet has the sea represent the broad

expanse of absence while at the same time symbolizing that

\diich goes on forever, not ever found (seen) in its

entirety, nor ever lost (unseen) in its continuous presence:

"Cerca del agua perdida del mar/ que no se puede perder ni

encontrar" (OC, p. 391).

It is in one of the relatively few longer poems of this

collection, however, (OC, p. 375), where the themes and

images mentioned above converge. Here we may note how

Hernandez develops what is only succinctly suggested in the

shorter poems as he elaborates on the concept of a

re-creation of the world as it now appears to all his senses

and belonging exclusively to him and the absent beloved

whose feelings frame his own. Together they may discover

the essences of such a newly conceived world since they

alone give it form and substance:

El mundo es como aparece ante mis cinco sentidos, y ante los tuyos que son las orillas de los mios. El mundo de los dem^s 132

no es el nuestro: no es el mismo. Lecho del agua que soy, td, los dos, somos el rfo donde cuando mds profundo se ve mds despaclo y lfmpido.

Although the five senses are mentioned, that of sight

Is of primary Importance, but It will be a way to see beyond the visible to a deeper penetration of all things. The

images received by the poet and his other self, through such a vision In depth, will also receive them, joined in a type of cosmic rhythm which is at the center of all life:

Imdgenes de la vida: a la vez que recibimos, nos reciben entregadas mds unidamente a un ritmo.

Things will be re-formed again by the lovers from these

essences as they look toward the center first and then out­ ward from it in a state of blindness which is really a total vision that resembles mystical illumination:

Pero las cosas se forman con nuestros propios delirios. El aire tiene el tamaflo del corazdn que respiro y el sol es como la luz con que yo le desaffo. Ciegos para los demds, oscuros, siempre remisos, miramos siempre hacia adentro, vemos desde lo mds fntimo. . . . 133

The final section of the poem reiterates the idea of

seeing and not seeing as we note again the suggestion of blindness being equated with absence:

Nadie me verd del todo ni es nadie como lo miro Somos algo mds que vemos, algo menos que inquirimos. Algdn suceso de todos pasa desapercibido. Nadie nos ha visto. A nadie ciegos de ver, hemos vis to.-A'

In the earlier poetry of Miguel Hemdndez and even up

to the period of the Cancionero y romancero de ausencias, we could rather consistently note the importance of the

4/ This poem brings to mind the concepts of "inscape" and "instress" discussed by the nineteenth century English poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins in his Note-Books and Journal. In the Introduction to the Penguin Edition of the poet's work (London, 1953), W. H. Gardner briefly describes what these words meant to Hopkins: "As a name for that *individually-distinctive' form (made up of various sense-data) which constitutes the rich and revealing 'oneness' of the natural object, he coined the word inscape: and for that energy of being by which all things are upheld, for that natural (but ultimately supernatural) stress which determines an inscape and keeps it in being— for that he coined the name instress. . . . Instress, then, is often the sensation of inscape--a quasi-mystical illumination, a sudden perception of that deeper pattern, order and unity which gives meaning to the_extemal forms. . (pp. xx-xxi). Mr. Gardner then quotes from the Journal and we may note Hopkins's idea of a new type of sight: "I thought how sadly beauty of inscape was unknown and buried away from simple people and yet how near at hand it was if they had eyes to see it and it could be called out everywhere again" (loc. cit). 134 cyclical chain of events which was forcefully constructive if it functioned in accordance with the natural order, or was either potentially or actually destructive if any link in the chain was temporarily severed. In the more person­ ally re-created world of the Canelonero. this cycle is incomplete, permanently out of phase, and there can now be no full, continual development when rebirth does not sub­ sequently arise out of death. The earth, which had been both the repository of the dead and the source of new life, has lost its dual character to become now primarily a ter­ minal thing, an end without a new beginning. The changing seasons, then, can taste only of death and separation:

Tierra, en medio morimos.

Por eso las estaciones saben a rauerte y los puertos. . . .

Cad£veres vivos somos en el horizonte lejos. (OC, p. 373)

Instead of continuity, rather than a new form of life following naturally upon and out of death in a never-ending series of "puntos suspensivos,'1 the two extremes of exist­ ence are separated, physically close (this is also stressed- by means of structural similarity in the lines beginning 135

"Cuatro pasos. . .") but spiritually remote from one another:

De aquf al cementerio, todo es azul, dorado, lfmpido. Cuatro pasos y los muertos. Cuatro pasos y los vivos.

Lfmpido, azul y dorado, se hace allf remoto el hijo. (OC, p. 386)

The death of the child, the presence of death every­ where during the war years and the sense of his own death, have all caused the poet to convert his original exaltation of a natural scheme to a darker and more intimate personal vision of nature and its external manifestations. The for­ mer generative quality of the rain, for example, is gone and

it cannot bring back to life what is already dead or in the process of dying:

Llueve sobre tus dos ojos negros, negros, negros, negros, y llueve como si el agua verdes quisiera volverlos.

jVolverdn a florecer?

Si a travds de tantos cuerpos que ya combaten la flor renovaran su ascua. . . Pero seguirdn bajo la lluvia para siempre, mustios, secos. (OC, p. 393) The question and the wish for a type of renewal, are resolved in a stoical resignation now that the weight of so many bodies has finally defeated the flower. The ellipses create a daydreaming quality as the poet ponders on the pos­ sibility of a rekindling of the embers, but there is a sudden awakening in the "Pero seguirdn . . . Hemdndez also uses the image of rain to express the irredeemable aspect of time in the repetitive technique which is so characteristic of the Cancionero; "Llueve tiempo, llueve tiempo" (OC, p. 402). In a particularly effective poem which appears under the heading of "Ultimos poemas" in the Obras Completas

("Enmudecido el campo, presintiendo la lluvia," p. 415), the poet has beautifully expressed how the whole of nature, in which he includes himself, silently awaits the arrival of this "sangre transparente" with a mixture of awe and sus­ pense. But the ensuing dialogue established between the earth and the sky is filled with melancholy, as the rain penetrates deeply below the surface of things only to inten­ sify the pain and further interiorize the sense of an eternal darkness. Whatever is momentarily animated by the falling rain is then made to feel its own wounds more deeply:

Enmudecido el campo, presintiendo la lluvia, reaparece en la tierra su primer abandono. 137

La alegr£a del clelo se desconsuela a veces, sobre un pastor sedlento.

Cuando la lluvia llama se remueven los muertos. La tlerra se hace un hoyo removido, oloroso. Los drboles exhalan su ultimo olor profundo dlspuestos a morirse.

Bajo la lluvia adqulere la voz de los relojes la gran edad, la angustla de la postrera hora. Seffalan las herldas visibles y las otras que sangran hacla adentro.

Todo se hace entrafiable, reconcentrado, fntimo. Como bajo el sub sue lo, bajo el signo lluvloso todo, todo parece desear ahora la paz definitiva.

Llueve como una sangre transparente, hechlzada. Me slento traspasado por la humedad del suelo que habrd de sujetarme para siempre a la sombra, para siempre a la lluvia.

El clelo se desangra pausadamente herldo. El verde intensifies la penumbra de las hojas. Los troncos y los muertos se oscurecen arfn mds por la pasidn del agua.

This is a cosmic sadness in which even the heavens take part and the "pastor sedlento" (universalized by the indefi­ nite article) is one with the dead, with the trees which are resigned to their fate and with the rain itself as it too is sacrificed ("la pasidn del agua"). It also dies as it falls on this somber wasteland where all things appear to be receding deeper and deeper into darkness and oblivion. As everything becomes more intimate, more concentrated below the surface, the poet's voice is briefly but directly heard in the penultimate stanza as he begins to sense his own con­ tact with and even interment in the earth. The soil will subject him, keep him eternally in the shadows and there will be no resurrection or rebirth. There are no images of light in this poem and the only color mentioned ("verde") is used to emphasize the progressive dimming of a previously existent illumination ("intensifies la penumbra de las hojas"). On the basis of this and similar poems of the last period, it would certainly be possible to arrive at the same conclusion as one critic who has written on the subject of pain and solitude in the poetry of Miguel Hemdndez: "Si el dolor ya era irremediable, la soledad va hacidndose irremediable poco a poco. Todo se recubre de tristeza. El amor no consigue alzarse ni romper tan tremendo sello.,u-^

However, as has already been pointed out, Hemdndez does see the possibility of light and continuation through the crea­ tion of a new world which is different from the one existing outside himself and the beloved. When the poet identifies with the world which he once knew and could formerly explore with eagerness and enthusiasm, however, he generally

5/ Angel Rodrfguez Segurado, "Dolor y soledad en la poesia de Miguel Heradndez, Revista de la Universidad de Buenos Aires. Vol. 24 (octubre-diciembre, 1952), pp. 594-595. 139 discovers nothing but a sense of resigned despair, as in the poem cited above. The soil no longer holds out the possi­ bility of a resurgence of life since only darkness and death prevail there:

Era un hoyo no muy hondo. Casi en la flor de la sonfcra. No hubiera cabido un hombre en su oscuridad angosta. Contigo todo fu£ anchura en la tierra tenebrosa. (OC, p. 391)

In this poem, which is a shortened and more intense version of a longer one of the same collection (OC, p. 382), the absence of light is emphasized by three different ref­ erences to the obscuring quality of the earth in the "flor de la sombra," the "oscuridad angosta" and the "tierra tenebrosa." The dead infant who lies in this narrow dark­ ness that is too wide and ill-fitting for him, is close to the surface of the earth, but his separation from life is nonetheless complete. The adverbial "casi" which precedes the poignant "en la flor de la sombra" makes this removal more despairingly pathetic, although the emotion is as restrained here as it is in most of the later poetry. The poet also uses the image of the flower to describe the brevity of the infant's life in another short poem in which 140 there Is a rapid progression from the moment of dawn above the earth to a finality beneath it:

Cuerpo del amanecer: flor de la c a m e florida. Siento que no quiso ser mds alld de flor tu vida.

Corazdn que en el tamafio de un d£a se abre y se cierra. La flor nunca cumple un aflo, y lo cumple bajo la tierra. (OC, p. 389)

But in the re-created universe which Hemdndez strives to bring into existence out of the relationship between the poet and the beloved, there is light and the possibility of perpetuation since its primarily hermetic nature will seal it off from time and other destructive elements. As a con­ sequence of this new vision, the earth as a source of the life force has been replaced by the figure of the woman in whose womb the poet now sees concentrated all the sought- after clarity and the permanence which are to prevail in this inner world. In the Cancionero y romancero de ausencias, the image of the womb appears frequently and

Hemdndez devotes one entire poem to what he now considers to be the only source of light and order:

Menos tu vientre todo es confuso. 141

Menos tu vlentre todo es futuro fugaz, pasado baldlo, turblo.

Menos tu vlentre todo es oculto, menos tu vlentre todo inseguro,. todo postrero, polvo sin mundo.

Menos tu vlentre todo es oscuro, menos tu vlentre claro y profundo. (OC, p. 378)

It Is clearly a type of litany which the poet has offered here with Its repeated chant ("menos tu vlentre") and Its praise of the purity of birth. The ritual quality of such a prayer Is perfectly in keeping with the ritual theme Itself and in yet another poem we note how this Is carried further into the realm of primitive rites through the association of the moon with the act of birth

Itself:

A la luna venldera te acostards a parlr 142

y tu vlentre arrojard la claridad sobre m£. ... ,, (OC, p. 379)-^'

When Miguel Hemdndez thinks back on the destructive­ ness of war In the poetry of this period, he continues to use the womb Image which becomes the last refuge for the

living and Is therefore to be hidden from the forces of annihilation:

Todas las madres del mundo ocultan el vlentre, tiemblan, y qulsieran retlrarse a vlrginldades clegas, al orlgen solltarlo y el pasado sin herencia. Pdlida, sobrecoglda la vlrginldad se queda. . . . ("Guerra,” OC, p. 397)

The image becomes increasingly important and it is "el ultimo rincdn" (OC, p. 399), the place where the sun is b o m ,

"el sol nace en tu vlentre donde encontrd su nido" ("Hijo

6/ Juan Cano Ballesta, op. cit., makes mention of the theme of "el vlentre" in the later poetry of Miguel Hemdndez and includes in the Appendix of his book a poem which revolves around this image and which had not been included in the Obras Completes: "Orilias de tu vlentre" (pp. 281-283). The author also discusses the relationship between the moon and fecundation in ancient religions and he indicates that Hemdndez introduces this in his poetry: "Las intuiciones religiosas del hombre primitivo han coincidido con las intuiciones podticas de un hombre modemo, que ha -recido ante el mismo espectdculo impresionante de la naturaleza desbordante de vida" (p. 168). 143 de la luz," OC, p. 410), and, finally, the center of all existence: "Vlentre: came central de todo cuanto existe"

("El nifio de la noche," OC, p. 426).

All of this is basically a vision of rebirth; from the womb of the woman, who becomes more and more of a goddess­ like figure of pure light, will be b o m the child that will be the poet's means of personal salvation against the destructiveness of time, as well as the more universal sym­ bol of a new world.—^ In the following poem from the

Cancionero. we find this note of a personal immortality ter be achieved through the existence of the child, but even here a cosmic element is introduced into the description:

Sangre mfa, adelante, no retrocedas.

TJ Maud Bodkin has written at length about the Rebirth archetype in her book, Archetypal Patterns in Poetry (Reprinted by Vintage Books, Inc., 1958). The author has shown how the mother image appears quite consist­ ently in poetry when the mind is thrown back on Itself "in lonely brooding." One of the many examples which she offers to support this view is the relationship between Achilles and Thetis in Homer's Iliad, where the image of the goddess-mother appears to the wrathful Achilles when he has separated himself from society and action, thus becoming alone and withdrawn. Miss Bodkin also quotes from a medical psychologist (Beatrice M. Hinkle, The Recreating of the Individual) who discusses this phenomenon from the point of view of perspectives and states the following: "When man looks outward he sees the world, when he looks inward he sees the woman and her child." (Maud Bodkin, p. 297). 144

La luz rueda en el mundo mientras td ruedas. Todo te mueve, universo de un cuerpo dorado y leve.

Herramienta es tu risa, luz que proclama la victoria del trigo sobre la grama. Rfe. Contigo veneerd siempre al tiempo que es mi enemigo. (OC, p. 381)

The cosmogonic aspect becomes increasingly more evi­ dent in the last poems, even in the well-known "Nands de la cebolla" (OC, p. 417), which Concha Zardoya has called "las mds patdticas y, a la vez, tiernisimas canciones de cuna de toda la poesia espaflola y, acaso de la poesla universal de 8/ todos los tiempos."— The personal is also fused here with the universal so that the child represents the poet's hope

for total freedom and is his guarantee of eternity, but the

former's laughter is also "la luz del mundo" and the "rival del sol":

Alondra de mi casa, rfete mucho. Es tu risa en tus ojos la luz del mundo. Riete tanto que mi alma al oirte bata el espacio. . . .

8/ Concha Zardoya, o£. cit., p. 81. 145

Es tu risa la espada mds victoriosa, vencedor de las flores y las alondras. Rival del sol. Porvenir de mis huesos y de ml amor.

The physical world is almost completely transcended in these final poems and as a consequence of this, physical violence has also disappeared. In its place we find the explosion of a transparent light and the dawning of a new cosmos springing out of the destruction or at least the absence of a previously existent physical universe. Even the titles which Hemdndez gave to these last poems are indicative of this cosmological vision: "Hijo de la luz y 9/ de la sombra" (OC, p. 409),— "Yo no quiero mas luz que tu cuerpo ante el m£o" (OC, p. 413), "Desde que el alba quiso ser alba" (OC, p. 420), !IE1 niflo de la noche" (OC, p. 425) and "Cuerpo de claridad que nada empafla" (OC, p. 426). The mythological quality of both the wife ("el alba") and the child ("el sol") in this poetry removes them from the sphere of the earthbound and the purely tangible. Miguel Hemdndez has progressively abandoned the known world, first by a

9/ An interesting analysis of this poem is offered by Juan Guerrero Zamora in his Miguel Hemdndez, poeta (op. cit.), pp. 384-389. 146 contemplative re-creation of it ("De la contemplacidn/ nace la rosa") and then by transcending it through the creation of a mythic realm:

Td eres el alba, esposa: la principal penumbra, recibes entomadas las horas de tu frente. Decidido al fulgor, pero entomado, alumbra tu cuerpo. Tus entrafias forjan el sol naciente.

Centro de claridades, la gran hora te espera en el umbral de un fuego que al fuego mismo abrasa. . . .

La gran hora del parto, la mds rotunda hora: estallan los relojes sintiendo tu alarido, se abren todas las puertas del mundo, de la aurora, y el sol nace en tu vientre donde encontrd su nido.

("Hijo de la luz")

This is no mere human birth, but is rather a cosmic one which will affect all of creation, and the figure of the wife-mother is really that of a Demiurgus or world-maker:

Nunca tan parecida tu frente al primer cielo. Todo lo abres, todo lo alegras, madre, aurora. Vienen rodando el hijo y el sol. Arcos de anhelo te impulsan. Eres madre. Sonrie. Rfe. Llora.

("Desde que el alba quiso ser alba")

Out of absence and darkness there has appeared this

luminous vision which now becomes the only reality for

Miguel Hemdndez, as he seeks the essence of things which

can never decline nor decay. The natural world which he had

exalted and with which he had so fully identified has now 147 been replaced by a mystical vision that is both pagan and

Christian in its blending of flesh and spirit:

Yo no quiero mis luz que tu cuerpo ante el m£o: claridad absolute, transparencia redonda. Limpidez cuya entrafla, como el fondo del rfo, con el tiempo se afirma, con la sangre se ahonda. . . .

No hay mis luz que tu cuerpo, no hay mis sol: todo ocaso. Yo no veo las cosas a otra luz que tu frente. La otra luz es fantasma, nada mas, de tu paso. Tu insondable mirada nunca gira al poniente.

Claridad sin posible declinar. Suma esencia del fulgor que ni cede ni abandona la cumbre. Juventud. Limpidez. Claridad. Transparencia acercando los astros mis lejanos de lumbre.

("Yo no quiero mis luz que tu cuerpo ante el mfo")

The poetry in "tono menor" of the Cancionero, with its short lines and often~delicate structure well within the popular tradition, is basically a series of probings, of searching within the darkness for the light which might illuminate the inner world that the poet is now seeking.

There is a need for Hernindez to gradually and gently create this new world out of his increasingly more tenuous rela­ tionship with the previous one he knew but which is now lost to him. This is achieved through these songs of absence which often tell in a fragmented fashion of destruction and creation simultaneously. In spite of a few examples to the 148 contrary ("Gantar" PC, p. 421, "Casida del sediento," PC, p. 417, "Nanas de la cebolla," PC, p. 417, etc.), in the last poems we again primarily note the "tono mayor" of the earlier poetry with its-more rigidly strict formal and clas­ sical structure of "serventesios alejandrinos" and the hendecasyllabic verse line, as the poet consistently describes that transparent, circular light which is pure, but which seems mainly to illuminate itself. It is not the

former light which focused on the real world, allowing cer­

tain aspects of it to stand out in sharp relief, but, rathei;

it is the essence of all light, reflecting itself and even buried In itself:

Fuera la luz en luz sepultada.

("Etema sombra" PC, p. 431)

The fluidity of the verse form with its longer lines

contributes to the description of a radiance which is dif­

fused everywhere; the poet is offering us a type of hymn to

a light which is in reality beyond that of human vision:

Cuerpo diurao, dia sobrehumano, fruto del cegador acoplamiento, de una atirea madrugada de verano con el mds inflamado firmamento.

("Cuerpo de claridad que nada empafla") 149

Ddmaso Alonso has written of a similar illumination as it appears in the Sombra del Para iso of Vicente Aleixandre and the following description of pure light could most cer­ tainly apply to what is discovered in the late poems of

Miguel Heradndez:

Si; sobre ese cansancio de la ciencia y de la conciencia, del miembro de una humanidad manchada y del pobre ser de came que se inclina ya hacia su destruccidn, se abre momentdnea, huidiza, la pura visidn de la limpidez anterior a toda la tristeza, de lo etemamente impoluto. 1 0 /

In these final poems of Hemdndez, the same affirmative quality of the earlier poetry has returned, but the language

is no longer conceptually complex nor is the syntax vio­

lently disruptive. The poet is not now attempting to present the physical world in new and startling ways; he

is offering the birth of a non-physical universe which is based less on sight than on pure imageless vision. In cos­

mic terms, this is a return to the moment of all creation, but in more intimate, personal terms, it becomes a regres­

sion to innocence for the poet himself:

Mas algo me ha empujado desesperadamente. Caigo en la madrugada del tiempo, del pasado.

10/ Ddmaso Alonso, Poetas espafloles contempordneos (op. cit.), p. 307. 150

Me arrojan de la noche ante la luz hiriente. Vuelvo a llorar desnudo, pequeflo, regresado.

(••El nifio de la noche,” PC, p. 425)

The "madrugada del tiempo,” the dawn of time, Is imme­

diately made intimate as it becomes for the poet the beginning of his own life ("/madrugadaj del pasado”). The

light still has the potential to wound which it possessed

in the early poetry (”la luz hiriente”), but it is now also

reductive, blocking out whatever may be superfluous to this new vision. The poet finds himself in a new world and he

cries out not in sorrow, but from wonder at the newness and

strangeness of it all. Miguel Hemdndez here seems to echo

the feelings of another Spanish poet of this century who

also exalted the pure light of dawn in his search for the

essence of reality:

jVuelve todo a surgir como en primera vez, Este universo es primitivo? Mejor: todo resurge en esbeltez Fara ser mds . . .

* * *

Todo es nuevo. . . Tan nuevo que nadie aun lo ha dicho.

(Jorge Guilldn : Cdntico ”Paso a la aurora1*) CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION

151 The question of violence* as theme and mode of expres­ sion* has served me as both a "punto de partida" and "punto de apoyo" for this investigation. My reason for choosing this particular aspect was originally based on the obvious importance which it had for the poet* evidenced by its con­ tinued appearance in one form or another in so much of the poetry. As I became more and more immersed in close analy­ ses of individual poems from different periods of the poet's career* I discovered significant changes in the poet's approach to violence and his reaction to it within the vari­ ous works studied. 1 was able to note* and have attempted to convey here* that Hernandez rather consistently set out to establish a particular violent mood in many poems* and that he would then work with this— inside the frame of such created violence— in ways which really constituted personal statements about his vision of the world and his sense of place in it.

My primary intention has been to locate the poet in certain "key" poems in order to discover how his position or presence in them might relate to his sense of place in the

152 153 world around him during different periods of his poetic and historical life. Rather than follow the lead of most of the previous criticism of the poetry of Miguel Hemdndez, which tended to look to the poems for corroboration of biograph­ ical information which lay outside the works, I was interested In starting from within and moving through the poetry in an attempt to discover the poetic consciousness of Miguel Hernandez at work. Thus, it should be evident from the preceding pages that I have not presented here a traditional thematic study. I have nowhere attempted to establish the frequency with which the theme of violence appears in the total poetic output of Miguel Hemdndez.

Such an approach would have necessarily required a different and even more rigorous arranging of materials (as well as a more exhaustive selection of poems) than I have offered in

this essay.

In the early poetry, as I have tried to indicate in the

first two chapters, Miguel Herndndez exalts and glorifies a

type of natural violence, as he makes his language and syn­

tax reflect the surging energy of an explosive world that

is in a state of constant becoming. In most of these early

poems, the poet can move easily from a point outside the

work to one which is located at the very center of the generally short stanzas. That is, there^Ls complete freedom

in regard to perspective or vantage point as far as the poet-in-the-poem is concerned; but we do find a highly rigid control of the structure which acts as a type of counter­ balance to this freedom. What I have termed "natural and familiar violence" can be held in check by Miguel Hernandez

in this early period as he writes poetry within the frame­ work of traditional verse forms. He thus becomes a type of

organizing force of his own variegated material in much the

same way as Nature herself is the great organizer of diverse natural phenomena. His identification with the force of

Nature in these poems causes the poetic technique to be pri­ marily a highly stylized imitation of Nature1s technique.

The control of violence in this poetry is primarily an

affirmative statement about the world and about the poet's

feelings of identification with (and power over) certain

essential aspects of it.

The description of violent activity undergoes a series

of significant imagistic and structural changes immediately

prior to and during the war years. In "El silbo de

afirmacion en la aldea," we could see how the poet created

a certain violation of nature in the poem so as to be able

to subsequently counteract it through a subdued description 155 of Its opposite. The poem clearly indicated how the poet's position had changed as he showed himself to be the victim of an impersonalized violence in an unfamiliar world. He could identify with it only as victim, and in the poem he eventually succeeds in extracting himself from its adverse

influence by presenting a familiar world in which the pos­

sibility of such chaos cannot exist. Before he accomplishes

this, however, Hemdndez places himself at the center of the poem and of the violence. From this central point, he

lashes out at the city in his attempt to extricate himself

from the wounding experience. He has, therefore, created

the scene of threatened destruction, located himself well within it, and then found the means within the poem to break

out of the confines which he has allowed the city to impose V on him.

The particular violence of the war poetry, with its

special vocabulary of mutilation and its description of an

almost cosmic horror, has the effect of further removing the

poet from the world around him, a world in which destruction

has now become the norm. The surrealistic imagery which

Hemdndez employs to capture the mood of this disintegrating

world contributes to the reader's awareness that the poet's

vantage point has undergone a change. He is struck by the 156 horror, but he now seems to survey It from a certain dis­ tance. The poet here begins his withdrawal from the world as he steps further and further back from it, and a sense of alienation becomes tied in with this action of removal from the turbulence.

The poetry of the final years continues to show this tendency to withdraw from a violence with which the poet can no longer affirmatively identify. In'an effort to find his place, to comfortably locate his "self," he begins to bring

into existence in many of his late poems, an uncontaminated universe in which he may once again (as in the early poems) become the dynamic center. In a certain way, the poetry of

Miguel Hemdndez has come full circle in that it is now highly structured and controlled; even more important, it

again presents a type of comprehensible violence in the form

of an illuminated birth of a new cosmos. The poet is not

only the organizer of this world, he is its Creator, since

it originates with him and with the "other" who is, in

reality, only an extension of himself.

It would seem, therefore, that a look at the theme of

violence in the case of Miguel Hemdndez makes it possible

to trace the movement of his poetic trajectory in a mean­

ingful way. We can constantly locate the poet and discover 157 his changing vision of the world by examining the different ways in which he deals with this subject. No claim can be made for this approach as an all-inclusive one, and it must be considered only as one means of penetrating more deeply into an important but nonetheless partial segment of the poetry of Hernandez. It does, however, synthesize much that is both characteristic of and distinctive to Miguel

Hemdndez, and it allows us to discern information about the poet which could not be obtained through a purely bio­ graphical approach. In this study, then, I have gone to the poetry itself in order to examine what Francis Noel Lees has called that "point in mental space-time" which is the poem and which cannot be discovered anywhere else:

It is a fact of our existence in time, multiple of level though it be, that the poem itself will constitute an irreducible particularity in the history of the poet, perhaps repeating known particularities of the biography, but perhaps, and very often, not; and that it will always be its own point in the succession. Criticism it is, not biography, that must establish the character of that point in mental space-time, determining what is conveyed, what kind of thing is expressed. Criticism contributes to biography, not vice versa. *

* Francis Noel Lees, "The Keys Are at the Palace," College English, XXVIII (November 1966), p. 107. APPENDIX

Sections of a letter from Miguel Hemdndez to Federico Garcia Lorca dated April 10, 1933 published in the expur­ gated form evidenced below by Maria de Gracia Ifach in her article "Federico y Miguel," Revista Nacional de Culture, Afio XXIV, No. 148-149 (Caracas, 1961), p. 102:

Perdone. Pero se ha quedado todo: prensa, poetas, amigos, tan silenciosos ante mi libro— tan alabado, - no mentirosamente, como digo, por usted, la tarde aquella murciana , que he maldecido las p . . . horas y malas en que di a leer un verso a nadie.

... Usted sabe bien que en este libro mio hay cosas que se superan dificilmente; que es un libro de formas resucitadas, renovadas; que es un primer libro y encierra en sus entrafias mds personalidad, mds valentia y mds c . . . que el de casi todos los poetas, a~los que si se les quitara la firma, se les confundiria la voz.

. . . En mi casa . . . me niegan la mitad del pan . . . les averguenza que haga versos . . . Aqui en mi huerto, en mi chiquero, aguardo respuesta feliz suya y pronta, o respuesta simplemente . . .

Letter from Federico Garcia Lorca in reply to Miguel Hemdndez. This letter was partially quoted by Concha Zardoya in her Miguel Hemdndez: Vida v Obra, p. 16, fn. 40 and subsequently published by Marie Laffranque in Bulletin Hispanique, LX, n. 3 (Juillet-Septembre, 1958), p. 383. The description of this letter appears in a

158 159

footnote which quotes from a note which Marie Laffranque received from Concha Zardoya along with the copy of the original letter: ,tEs__copia fiel del original visto en casa de Josefina Manresa /.the wife of Miguel Hemdndez/* Elche. Ndtese la falta de acentos, signos de puntuacidn y sangrfas a comienzo de cada pdrrafo. La carta estd escrita en dos cuartillas de papel corriente, ya amarillas por el tiempo. Data, como es natural, de 1933, a rafz de la aparicidn de Perito en lunas."

Mi querido poeta: No te he olvidado. Pero vivo mucho y la pluma de las cartas se me va de las manos. Me acuerdo mucho de ti porque se que sufres con esas gentes puercas que te rodean y me apeno de ver tu fuerza vital y luminosa encerrada en el corral y dandose topetazos por las paredes. Pero asi aprendes. Asi aprendes a superarte, en ese terrible aprendizaje que te esta dando la vida. Tu libro esta en el silencio, como todos los primeros libros, como mi primer libro que tanto encanto y tanta fuerza tenia. Escribe, lee, estudia. LUCHA! No seas vanidoso de tu obra. Tu libro es fuerte, tiene muchas cosas de interes y revela a los buenos ojos pas ion de hombre pero no tiene mas cojones como tu dices que los de casi todos los poetas consagrados. Calmate. Hoy se hace en Espafia la mas hermosa poesia de Europa. Pero por otra parte la gente es injusta. No se merece "Perito en Lunas" ese silencio estupido, no. Merece la atencion y el estimulo y el amor de los buenos. Ese lo tienes y lo tendras porque tienes la sangre de poeta y hasta cuando en tu carta protestas tienes enmedio de cosas brutales (que me gustan) la ternura de tu luminoso y atormentado corazon. Yo quisiera que pudieras superarte de la obsesion de esa obsesion de poeta incomprendido por otra obsesion mas generosa politica y poetica. Escribeme. Yo quiero hablar con algunos amigos para ver si se ocupan de "Perito en Lunas." Los libros de versos querido Miguel caminan may lentamente. Yo te comprendo perfectamente y te mando un abrazo mlo fraternal lleno de carifio y de camaraderia.

Federico (Escrfbeme) T/C Alcala 102

Letter from Miguel Hemdndez to Josefina Manresa, dated July 11, 1939 from the Prisidn Celular de Torrijos in Madrid: (Zardoya, oj>. cit., p. 38)

He visto a la gente que me rodea desesperarse y he aprendido a no desesperarme yo. Duermo sobre una manta de tin tirdn como de costumbre y por no perderla, y coso y lavo las mudas, aunque algunas veces se las llevan las familias de estos amigos y me las lavan y cosen ellas... En fin, que estoy casi como en un hotel de primera, sin ascensor, pero con una gran esperanza de verte... Me paso al sol todo el d£a, duchdndome a cada momento y asi evito toda clase de bichos en el cuerpo. Esta carta te la estoy escribiendo a tirones porque llueve de cuando en cuando y he de dejarla para que no caigan gotas sobre ellas y creas que son ldgrimas. Y para no mojarme el camisdn me lo pongo entre las piemas y recibo la gran ducha que cae desde el cielo... Mi cabeza estd superior: leo, escribo, pienso en ti, y no me duele.

Letter from Miguel Hemdndez to Josefina Manresa, dated July 25, 1939 from the Prisidn Celular de Torrijos in Madrid: (Zardoya, o£. cit.VPP* 38-39)

Me aburro alguna vez, eso s£. Tiene muchas horas el d£a y siempre no es posible dlstraerse. En la manta duermo muy bien, tanto que tengo fama de dormlldn, entre los demds... y eso que tenemos 161

palmo y medio de habitacidn por cabeza y cuerpo, y para volverse del otro lado hay que pedir permiso a los vecinos... En el lecho, sobre ml cabeza, que da con el techo, no sd si porque he crecldo o porque ha crecldo poco el techo, he pintado un caballo, como esos que te mando a todo galope, y colgado un pdjaro de papel con este letrero: "Estatua voladora de la libertad". Espero que el caballo y ella, a pesar de todo, me traerian, nos traerian la buena suerte pronto.

Letter from Migtiel Hemdndez to Josefina Manresa, dated August 3, 1939 from the Prisidn Celular de Torrijos in Madrid: (Zardoya, oj>. cit., p. 39)

Por no perder la costumbre mia de andar, que tanto me gusta, sierapre estoy patio arriba, patio abajo y rompo mds alpargatas que todos los presos juntos. Ya llevo cuatro pares, y eso que procuro pisar lo menos fuerte posible... Esta noche o mafiana tengo que coser mis trapitos, y me gustaria que vieras los calzoncillos cosidos con hilo verde y los camisones con hilo verde tambidn. Parecen banderas italianas mds que prendas de vestir...

Letter from Miguel Hemdndez to Josefina Manresa, dated September 12, 1939 from the Prisidn Celular de Torrijos in Madrid: (Zardoya, oj>. cit., p. 39)

Estos dias me los he pasado cavilando sobre tu situacidn, cada d£a mds dificil. El olor de la cebolla que comes me llega hasta aqui y mi nifto se sentird indignado de mamar y sacar zumo de cebolla en vez de leche. Para que lo consueles te mando esas coplillas que le he hecho ya que para nd no hay otro quehacer que escribiros a vosotros o desesperarme. Prefiero lo primero y asi no hago mds que eso, ademds de lavar y coser con rauchisima seriedad y soltura, como si en toda mi vida no hubiera hecho otra cosa. 162

Tambidn paso mis buenos ratos expulgdndome, que famllla menuda no me falta nunca, y a veces la crfo robusta y grande como el garbanzo. Todo se acabard a fuerza de rlfla y paciencia, o ellos, los piojos, acabardn conmigo. Pero son demaslada poca cosa para ml, tan vallente como siempre, y aunque fueran como elefantes estos blchos que quleren llevarse ml sangre, los harfa desaparecer del mapa de ml cuerpo. fPobre cuerpo.' Entre sarna, plojos, chinches y toda clase de animales, sin libertad, sin ti, Josefina, y sin ti, Manolillo de mi alma, no sabe a ratos qud postura tomar, y al fin, toma la de la esperanza que no se pierde nunca.

Letter from Miguel Hemdndez written in the prison of Orihuela, undated (he was imprisoned here on September 29, 1939) and was, according to Concha Zardoya, "una carta clandestina": (Zardoya, op. cit., p. 41)

Me siento aqul mucho peor que en Madrid. All! nadie, ni los que no reciblan nada, pasaban esta hambre que se pasa aquf, y no se vefan por tanto las caras y las cosas y las enfermedades que en este edificio. A nuestros paisanos les lnteresa mucho hacerme notar el mal corazdn que tienen, y lo estoy experimentando desde que ca£ en manos de ellos. No me perdonardn nunca los sefioritos que haya puesto mi boca, o mi mucha inteligencia, mi poco o mi mucho corazdn, desde luego dos cosas mds grandes que todos ellos juntos, al servicio del pueblo de una manera franca y noble. Ellos preferfan que fuera un sinverguenza. Ni lo han conseguido ni lo conseguirdn. Mi hijo heredard de su padre, no dinero: honra. Pero no esa honrilla que se consigue a fuerza de mentir y seguir la corriente de la peor gente disfrazada de mejor... Letter from Miguel Hemindez to Josefina Manresa, dated February 5, 1940 from the Prisidn de Conde de Toreno in Madrid: (Zardoya, oj>. cit., p. 42)

Hace varias noches que han dado las ratas en pa sear por mi cuerpo mien tr as duermo. La otra noche me despert£ y tenia una al lado de la boca. Esta mafiana he sacado otra de una manga del jersey, y todos los dias me quito bofiigas suyas de la cabeza. Vidndome la cabeza cagada por las ratas me digo: jqu£ poco vale uno ya! Hasta las ratas se suben a ensuciar la azotea de los pensamientos. Esto es lo que hay de nuevo en mi vida: ratas. Ya tengo ratas, piojos, pulgas, chinches, sarna. Este rincdn que tengo para vivir ser£ muy pronto un parque zooldgico, o mejor dicho, una casa de fieras...

CONTEMPLAD...

Si querdis el goce de vision tan grata que la mente a creerlo terca se resista; si quer£is en una blonda catarata de color y luces anegar la vista;

^i querdis en imbitos tan maravillosos como en los que en sueflos la alta mente yerra revolar, en estos versos milagrosos contemplad mi pueblo, contemplad mi tierra.

Que un cuadro de tantos puros horizontes, raras hermosuras y soberbias galas, otear£is alzados a los magnos montes de la fantasia que os nacer£n alas.

Y en un vuelo solo, bravo y estupendo ganardis las nubes con el viento en guerra, y entre sus vapores estardis bebiendo pozos de hermosura... jcontemplad mi tierra.' Una sierra aurffera de un lado la apoya y las ruinas muestra de un viejo castillo; una huerta espl£ndida de verdor la enrolla y un r£o de perlas si£mbrala y de brillo,

y como un acero de descomunal dimension la corta corvo y homicida; y palmar egregio y un regio rosal brota en cada punto de la inmensa herIda...

Dentro de la huerta que con mil rosarios de inflamadas rosas lldnanla de efluvios, yace, salpicada con mil campanarios de cien monasterios de altos rasgos rubios.

Campanarios de oro que por las mafianas, cuando el alba virgen sobre el iter arde, nuncios de los d£as, vuelcan sus campanas que no m£s se duermen al rodar la tarde.

Campanarios £ureos que en fingidas pomas de granito ocultan nidos de avestruces, y donde sus picos funden las palomas que al hender el cielo son aladas cruces.

Barrios pintorescos con olor a establo sdrcanla en confuso laberinto ameno, y plazuelas blancas con algiSn retab lo de una Virgen Candida o un Cristo moreno.

Hondos callejones y £speras callejas con el brujo encanto de los andaluces, porque tienen moras y floridas rejas, sombras transparentes, y furiosas luces.

Y porque en las rejas tienen muy galanas hembras de ojos negros y de bocas fresas: con el fuego en ellos de las sevillanas, con la gracia en ellas de las cordobesas.

Hembras que salmodian ldnguidos cantares mientras por sus manos rueda la costura; que a claveles huelen, a nardos y azahares y de sus vergeles tienen la frescura. Hembras que amorosas bafian en las brlsas de las frescas noches pomos de albahacas; y que tan sonoras brdtanles las rlsas como de una fiesta las potentes tracas.

Hembras que, cuando aman, fuentes de temura son; dulces panales de sabores fuertes; y aman con tal brfo, con tanta bravura que el amor robarles no logran mil muertes.

Y que se envenenan de melancolfa si a la luz opaca de la lima vleja que en las calles llueve, ven la blzarrla del doncel amado cabe de otra reja.

{Contemplad ml tierra...I M^glcos jardines de belleza henchidos, verdes la clrcundan; mrfsicas la ofrecen pliimeos clarines; flores, resplandores y aromas la inundan.

Tfpicos paseos no en sllenclos parcos; rotos paredones con enredaderas de azulados cilices y con confcos arcos hechos con los brazos de £rabes palmeras.

Lfrlcas acequlas que el r£o brlllante lanza por ocultos ldbregos caminos a la ablerta huerta, mientras retumbante cae en cascadas y hace retronar mo linos.

Clelo tan hermoso que de terciopelo, de crlstales lfmpldos y turqu£ parece; cielo-maravilla, cielo-asombro, clelo que como ascua viva do oro resplandece.

Sol de gloria y trlunfo, sol soberanos llamarazos £gneos que mlrar aterra, y ensofiante ambiente... {Contemplad humanos' jAh£ tennis el cuadro. . . {Contemplad ml tierra.'

(Destellos, No. 1, Orihuela, 15-11-1930) BIBLIOGRAPHY

Works of Miguel Hemdndez in Various Editions *

Perito en lunas. Marcia: Ediciones Sudeste, 1933 (Coleccidn "Varietas").

Perito en lunas* Poemas de adolescencia. Otros poemas. Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1963 (Biblioteca Contempordnea).

Quidn te ha visto y quidn te ve y sotnbra de lo que eras (Auto Sacramental). Madrid: Ediciones del Arbol, 1934 (Cruz y raya, Nos. 16-18).

El rayo que no cesa. Madrid: Ediciones Hdroe, 1936.

El rayo que no cesa y otros poemas (1934-1936)• Prdldgo de Rafael Alberti. Buenos Aires: Editorial Schapire, 1942 (Coleccidn "Rama de Oro").

El rayo que no cesa. Prdlogo de Josd Maria de Cossio. Buenos Aires and Madrid: Espasa Calpe (Coleccion "Austral," No. 908). a) 1? edicidn - Buenos Aires, 1949. b) if edicidn - Buenos Aires, 1949 (December 30). c) 3? edicidn - Madrid, 1959. d) 4? edicidn - Madrid, 1966.

El rayo que no cesa. Viento del pueblo. El silbo vulnerado (Imagen de tu huella). (Otros poemas). Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1963.

* This list, with slight modifications, is taken from the bibliographical article by Antonio Odriozola. See Part III (Recent Essays and Articles Consulted) below. 166 167

Vlento del pueblo* Poesia en la guerra. Valencia: Ediciones Socorro Rojo, 1937.

& f Vlento del pueblo. Poesia en la guerra. 2. edicion. Prdlogo de Elvio Romero. Buenos Aires: Editorial Lautaro, 1956.

El labrador de mds aire (Teatro). Madrid-Valencia: Editorial Nuestro Pueblo, 1937.

Teatro en la guerra. Madrid-Valencia: Editorial Nuestro Pueblo, 1937.

Sino saner lento y otros poemas. La Habana: Imp. M. Altolaguirre, 1939.

Seis poemas indditos y nueve mds. Alicante: Grdficas Gutenberg, 1951.

Cancionero v romancero de ausencias. Prdlogo de Elvio Romero. Buenos Aires: Editorial Lautaro, 1958.

Cancionero v romancero de ausencias. El hombre Acecha. Ultimos Poemas. Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1963.

Dentro de luz y otras prosas. Madrid: Ediciones Arion, 1957.

Los hilos de la piedra (Drama). Buenos Aires: Ediciones Quetzal, 1959.

Antologia podtica. Seleccidn y notas de Francisco M. Marin. a) Orihuela: Aura, 1951. b) 2? edicidn aumentada - Orihuela, 1967.

Los me.jores versos de Miguel Hemdndez. Seleccidn de Simdn Latino. Buenos Aires: Editorial Nuestra Amdrica, 1958.

Obras Completas. Edicidn ordenada por Elvio Romero. Prdlogo de Maria de Gracia Ifach. Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1960 (Extensive Bibliography on pp. 963-971). 168

Antologia. Seleccion y prdlogo de Marla de Gracia Ifach. Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada - three editions. a) 1960 (Coleccidn "Poetas de ayer y hoy"). b) 1960 (Biblioteca Contempordnea). c) 1966 (Biblioteca Cldsica y Contempordnea).

Poemas. Seleccidn de Josefina Manresa (the widow of Miguel Hemdndez) and Josd Luis Cano. Barcelona: Plaza y Janes, 1964.

Poeslas. Seleccidn e Introduceidn de Jacinto-Luis GuerefSa. Madrid: Editorial Taurus, 1967.

II. Important Studies on Miguel Hemdndez

Cano Ballesta, Juan. La poesia de Miguel Hemdndez. Madrid: Gredos, 1962 (Extensive Bibliography on pp. 287-295).

Guerrero Zamora, Juan. Noticia sobre Miguel Hemdndez. Madrid: Cuademos de Politics y Literatura, 1951.

Guerrero Zamora, Juan. Miguel Hemdndez. poeta. Madrid: Coleccidn"El Grifon," 1955.

Puccini, Dario. Miguel Hemdndez. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1962.

Romero, Elvio. Miguel Hemdndez. destino v poesia. Buenos Aires, Editorial Losada, 1958.

Zardoya, Concha. Miguel Hemdndez: vida v obra. New York: The Hispanic Institute, 1955 (Extensive Bibliography on pp. 98-102).

III. Recent Essays and Articles on Miguel Hemdndez (Not Included in Previous Bibliographies)

Angeles, Josd. "La poesia de Miguel Hemdndez," Duquesne Hispanic Review, III (1964), pp. 23-33. 169

Batra, Agustl. "Los temas de la vlda y de la muerte en la poesia de Antonio Machado, Garcia Lorca y Miguel Hemdndez," Cuademos Americanos, Mum. 124 (septiembre/octubre, 1962), pp. 191-212.

Cosslo, Josd Marla de. "Miguel, en la memoria," La Estafeta Literaria, num. 366 (Madrid, 5 de novlembre de 1967), p. 7.

Couffon, Claude. Orihuela et Miguel Hemdndez. Paris: Centre de Recherches de 1'Institute d'Etudes Hispaniques, 1963.

Gulldn, Ricardo. I!E1 rayo de Miguel," Sur, No. 294 (1965), pp. 86-97.

Ifach, Marla de Gracia. "Federico y Miguel," Revista Nacional de Cultura. XXIV, No. 148-149 (Caracas, 1961), pp. 98-106.

Odriozola, Antonio. "A los veinticinco aftos de la r muerte de Miguel Hemdndez - Breve repaso a la bibliografia del poeta," Insula, Afio XXII, Ndms. 248- 249 (julio-agosto de 1967), p. 12.

Ramos, Vicente. "Ramon Sijd y Miguel Hemdndez, tdndem de amistad y poesia," La Estafeta Literaria, ndm. 366 (Madrid, 5 de novlembre de 1967), pp. 10-11.

Valente, Josd Angel. "Miguel Hemdndez, poesia y realidad," Insula, Afio XX, Ndms. 224-225 (julio- agosto, 1965).

Zardoya, Concha. "La tdcnica metafdrica en la poesia espafiola contempordnea," Cuademos Americanos, NiSm. 116 (mayo/junio, 1961), pp. 258-281.

IV. Recent Translations of Works by Miguel Hemdndez (since 1960).

Guerrefia, Jacinto-Luis. Miguel Hemdndez (Translations into French), Paris: Editions Sdghers, 1963. 170

"Homage to Miguel Hemdndez," (Translations of several poems, a letter from Federico Garcia Lorca to Miguel Hemdndez and an interview between Robert Bly and Pablo Neruda, all into English), The Sixties, Number 9 (Spring, 1967), pp. 2-42.

Merton, Thomas. In preparation. Translations of a group of poems by Miguel Hemdndez into English to be published by New Directions.

V. General Works Consulted

Abrams, M. H. The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and Critical Tradition. New York, 1958.

Alonso, Ddmaso. Poetas espafloles contempordneos. Madrid, 1958.

Auden, W. H. The Enchafhd Flood. New York, 1950.

Berger, Harry. "Biography as Interpretation, Interpretation as Biography," College English. Vol. 28, No. 2 (November, 1966), pp. 113-125.

Blanco Aguinaga, Carlos. "Emilio Prados, vida y obra," Revista Hispdnica Modema, XXVI, Nums. 3-4 (julio-octubre, 1960).

Blanco Aguinaga, Carlos. Unamuno, tedrico del lenguai e. Mdxico, 1954.

Bodkin, Maud. Archetypal Patterns in Poetry. New York: Vintage Books, 1958.

Bousofio, Carlos. La poesia de Vicente Aleixandre. Madrid, 1950.

Bowra, C. M. Poetry and Politics. Cambridge, 1966.

Bowra, C. M. The Creative Experiment. Oxford, 1948.

Cemuda, Luis. Estudios sobre poesfa espaftola c ontempordnea. Madrid, 1957. 171

Chevallier, Marie. "Tentative d*explication de texte: 1Perito en lunas,1" Les Langues Ndo-latines, No. 150 (Paris, juin, 1959), pp. 38-62.

Cohen, J. M. Poetry of This Age. London, 1960.

Eastman, Max. Enjoyment of Poetry. New York, 1939.

Eliot, T. S. The Three Voices of Poetry. New York, 1954.

Englekirk, J. E. Edgar Poe in Hispanic Literature. New York, 1934.

Ferrater Mora, Josd. Ortega y Gasset. London, 1956.

Ford, Hugh D. A Poet's War: British Poets and the Spanish Civil War. Philadelphia, 1965.

Genestier, Paul. The Poet and the Machine. Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1961.

Gonzdlez Maela, Joaquin. La realidad y Jorge Guilldn. Madrid, 1962.

Guilldn, Jorge. Lenguaje y poesia. Madrid, 1962.

Hartman, Geoffrey H. The Unmediated Vision. New York, 1966.

Hoffman, Frederick J. The Mortal No: Death and the Modem Imagination. Princeton, 1964.

Langbaum, Robert. The Poetry of Experience. London, 1957.

Lewis, C. S. The Personal Heresy. London, 1965 (first published in 1939).

Lowry, Nelson Jr. Baroque Lyric Poetry. New Haven, 1961.

Torre, Guillermo de. La metamorfosis de Proteo. Buenos Aires, 1956. 172

Ulibarri, Sabine R. El nrundo portico de Juan Ram<5n. Madrid, 1962.

Vivanco, Luis Felipe. Introdnccidn a la poesfa espaftola contemn ordnea. Madrid, 1957.

Weil, Simone. The Iliad or the Poem of Force. Wallingford, Pennsylvania: Pendle Hill, 1967.

/