Selected Writings (Dario, Ruben) (38 page)

“Año nuevo”
(New Year) is a calendric decoration, animated, one might say, by a breath of theology.

“Sinfonía en gris mayor”
(Symphony in Gray Major) entails the inevitable memory of magical Théo, exquisite Gautier, and his
“Symphonie en blanc majeur.”
Mine is annotated
“d’après nature,”
under the sun of my tropical native land. I have seen those stagnant waters, the burning coasts, the old sea-wolves who loaded wood for dye into schooners and brigantines and set sail for Europe. Taciturn or jolly drinkers would be singing at dusk, on the aft deck, accompanying their Normandy or Breton airs on the accordion, while the nearby woods, the estuaries ringed with mangroves, exhaled warm, malarial breezes.

“Epitalamio bárbaro”
(Barbarian Epithalamion) is a song, on the lyre, to the loving triumph of a great Apollonian. The “Response” to Verlaine proves my admiration and cordial fervor for “
pauvre
Lelian,” whom I met in Paris in his sad and saddening Bohemian days, and I show the two faces of his panic soul: that which is turned to the body and that which is turned to the soul; that which turns to the laws of human nature and that which turns to God and the Catholic mysteries—in parallel. In
“Canto de la sangre”
(Song of the Blood), there is a series of symbolic correspondences and equivalences under the enigma of the sacred liquor that sustains the vitality of our mortal bodies.

The title of the following part of the volume, “Archaeological Recreations,” indicates its content. These are echos and manners of past times, and a demonstration, for my disconcerted and misguided detractors, that in order to achieve reform, in order to achieve the modernity that I have undertaken to achieve, I have needed to study the classics and the primitives. Thus, in
“Friso”
(Frieze) I take up elegant
vers libre,
whose last plausible use in Spain occurs in Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo’s famed “Epistle to Horace.” There is more architecture and sculpture than music in it, more brush than string or flute. The same can be said for “Palimpsest,” in which the poem’s rhythm approaches the reverberations of Latin meters. In
“El reino interior”
(The Inner Kingdom), one feels the influence of English poetry, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, some of the coryphaei of French Symbolism. (Good God! In one line I have even alluded to Powell’s “Glossary”! . . . )
“Cosas del Cid”
(On El Cid) contains a legend narrated in prose by Barbey d’Aurevilly and continued by me in verse.

The
“Decires, leyes y canciones”
¹¹
renew old poetic and stanzaic forms; thus, I express new loves in verses composed and arranged in the manner of Johan de Duenyas, Johan de Torres, Valtierra, and Santa Fe, with unusual and suggestive verbal compression and rhythmic combinations that yield a graceful, euphonious result. . . .

And to conclude: In the series of sonnets titled
“Las ánforas de Epicuro”
(Epicurus’ Amphorae)—with one “Seascape” slipped in—there is a sort of exposition of philosophical ideas: in
“La espiga”
(The Stalk), the concentration of a religious ideal in Nature; in
“La fuente”
(The Fountain), self-knowledge and the exaltation of personhood; in
“Palabras de la Satiresa”
(Words of the Female Satyr), the conjunction of praise to both Pan and Apollo (which Moreas, as a clever censor of mine has made clear, had prefigured—and so much better!); in
“La anciana”
(The Old Lady), an allegorical affirmation of survival; in “
Ama tu ritmo
. . .” (Love Your Rhythm . . . ), once again the exposition of the inner potency of the individual; in
“A los poetas risueños”
(To Cheery Poets), a pleasure, an impetus that leads to gay, comforting clarity, with the exultance of hymns to joy; in
“La hoja de oro”
(The Golden Leaf), the arcana of autumnal sadness; in “
Marina”
(Seascape) a bitter true page from my life; in “Syrinx” (for the sonnet that appears in other editions erroneously under the title “Daphne” should be called “Syrinx”), I paganize as I sing the spiritual concretion of metamorphosis.
“La Gitanilla”
¹²
is a rhymed anecdote. I then laud an ancient, delicious Spanish zither-player; I cast forth a song of encouragement and spirit, I reveal my dreams.

And that is the nature of this book, which I love intensely yet delicately—not so much as a work of my own as because when it appeared a whole mountain range of poetry, inhabited by magnificent young spirits, was awakened in our continent. And our dawn was reflected in the sunny old man.

If
Azure
. . . symbolizes the beginning of my spring and
Profane Prose Pieces
my spring full blown, then
Songs of Life and Hope
contains the saps and essences of my autumn.

I have read praise to autumn (I no longer remember by what hand), but who better than Hugo has sung that praise with the profound enchantment of his forest of lyrics? Autumn is the season of reflection. Nature communicates her philosophy wordlessly, with her pale leaves, her taciturn skies, her melancholy glooms. Our daydreaming is impregnated with reflection. With its peaceful inner light, recollection illuminates the sweetest secrets of our memory. We breathe, as though it were a magical air, the perfume of bygone roses. Hope exists, but its smile is a discreet one. Love acquires that same sweet gravity. This was not understood by many, for when
Songs of Life and Hope
appeared, many lamented the absence of the auroral tone of
Azure . . .
and the princess who was sad in
Profane Prose Pieces
and the eighteenth-century capriccios, my beloved, high-born Versailleings, the gallant, precious madrigals, and all the rest that in its time helped renew the taste and forms and vocabulary of our poetry, which had been straitened within the stiff pedagogical-classical poetics of the Renaissance, or, at best, had clung to the prosaico-philosophical (or baritone and bell-like) formulas of masters who, however illustrious, were nonetheless limited. . . .

By the time I wrote
Songs of Life and Hope
I had explored not just the field of foreign poetics but also the ancient poets, the work—whether complete or fragmentary—of the primitives of Spanish poetry, and I had found there a richness of expression and grace that will be sought in vain even among the immensely celebrated poets of centuries nearer to our own. To all this, add a spirit of modernity that I found fitted me perfectly in my polyglot and cosmopolitan incursions. In a few introductory words and the hendecasyllabic epigraph, I explained the nature of the new book. The history of a young-manhood filled with sadness and disappointment, despite the springlike cheer; the struggle for existence from the beginning, with no family support, no aid from a friendly hand; the sacred and terrible fever for the lyre; the worship of enthusiasm and sincerity against the snares and betrayals of the world, the flesh, and the devil; the dominant, invincible power of the senses in an idiosyncratic character warmed by the tropical sun in mixed Spanish and Chorotegan or Nagrandano blood; the seed of Catholicism juxtaposed against a tempestuous pagan instinct and complicated by the psycho-physical need for thought-modifying stimulants, dangerous combustibles, suppressors of disturbing perspectives, but which put at risk the cerebral machine and the vibrating tunic of nerves. I had recovered from my optimism. A Spaniard of the Americas and an American of Spain, I sang, electing as my instrument the Greek and Latin hexameter and placing my faith and trust in the renaissance of old Hispania in my own homeland, the renaissance of the other side of the ocean in the chorus of nations that in the emotional scale act as counterweights to the strong, daring race to the North. I chose the hexameter because it was in the Greek and Latin tradition and because I believe, after studying the matter, that in our language,
malgré
the opinion of so many scholars, there are, indeed, long and short syllables, and that what is lacking is a deeper and more musical analysis of our prosody. . . .

Our alexandrine rendered more flexible, then, by the application of what Hugo, Banville, and later Verlaine and the Symbolistes brought to French, it was cultivated, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically, in Spain and the Americas. One must note here that the Portuguese had already benefited by these reforms.

There is, as I have said, a great deal of Hispanicism in this book of mine. Whether the optimist in me was making his salute, or I was addressing King Oscar of Sweden or President Roosevelt, or celebrating the Swan or evoking anonymous figures from centuries past, or making Diego Velázquez or Luis de Góngora speak, or praising Cervantes or Goya, or writing the “Litany of Our Lord Don Quixote”—Hispania forever! I had already lived for some time and my ancestral past had been reborn in me. . . .

The title—
Songs of Life and Hope
—though it corresponds in large part to the contents of the volume, is not fully sympathetic to certain notes of disillusion, disappointment, doubt, and a degree of fear of the unknown, the Beyond.

“Los tres reyes mago”
(“The Three Wise Men”) establishes my absolute deism. In
“Salutación a Leonardo”
—written in French
vers libre
. . .—there are games and enigmas of art that can only be understood, naturally, if one has undergone certain initiations. In
“Pegaso”
(“Pegasus”), the value of spiritual energy, the will to creation, is proclaimed.
“A Roosevelt”
(“To Roosevelt”) preaches the solidarity of the Spanish-American soul in the face of the possible imperialist incursions of the men of the North; the following poem considers poetry as a special gift, a divine gift, and points to the lighthouse of hope in the face of mean democracy and terrifying equality. In
“Canto de esperanza”
(“Canto to Hope”) I turn my eyes to the immense splendor of the figure of Christ, and call out for his return as a salvation from the disasters of an earth poisoned by men’s passions, and farther on I once more give a glimpse of the meditative philosophers, the poets who undergo transfiguration and the final victory. “Helios” proclaims Idealism, and, always, infinite omnipotence. “Spes” ascends to Jesus, who, “against cruel hell,” is asked to bestow “a grace to purify us of wrath and lechery.”
“Marcha triunfal”
is a “triumph” of decoration and music. There is a part titled “Swans.” Love for this beautiful symbolic bird since ancient times—
has made both me and the Spaniard Marquina the butt of censure by one Spanish-American critic, who over the white bird Leda prefers the owl—a dark fowl, though Minervan. (Though I daresay Sthenelus’ son [Cycnus] was happier in his metamorphosis
¹⁴
than Ascalaphus was in his.
¹⁵
And allow me to note, in my defense, that in several places I affirm the owl’s wisdom. . . .) In
“Retrato”
(“Portrait”), I present in evocative canvases figures of grandeur, and of Hispanic character, from the past, four gentlemen and an abbess. Then I rhyme the spring’s influence in a romance which I suddenly truncate. In
“La dulzura del Angelus”
(“The Sweetness of the Angelus”) there is a kind of mystical dream, and I present belief in the Deity and the purification of the soul, and even Nature itself, as a true refuge, through the intimate grace of prayer.

“Tarde del trópico”
(“Tropical Evening”) was written many, many years ago, when for the first time I felt under my feet the vast waters of the ocean during my voyage to Chile. At that time, the demigod Hugo was everything to me in poetry. The “Nocturnes,” on the other hand, speak of a later culture; my spirit had now been anointed by the great “humanists,” and thus I exteriorized in transparent, simple, musical verses (inner music, that is) the secrets of my embattled existence, the blows of destiny, the inevitabilities of fate. There may be too much despair in some places; the blame lies only with the marked instances in which a hand from out the darkness plucks the martyrizing strings of our nerves. And with the truths of my life: “a vast pain and small cares,” the “voyage to a vague Orient on glimpsed ships,” the “grains of prayers that flowered in blasphemies,” the “confusions of the swan among the pools,” the “false evening azure of unloved dissipation. . . .” Yes, more than once I thought I could be happy, had not “rude destiny” interposed. Prayer has always saved me, and faith, but I have also been attacked by the forces of malignity, which have created in my understanding hours of doubt and anger. But have not the greatest saints endured worse aggressions? I have slogged through mudholes. I can say, like the vigorous Mexican,
¹⁶
“There are plumages that cross the swamp and are not sullied; my plumage is one of those.”

As for that “unloved dissipation,” would I have wasted so many hours of my life in white nights, the artificial and exorbitant euphoria of alcohol, the wasting-away of a too-robust youth, if fortune had smiled upon me and if another person’s caprice and sad error had not kept me, after a cruelty of death, from the formation of a home? . . .

And let us give thanks to the Supreme Reason that I am able to exclaim, with the line that opens this book, “If I did not fall, it was because God is good!” In the
“Canción de otoño en
primavera”
(“Song of Autumn in Spring”) I bid farewell to the years of youth in a melancholy sonata which, if one must offer comparisons, has a melody like a sentimental echo of Musset. It is, of all my poems, the one that has conquered the greatest number of soft and fraternal hearts.

“Trébol”
(“Three-Leaf Clover”) is an homage to Spanish glories; in “Charitas,” a theological aspiration sends up incense to the most sublime of virtues. In the following lines,
“¡Oh,
terremoto mental!”
(“Oh Mental Earthquake!”), the menace of maleficent powers passes, and farther on there is talk of the danger of the eternal enemy, the lovely Varona who offers us the apple. . . . “Filosofia” addresses the truth of the natural world and divine reason against ugly, harmful appearances; in “Leda” I sing once more the glories of the Swan;
“Divina Psiquis”
(“Divine Psyche”) tends, in its lyrical whirlwind, toward the ultimate consolation, the consolation of Christianity. The
“Soneto de trece versos”
(“Sonnet of Thirteen Lines”), whose misunderstood meaning has rendered more than one critic of not particularly malicious intent a babbling fool, is a game,
à la
Mallarmé, of suggestion and fantasy. The lines that follow it elevate moral miseries to ideality, and lighten their burden. Then comes a paternal recollection, a hymn to the mysterious enchantment of the female, a song of praise to the Great One-Handed, a madrigal of occasion, a song to the always attractive (to me) Thalassa, a philosophical meditation, followed by others: a biblical silhouette, allegories and symbols.