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Preface
In El area y Ia lira (Mexico, 1 956), published many years ago,
I tried to answer three questions about poetry . Wha t is a poem?
What do poems say? How do poems commu nicate? This book is
an amplification of the response I tried to make to the third of
these questions. A poem is an object fashioned out of the
language , rhy thms, beliefs, and obsessions of a poet and a
society. I t is the product of a d efi nite history and a definite
society, but i ts historical mode of existence is contrad i ctory .
The p oem is a d evice which produces anti-history , even though
this may not be the poet 's intention. The poetic process inverts
and converts the passage of time ; the poem does not stop time
it contradicts and transfigures i t . Whether we are talking abou t
a baroque sonnet, a popular epic, or a fable , within its confines
time p asses d i fferently from time in history or in what we call
real life . Contradiction between history and poetry is found in
all socie ties, but only in the modern age is i t so manifest.
Response to and awareness o f the discord between society and
poetry has been the central, often secre t, theme of poe try since
the Romantic era . In this book I have tried to describe, from
the perspective of a Spanish American poet, the modern poetic
movement and i ts contradictory relationships with what we
call " the modern . "
Preface
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Preface
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Prefa ce
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Preface
Contents
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Revolution/Eros/Meta-Irony
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Contents
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The title of this chap ter, " A Trad ition against I tself, " at first
seems a contradi cti on . Can "tradition" be that which severs the
chain and interrup ts the continuity? Could this nega tio n
become a tradition without denying itself? The tradition of
"A
are more witty than the Ancien ts-not that they are d i fferent.
He enthuses over the works of certain of his contemporaries,
not be cause their au thors have abandoned an older sty le,
but because they provide new a nd surprising combinations of
the same elements. Nei ther Gongora nor Gracian was revo
lu tionary in the sense in which we use the word today ; they did
not se t out to change the ideas of beauty of their time -although
Gongora actu ally d id For them n,ovelty was synonym ous not
with change b u t wi th\am azement .) To find this strange marriage
of the aesthetics of surprise and
to
but it has always been tha t which is different, apart from and
foreign to the reigning tradition, a singulari ty which b ursts into
the present and twists its course in an u nexpected dire ction .
It is controversial oddness, active opposition . We are seduced
by the new not because of its newness but because of its
differen tness. This differentness is negation-the knife which
splits time in two : before and now.
The very old can be adopted b y modernity if it rej ects the
tradition of the momen t and proposes a differen t one . Conse
crated by the same controversial forces as the new , what is
very old is not a past but a beginning . Our passion for contra
dictions re suscitates i t , breathes life into i t , and makes i t
o u r contemporary . M odern art a nd literature consist o f c on
tinuous discovering of the very old and distant , from the
popular Germanic poetry uncovered by Herder to the Chinese
poetry recreated by Pound , frmn the Orient of Delacroix to
the art of the Sou th Seas so loved by Breton . The appearance
of all these paintings, sculptures, and poems on our aesthetic
horizon marked a break , a change . These hundred- and thou
sand-year-old novelties interrup ted tradition time and time
again ; the history of modern art is linked wi th the resurrection
of the art forms of vanished civilizations. As manifestations of
the aesthetics of surprise, b u t even more as momentary incarna
tions of cri tical negation, the products of archaic art and of
distan t c ivilizations fit naturally into the tradition of d iscon
tinuity . They are among the masks of modernity .
The modern tradition erases d icho tomies between the a ncient
and the contemporary and b e tween the far-distant and the
near-to-h and . The acid dissolving these differences is criticism.
process in
most rem arkable fact about con temporary Mexico is the persist
ence of ways of thinking and feeling that belong to the colonial
era, or even the pre-Hispanic world . The same is true o f art
and li terature . During the last cen tury and a half there have
been many changes and aesthetic revolu tions, but one and the
same principle inspired the German and English Romantics,
the French Symbolists, and the cosmopolitan vanguard of the
first half of the twen tie th century. On various occasions
Frederick Schlegel defi ned romantic poetry , love , and irony
in terms not very differen t from those which , a cen tury later,
Andre B reton u sed in speaking abou t the eroticism , imagination,
and humor of the Surrealists. I nfluences? Coincidences?
Neither : merely the persistence of certain ways of thinking,
seeing, a nd feeli ng.
D oubts about the reality of "the acceleration of history" grow
stronger if, instead of turning to the recent past for ex amples,
we compare distant ages or d i fferent civiliza tions. Georges
Dumezil has shown the existence of an ideology comm on to all
Indo-Eu ropean peoples, from I ndia and I ran to the Ce l ti c and
Germanic worlds, an ideology whi ch resisted and still resists
the double erosion of geographic and historical isolation.
Separa ted by thousands of miles and by thousand s of years,
the Indo-Europeans still preserve the remains of a triparti te
conception of the world . I am convinced that something similar
is tru e of the M ongolian p eoples , in Asia as well as in America ;
that world is waiting for a Dumezil to show its profou nd unity.
Even before Benjamin Lee Whorf, who was the first to formu
late systematically the contrast b e tween the mental stru ctures
underlying the Europeans and those of the Hopi , some
they live with and in the m . Once a man realizes that he belongs
to a tradition , he knows implicitly that he is different from
that trad ition ; sooner or later this knowledge impells him to
question , examine , and some times deny i t . Our age is d istin
guished from other epochs and other societies by the image we
have made of tim e . F or us time is the sub stance of history,
time unfolds in history. The meaning of " the modern tradition"
emerges more clearly : i t is an expression of our histori c con
sciousness. It is a criticism of the past , and it is an a ttemp t,
repeate d several times throughout the last two centuri es, to
found a tradition on the only principle immune to cri ticism ,
because i t is the condition and the consequence of criticism:
change, history .
The relation between past, present , and fu ture differs i n each
civilization . In primitive societies the temporal archetype,
model for the present and fu ture , is the p ast --not the recent
past , b u t an immemorial p ast lying bey ond all pasts, at the
beginning of the beginning . Like a wellspring, this past of pasts
flows constantly , runs i nto and becomes part of the present ;
i t is the only actuality which really cou nts. Social life is not
histori c b u t ritualistic; it is made up not of a successio n of
changes but of the rhythmic repetition of the timeless past.
Always present, this past protects society from change by serv
ing as a model for imitation and by being periodically actualized
in ritual. The past has a double na ture : it is an immutable time ,
impervious to change ; i t is not what happened once , b u t what
always h appens. The past escapes both accident and contin
gen cy ; a l th ough it is time, it is also the negation of time. I t
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again. The model is still the past before all eras, the happy time
of the beginning, governed by the harm ony of heaven and
earth . B u t i t is a past which possesse s the same properties as
plan ts and living beings ; i t is an animated substan ce , that
changes, and, above all , dies. History is a debasem ent o f original
time , a slow, inexorable process of decadence ending in death.
Recurrence is the remedy for change and ex tinction ; the past
waits at the end of each cycJe . The past i s an age to co me .
The fu ture offers a double image : the end of t ime and its
reb irth , the corrup tion of the archetypal past and i ts resurrec
tion . The end of the cycle is the restoration of the orig inal
past- and the beginning of the inevitable downfall. Th is con
cep tion d iffers markedly from those of th e Christians and the
moderns. For the Christians, perfect time is eterni ty - time
abolished , history annu lled ; for the moderns, perfection, if it
exists, c an be found only in the fu ture . Also, our fu ture
resembles neither the past nor the presen t ; it is the region of
the unexpected , whereas the fu ture of the ancient Med i te rran
eans and Orientals runs into the past .
The Western \Vorld has a name for this primordial time which
is the model of all times, the age of harmony between m an
and nature and be tween m an and men : the Golden Age . I n
other civilizations- the Chinese , the Mesa-American -j ad e , not
gol d , sym bolized the harmony between th e social sche me of
humans and that of nature . 1 ade embodies the ever-returning
green of na ture , just as gold bears wi tness to a materialization
of the light of the sun . Jade and gold are double sym bols,
like every thing which expresses the deaths and resurrections of
cyclical time. In one phase time is condensed and transmu ted
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were living the end of a cycle . At times this idea was e xpressed
in almost Christian term s : "The earthly elements will be dis
solved and all will be destroyed so that all may be crea ted anew
in i ts first innocence . " The first part of this sentence b y Seneca
correspond s to what the Christians believed and hoped, that
the end of the world was near. I t is very possible that o ne of the
reasons for the great number of conversions to the new religion
was the belief in the imminence of the end . Christianit y offered
an answer to the threat which loomed over mankind . W ould so
many have been converted if they had known that the world
would last several mi llenniums more? Saint Augustine thought
that the first age of human ity, from the Fall of Adam to the
sacri fi ce of Christ, had lasted a lit tle less than six thousand years,
and that the last age , ou rs, would endure only a few ce nturies.
The circular time of the pagan philosophers implied th e re turn
of a golden age , bu t this universal regeneration , apart from
bei ng only a respite in the inex orable movement toward deca
dence, was not synonymous w i th individual salvation . Christi
ani ty promised personal salvation, so its triumph prod u ced
an essen tial change : the protagoni st of the cosmic drama was
no longer the world but man-or, rather, Everyman. H i story's
center of gravity changed . The circular time of the pagans
was infini te and impersonal ; Ch ristian time was finite and
personal.
Augustine refu tes the idea of cycles wi th curious arguments.
He thinks i t absurd that rational souls do not remember having
lived all those lives of which the pagan philosophers sp oke ;
and he thinks i t even more absurd to postulate at one time
wisdom and the eternal re turn : "How can the immortal soul
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is ideal and relative . I t d oes not have nor wll i t have rea l i ty ; it
will always be insufficient and incomplete . Our perfection is
not that which is, but tha t which will be. The ancien ts feared
the future and invented formulas to exorcise i t ; we would
give our lives to kn ow i ts shining face- a face we will n ever see . ;
!
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elimina tion of opposi tions is radical : Buddh ist criticism gets rid
of the terms " I " and "the world ," affirming universal vacui ty ,
an absolute abou t which nothing can be said because i t is
empty of everything, including, says a Mahayana Su tra , i ts own
emp tiness. In other cases, contrary elemen ts are not removed
but reconciled and harmonized , as in ancient China's philosophy
of tim e . The possibility that the con tradiction will explode,
destroying the system , is both in tellectual and real. If logical
coheren ce collapses, society loses its foundations and falls.
Hence the closed and self-suffi cient nature of these archetypes,
their claim to invulnerabil i ty , and their resistance to change.
A society may change its archetype-move , perhaps, from
polytheism to m onotheism , or from cyclical time to th e finite
and irreversible time of I slam or Christianity-but the arche
types are neither changed nor transformed . The single ex ception
to this universal rule is Western society .
The Christian dichotomy results from the dual legacy of
Judaic monotheism and p agan philosophy . The Greek idea of
Being-in any of its versions, from the Presocratics to the
Epicureans, S toics, and Neoplatonists-is incompatible with the
Judaic idea of a personal God who created the universe.
Christian philosophy was deeply aware of this contrad i c tion .
I t was its central theme from the Church fathers onward , and
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a new cornerstone . Cri tical reason , our rul ing principle , rules in
a peculiar way : rather than build ing systems invulnerable to
criticism, it acts as sel f-critic. It governs insofar as i t u n folds and
sets itsel f up as the obje ct of analysis, d oubt, and negation. I t
is not a temple or a stronghold , b u t a n open space , a p u blic
square and a road , a discussion, a method-a road continual ly
making and unmaking itself, a method whose only principle
is scru t iny of all principles. Cri t ical reason , by its very rigor,
accentuates temporality . Nothing is permanent ; reason becomes
identified with change and otherness. We are ruled not by
ident ity , with its enormous and monotonou s tautologies, but
by otherness and contradiction , the dizzying m anifesta tions
of criticism . In the past the goal of criticism was tru th ; in the
modern age truth is criticism. Not an e ternal tru th , bu t the
truth of change.
The contradiction of Christian society was the opposition of
reason and revelation, the Being which is thought thinking
itself, and the God who is a creating persona . That of the modern
age appears in the attempts to build systems based not on an
a temporal principle but on the principle of change . Hegel called
his philosophy a cure for division . But if the modern e ra is the
schism of Christian society and if our very foundation , critical
reason, continually divides itself, how can we be cured of
division without denying ourselves and our found ation? The
problem of the West was how t o bring opposing elements into
some kind of unity w ithout eliminating them . In other civiliza
tions, resolving the contradictions of opposites was the first
step toward a unifying affirmation. In the Catholic world the
ontology of the degrees of being also offered the possi bility
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Children o f t h e Mire
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h istorical change , adopts two forms : evolution and rev olu tion.
Both have the same meaning : progress ; both are history and
can be dated .
Critical negation encompasses both art and li terature : artisti c
values are seen as separa te from re ligious values. Literature
declares its independence : the poeti c , the artistic, the bea u tifu l
come to b e self-su fficient values. The independence of artistic
values led to the concept of art as object , which in turn led
to a d ou ble invention : art criticism and museums . I n the li terary
sphere, too, modernity ex pressed i tself in a cult of the "object " :
the poe m , the novel , the play. This trend began i n the Ren ais
sance and gained strength in the seventeenth century , bu t only
as we approach the modern age do p oets fu lly realize the nature
of this idea : the writing of a poem implies the constru ction
of a separate, sel f-sufficient reality . In this way the cri tical
spiri t is embodied wi thin the creative process. This is not sur
prising, apparently : modern litera ture , as befits a cri tical age ,
is a cri tical li terature . But the m odernness of modern p oe try
seems paradoxical when observed closely. In many of its most
violent and characteristic works- think of the trad ition which
runs from the R omantics to the Surrealists-modern li terature
passionately rejects the modern age . In another of its m ost
persisten t tendencies, embracing the novel as well as lyric
poetry-that which culminates in a M al larme or a Joyce-our
literature is an equally passionate and all-encompassing criticism
of itself. Criticism of the subject of literature : bourgeois society
and its values ; cri ticism of literature as an obj e c t : langu age and
its meanings. In both these ways modern literature denies
i tself and , by so doing, affirms, confirms , its modernness.
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Children of t h e Mire
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return : men volun tarily and delibera tely invent it and put it
inside history . The past of revolu tions is one form which the
I
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how to reconcile human freedom and divine omnipote ncehas worried men since the eighteenth century . How far d oes
history determine us and to what point can man channel
and change its c ourse? To the paradox of necessity and freedom
another may be adde d : the criticism of mod ern society adopts
the form of an act of violence. R evolution is criticism translated
into action . At the same time revolu tion is the renewal of the
original pact among equals, the restoration of a time p rior to
history and inequality . Thi s restoration implies a negation
of history , although such a negation will take place by virtue of
an eminently historical act: cri ticism conver ted into revolu
tionary action . The return to primordial time, before history
and inequality , represents the triumph of criticism .;. Thus we can
say , how ever surprising the proposition m ay appear, that only
the mod ern era can bring abou t the return tq primordial time
,
because only the modern era can deny itself.
M odern poe try , since its birth a t the end of the eighteenth
,.
cen tury , has embodied such a cri ticism of criticism . For this
reason it seeks its founda tion on a principle both anted ating and
antagonistic to, modernity . This principle , impervious to change
and temporal succession, is R ou sseau 's beginning of the begin
ning, but it is also William B l ake 's Adam , Jean Paul's vision,
Novalis' analogy , Wordsworth's childhood , Coleridge's imagina
tion . Modern poetry affirms i tself as the voice of this p rinciple ,
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Children of t h e M ire
the o th er time. But poetry 's time is not that of revolu tion, the
dated time of critical reason , the future of the U topias ; i t is
the time before time, the time of Ia vie an terieure which
reappears in the child 's timeless glance.
Poetry 's ambiguity toward cri tical reason and its hist orical
incarnation s, the revolu tionary m ovements, is one side of the
coin ; the other side is i t s ambiguity toward Christiani t y .
Again, a ttraction and rejection . Almost a l l the great Romantics,
heirs of Rousseau and eighteenth-cen tu ry deism , were religion
oriented , b u t what were the actual beliefs of H olderlin , B lake,
Coleridge, Hugo , Nerval? One m ight ask the same question
of those who openly declared themselves irreligious. Shelley 's
atheism is a religious passion . In 1 8 1 0, in a letter to Thomas
Hogg he writes: "0 ! I burn with impatience for the moment of
Christianity's dissolution ; i t h as inj ured me
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gods, and time is circular : " 'Dios es un hombre de otro Dios mas
grand e ; I Tambien tuvo caida , Adan supremo ; I Tam bien ,
aunque criador, el fue criatura ' ' (God is a man to another,
greater God , and thi s greatest Adam also fel l ; Though the
creator, he was a creature ) .
The p oetic consciousness of the West has accepted the death
of God as though i t were a myth ; or rather, thi s d eath truly
has been a myth , not merely an episode in the history of our
society 's religious ideas. The theme of universal orpha nhood , as
symb olized in Christ, the great orphan and elder brother of
the orphan children who are all mankind, expresses a p sy chic
experience recal ling the path of negation of the mystics. It is
that "dark night" in which we feel ourselves adrift, abandoned
in a hostile or indifferent worl d , guilty without guilt, and
innocen t without i nn ocence . H owever, there is an esse n tial
difference : it i s a night withou t an end , Chri stianity w i thou t
God . A t the same time, the death of God awakens i n the poetic
imagination a sense of my thic s tory telling, and a strange cos
mogony is created in which each god is the cre a tu re , the Adam ,
of another god . I t i s the re turn to cyclical time, the transmuta
tion o f a Chri stian theme i n to a paga n myth . A n inc omplete
paganism , a Christian paganism permeated w i th anguish for the
fall i n to contingency .
These two experiences-Ch ri stianity without God , and
Christian paganism -have been basic elements of Weste rn poetry
and literature since the Roman tic era. In both we face
double
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;}i umanity's
first cred os were poems. Whe ther we are dealing with magic
.,_
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form to religious ideas, transmu tes them into images, and ani
mates them : cosmogonies and geneal ogies are poems, H oly
Scriptures are wri t ten by poe ts. I ndeed , the poet is the geog
rapher and the historian of heaven and hell : Dante describes the
geography and the inhabitants of the o ther world ; Mil t on tells
us the true story of the Fall.
The critique of religion undertaken by eighteenth-century
philosophy sha t tered Christianity as the basis of society. The
fragmentation of eternity into historical time m ade i t possible
for poetry to conceive of itself as the real founda tion of society.
Poetry w as believed to be the true rel igion and knowledge.
Bibles, GospeJs, and Korans had been denounced by the philoso
phers as bundles of old wives' t ales and fantasies. At the same
time, even materialists recognized tha t these tales possessed
a poetic tru th . In their search for a found a tion predati ng
revealed or natural rel igion, poets found allies among the
philosophers. Kan1's influence was d ecisive i n the second phase
of Coleridge's though t . The German philosopher had shown
tha t between the sense data and the understanding, tha p articu
lar and the universal 'the " p rod u ctive imagination" acted as
intermediary . Through it the subject transcend s himse l f:
imagina tion projects and presents the objects of the sense data
to the unders tanding. I magination is the condition of k n owl
edge : w i thou t it there could be no link between percep tion
and j udgmen t. For Coleridge the imagination is not only the
necessary condi tion for all knowledge, it is also the faculty
which converts ideas into symbols and symbols into p resences.
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desire and satisfaction are one and the sam e . His Chri s t reminds
us of Satan ; his huge body , like a gigantic cloud lit by ligh tning,
is covered with the flaming letters of the proverbs of H e l l .
I n the early years of the French Revolution, !!l'!ke used t o
walk about the streets of London with the blood-red Phrygian
cap on his head . His political e n thusi asm eventually wane d ,
but n o t the ard or o f h i s imagin a tion, at once libertari a n and
Iibera ting :
"All B ibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the fol
lowing Errors : I . Tha t Man has two real existing pri n ciple s :
Viz : a Body and a Soul . 2 . Tha t Energy , call'd Evi l , i s alone
from the B od y ; and tha t Reason, call'd Good , is alone
from the Soul. 3 . That G od w ill torment Man in E tern i ty for
following his Energies.
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one against the o ther, and each against himself. Uri zen : reason
without body and without wings, the great j ailer. Blake not
only denou nced the superstition of philosophy and the idolatry
of reason, b u t , in the century of the first industrial revolu tion
and in the country which was the cradle of this revolu tion, he
prophesied the dangers of the cult of progress. The landscape of
England was starting to change , and hills and valleys were
becoming covered with the vege tation of industry : iron, coal,
dust, and w aste . He is in all things our con temp orary .
I n Blake's contradicti ons and eccentricities there is a larger
coherence not fou nd in any of his criti cs . Eliot charged his
mythology with being undigested and syncretistic, a private
religion m ade up of fragments of my ths and eccentric beliefs.
One could accuse most m odern poets o f the same thing, from
Holderlin and Nerval to Yeats and Rilke ; faced with th e progres
sive d isintegra tion of Christian myth ology , poets-not ex cluding
the poet of Tlze Waste Land-have had to inven t more or less
personal mythologies m ade up of fragme n ts of philosophies and
religions. I n spite of this diversity of poe tic systems-rather, in
its very center-a common belief can be d iscerned . This belief
is the true religion of modern poe t ry , from Romanticism to
Surrealism , and i t appears in all poets, sometimes impl icitly bu t
more often explici tly. I am talking about analogy . The belief
in correspondences between all beings and worlds pred ates
Christianity, crosses the Middle Ages, and , through Neopla
tionism , illuminism , and occultism , reaches the nineteenth cen
tury. Since then, secretly or openly, it has never failed to nourish
Western poets, from Goethe to B alzac, from Baudelaire and
Mallarm e to Yeats and Pessoa.
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s trict
be tween art and life . lThe poem was a vita!_exp_erie11ce , and life
acquired the intensity of poetry . For Calderon life is il lusion
and deceit because it has the duration and consistency of
dreams ; for the Rom antics what red eem s life from the horror of
i ts monotony is that it is a drea m . The Romantics see the
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dream a s "a second life , " a way to recover the true l ife , the life
of primordial time. Poe try is the reconquest of innocence.
How can we fail to see the religious roots of this atti tude and
its intimate rela tion with the Protestan t tradition? o m an ti cism
---- -
- -- - --
- - - --
- - -
:J
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differing from that of Rome, and this trad i tion is not single
but multiple.
Linguisti Cinfluence unfold s o n deeper levels. Romantic poe try
was not only a change o f styles, b u t a change of beliefs , and
this is what dis t inguishes i t radically from the o ther movements
of the past . Neither Baroque nor Neoclassica l art rej ec ted the
Western system of beliefs . To find a parallel to the Romantic
revolution we must go back to the Renaissance, above all, to
Provenal poetry . This last comparison is particularly revealing,
because in Provenal as in Roman tic poetry there is an undeni
able rel a tion, still not comple tely u nders tood, between the
metrical revolu tion , the new sensibility, and the cen tra l position
occupied by women in both movements. In Romanticism , the
metrical revolution consisted of resurrecting the traditional
poetic rhy thms of Germany and England . There is a reciprocal
relation between the resurrection of rhythms and form s and the
reappearance of analogy . The Romantic vision of the u niverse
and of m an was inspired by analogy . And analogy fu sed with
prosody : it was a vision more fel t than thought , and m ore heard
than fel t . Analogy conceives of the world as rhy thm : everything
corresponds because everything fi ts together and rhym es. It is
not only a cosmic syntax , it is also p rosody . If the universe is a
script, a tex t , or a web of signs, the rotation of these signs i s
governed by rhy thm . Correspondence a n d analogy are b u t
names for universal rhythm_ :
A lthough analogical vision inspires Dante as well as the
Renaissance Neoplatonists, its reappearance in the Romantic
era coin cides with the rej ection of Neoclassical archetypes
and the discovery of national poetic tradi tions. In unvei ling
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Children of t h e Mire
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---
- - - -"'Y---
. ....,
-'-,
...--
----- ---.....
1Quches the sky, " and that Fourier wrote , "human p assions are
anima ted rn a them a tics. "
p_ ;
---
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w..-:- ... .
,
--- - - ------ -----
-----
--- - ----- -
_,...
- - - - "- - - - -
. .. .
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poem
secre t
is to d ecipher the unive rse only to create a new cipher. The play
of analogy is infinite . The reader repeats the poet's a d ; to
read the poem is to translate i t and , inevitably , to convert i t
into another poem . The poetics of analogy consists ultimately
in conceiving li terary creation as a translation ; this translation
is m u l tiple and confron ts us with a paradox : plurality of authors.
The true au thor of a poem is neither the poe t nor the reader,
but language . I don't mean that language eliminates the reality
of the poet and the reader, but that i t includes and engu l fs
them. Poet and reader are two existential moments-i f one may
express it like this-of language . If it is true tha t they u se lan
guage to speak, i t is also true that language speaks through them.
The i d ea of the world as a moving text ends, as I said b e fore , in
the plurali ty of tex ts; the idea of the poet as translator or
decipherer leads to the d isappearance of the author. But it was
the twentieth-century poets, not B audelaire, who made a poetic
method out of this paradox .
__
72
73
laws. The cure for the universal exception is twofold : irony, the
aesthe tics of the grotesque, the bizarre and the unique ; analogy,
the aesthetics of corresponden ces .' Irony and !lll9gy a re
irreconcilable . The first is the child of linear, sequential, and
unrepeatable time ; the second is the manifestation of c yclical
time : the future is in the past and both are in the prese n t .
Analogy turns irony into one m ore variant of the fan o f sim ilari
ties, but irony splits the fan in two. I rony is the wound through
which analogy bleeds to death ; it is the exception, the fatal
accident (in the double meaning of the term : necessary and
deadly) . I rony shows that if the universe is a script , ea ch
translation of this script is di fferent, and that the concert of
correspond ences is the gibberish of Babel . The poetic w ord ends
in a h owl or in silence : irony is not a word , nor a speech, but
the reverse of the word , noncommunication . The universe, says
irony, is not a scri p t ; if i t were , its signs wou ld be inco mprehen
sible for man , because in it the word d eath does not ap pear,
and m an is m ortal.
In an oft-quotea sonnet, "Correspondences," B audelai!e said,
Nature is a temple of living pillars
where often words emerge , confused and dim ;
and m an goes through this forest, with familiar
eyes of sym bois always watching him .
74
75
76
-""
77
78
79
80
81
Translation a n d M etaphor
remorse , its delirium, its nostalgia for a word m ade fle sh.
Romantic ambiguity : i t glorifies the powers and facult ies of
the child , the madma n , the woman , the nonrational o th er, but
glorifies them from the point of view of the modern era. The
primitive does not recognize himself as such nor does he want
to be primitive;\ Baudelaire goes into raptures a t the "canni
82
83
Translation a n d Metaphor
{8
--- - - - -
----
__,
institu tions or, if they did , it was insufficient . How cou l d they
cri ticize a modern era which they never had? Heave n , as the
Spanish saw i t , was not the desert which terrified Jean Paul
and Nerval , but a place full of sugary virgins, chubby a ngels,
beetle-browed apostles, and vengefu l archangels-a fairground
and an implacable court of law . Yes, Spanish R omanti cs
rebelled against this heaven ; bu t their rebellion, histori cally
j ustifiable, was Roman tic only in appearance. Spanish Roman
ticism , in an even more obvious way than French , l acks this
element of originality , completely new in the history o f Western
sensibili ty -this dual element that we cannot avoid calling
demoniacal : the vision of universal analogy and the ironic vision
of man . Correspondence among all worlds and , a t the center,
the burn t-ou t su n of death .
Spanish Ameri can Romanticism was even more desti tute than
Spani sh Romanticism : the re flection of a reflection . H owever,
a historical circumstance affected our poetry , though n o t imme
diately , and made it change direction . I am referring to the
Revolu tion of I ndependence. ( I really should use the p lural, for
there were various revolu tions, not all with the same m eaning,
bu t to avoid unnecessary complications I will deal with them as
if they constitu ted a unified moveme n t . ) The Revolution of
Independence in Spanish America was the revolution the
Spanish never had , the revolution which failed time and again
84
and the Spanish American . Although all three succeed ed, the
resu lts were very d ifferent : the first two created new societies,
whereas ours initiated the desolation which has marked our
..
85
86
was posi tivism . During these years the ruling classes and in tel
lectual groups of Latin America discovered positivistic philoso
phy and embraced it en thusiastically . We changed the masks of
Danton and 1 efferson for those of A uguste Comte and Herbert
Spencer. On the al tars built by liberals to liberty and reason
were placed science and progress, surrounded by their mythic
creatures : the railroad and the telegraph. At tha t moment the
paths of Spain and Spanish America diverged . The cult of
positivism grew to become the offi ci al ideology , if not religion ,
of the governments of B razil and Mexico ; in Spain the best
of the dissidents sought an answer to their anx ieties in the
doctrines of an obscure German ideal ist thinker, Karl Christian
Friedri ch Krause . No divorce could be more complete.
Positivism i n Latin America was not the ideology of a liberal
bourgeoisie interested in industrial and social progress, as i t
was in E urope, b u t o f a n oligarchy o f big landowners. I t was a
mystification , a sel f-decei t as well as a deceit . A t the same time
i t w as a radical criticism of religion and of traditional i d e ol ogy .
Positivism did away with Christian mythology as with rationalist
philosophy . The resul t might be called the dismantling of
metaphysics and religion . This devel opment w as similar to the
eighteenth-century Enligh tenmen t ; the intel lectual classes of
Latin America lived ou t a crisis to a certain ex tent analogous to
tha t which had tormented Europeans a century earlier. F aith
in science became tinged with nostalgia for the old religious
certainties, and the belief in progress with vertigo at the pros
pect of nothingness. I t was not complete moderni ty b u t i ts
bitter foretaste : the vision of an u ninhabited heaven , the
dread of contingency .
87
88
--
""
.-10- -
..;.
,.__ .,
89
90
The reality of our nations was not a modern one : not industry ,
91
poor Daria, wro te odes and sonnets to tigers and alliga tors
in ep aulets . B u t we who have seen and heard many great poets
sing the lofty deeds of Stalin in French , German , and S panish
can forgive Daria for having wri t ten some stanzas in praise of
Zelaya and Estrada Cabrera, two Central Ameri can satraps.
An antimodern modernity , an ambiguous rebeJlion, mod ern
ism a was an act opposing tradition and , in its first stage , a
denial of a certain Sp anish tradi tion. ( I say a certain tradi tion
because at a second stage the modernistas discovered the other
Spanish tradi tion , the real one . ) Their Gallic passion was a
form of cosmop olitanism ; Paris was the center of an aesthetic,
rather than the capital of a nation . Their cosmopolitanism led
them t o discover o ther literatures and to re-evaluate our I ndian
past . The exaltation of the pre-Hi spanic world , an aesthetic
first and foremost, was at the same time a criticism of the
modern age , especially of North American p rogress : Prince
Ne tzahualcoyotl confron ting Edison . In this they were also
following Baudelaire , who had described the believer i n progress
as "a poor wretch Americanize d by zoocratic i nd ustri a l phi loso
phers . " The recovery of the Indian world and , later on , of the
Spanish past , coun terbalanced the admiration, fear, and anger
evoked by th Uni!ed States and i ts policy oLd ominat ! on
92
Children of t h e M ire
93
versifi ca tion and the analogical vision of the worl d . The new
rhythm s of the m odernistas brought abou t t e reappearance of
the original rhythmic p rinciple of the language ; this resurrection
of meters coincided wi th the appearance of a new sensibility,
which eventu ally proved to be a re turn to the o th er re ligion :
anal ogY{
94
---..-v.A
95
'/
--
_,_
96
97
- - ----------
--
98
99
Two Countries
I have two countrie s : Cuba and the nigh t .
I 00
wome q , death as the one and only woman , the one and only
abyss.;' Death , eroticism , revolutionary passion , poetry : the
nigh t , the great mother, contains it all. Earth mother but also
I
sex and common speech . The p oe t d oes not raise his voice,
he speaks to himself when he speaks to the night and t o revolu
tion . . Nei ther sel f-pity n or eloquence : " I t is t ime now I to
begin to die . The night is good I for saying goodbye . " I rony is
transfigured into a ccep tance of death . And , at the cen ter of the
poem , a phrase suspended between two lines, isolated in a
pause to emphasize its weight-a phrase which no other p oet in
our language could have w ri t ten before him (not Garcilaso,
nor San Juan de la Cru z , nor Gongora, nor Quevedo , n or Lope
de Vega) -because they were all p ossessed by the ghost o f
the Christian God and because they a l l faced the world as fallen
Nature - a phrase whi ch contains everything I have been t rying
to say : "The universe I speaks bet ter than man . "
I0I
1 02
R evolu tion/Eros/Meta-irony
The m ost remarkable similarity between Romanticism and the
I 03
The con trad iction between the era and i t s poetry , between the
revolutionary and the poetic sp irit, is vaster and deeper than
Trotsky though t. Russia provides an exaggerated bu t not
exceptional case . There the contradiction took atrocious shape :
poets who were not murdered or who did not commit suicide
were silenced by other means. The reasons for this heca tomb
derive from Russian history- that barbarous past to which
Lenin and Trotsky re ferred more than once-as much as from
Stal i n 's paranoid cruelty . B u t equally responsible is the bolshevik
spirit , heir to Jacobinism and its ex travagant pretensio ns con
cerning society and human nature .
"
1,
1 04
I 05
The bald lamppost that takes off th e street 's stockings , a great
ima . reveals the poet's bohemian essence rather than anything
else. '1 Trotsky emphasizes "the cynical and shameless t one of
many images" of Mayakovsky and, with admirable perspicacity,
un covers their Romantic origin . "Those thinkers who , in
defining the social character of Fu turism in its origins" (he is
referring to the prerevolutionary period which was the most
produ c tive part of the movemen t ) , "place decisive imp ortance
on its violent protests against b ourgeois life and art , reveal
their own ingenuity and ignorance . . . The R omantics, both
French and German, always spoke caustically abou t b ourgeois
mora1 ity and its hidebound life . They let their hair grow long,
and Theophile Gautier wore a red waistcoa t . The Futurists'
yellow blouses are without doubt descend ants of the R omantic
waistcoat which aroused such horror among papas and mamas. "
How can we fail to recognise Romantic irony in the "cynicism
and individualistic rebellion" of M ayakovsky and his friends?
Russian literature of this epoch was torn between the "witches'
spells" and the Futurists' satire . Avatars, metaphors of analogy
and irony :
.
Trotsky s s cri ticism amounts t o a condemnation of poetry, not
only in the name of the R ussian Revolu tion but of the mod ern
spirit in genera l . He speaks as a revolutionary who has ad opted
1 06
the intellectual tradition of the mod ern age "back from M arx to
Hegel and to Adam Smi th and David Ricard o . " The roots of
this trad i tion lie the French Revol ution and the Enligh tenment.
And so his criticism of poe try , wi thout his entirely being
aware of i t , takes on the form of the criticism which philosophy
and science since the eighteenth century have made of the
religion, myths, m agic, and other beliefs of the pasL Nei ther
philosophers nor revolu tionaries can patiently tolera t e the
ambivalence of poets who see in m agic and revolu tion two
parallel but not mu tually exclusive methods of changing the
worl d . The passages of Pilniak quoted by Trotsky e cho what
was said earlier by Navalis and Rimbau d : magic operates in
a way not essentially different from th a t of revolution. The
magic vocation of modern poetry from B l ake to our own time
is only the other sid e , the d ark side, of i ts revolutionary voca
tion. Here l ies the basis of the m isunderstanding between
revolutionaries and poe ts, which no one has been able to
unravel. If the poet d isowns his m agic sid e , he d isowns poetry
and becomes a functionary and a propagandist . But m agic
devours its l overs, and a complete surrender to its powers can
lead to suicide . The l ure of death was called revolu tion by
Mayak ovsky ; by Nerval, magic . The poet never escapes the
double-edged facination ; his concern , l i ke that of
H rrv
M artin
I 07
of itself-date back
....._..
to the
eighteenth
century . David Hume was first to notice it. He
-
!J
twentieth-cen tury
1 08
)J
1 09
tion The history of poe try in the twentieth cen tury is, as i t
was in the nineteenth , a history of subversions, conversions,
abj urations, heresies, aberrations. These words find their
1 10
tion and nega tion. The nude in the Philadelphia Muse u m , with
her legs open , clu tching a gas lamp i n one hand (like a fallen
Statue of Liberty) , leaning back on bunches of twigs as if they
were the logs of a funeral pyre , against the background of a
wa terfall (double image of mythic water and indu strial electri
city ) - this is Artemis the pin-up seen through the chin k of a
door by A c teon the voyeur. Me ta-irony works in circular
111
t) l ndustry ,
tha t m ost modern of all mod ernities, is also the most a ncient,
the other side of the myth of eroticism . I t is the end of recti
I I2
0.
1 13
1 14
1 15
1 16
1 17
1 18
then call ing themselves Cubi sts , and wi th Pierre Reverdy fo unds
I 19
1 20
tW estern
121
1 22
1 23
.\.
its place precisely in this historical con tex t . In its turn , history
turns toward the spiritual sphere . Modern history is fall, separa
tion, d isintegration ; it is likewise the way of purga tion and
reconciliation. Exile is not exile : it is the re turn to timeless
time. Christianity tak es time upon i tsel f only to transm ute it.
Eliot's p oetics become transformed into a religious vision
))
1 24
the Can tos a cosmop olitan tex t , a true poetic babel (and there is
nothing pejorative in this designation) . Nevertheless, the
Can tos are primarily a North American poem written for North
Ameri cans-which obviously does not prevent them from fasci
nating everyone . The various episodes, figures, and tex ts present
in the poem are models which the poet proposes to his com
patriots. All are aimed toward a u niversal or, to more exact,
imperial , standard . In this Pound d iffers from Whitman . One
sings of a national society , broad as a w orld , which would
finally bri ng abou t democracy ; the o ther of a u niversal nation ,
heir to all civilizations and all empires . Pound talks about the
world but-thinks always about his country , a world-wide
country ._ The nationalism of Whitmn was a universalism ; the
universal {sm of Pound a nationalism ._This is the reason for
the Pound cult of the political a nd moral system of Confu cian
ism : he saw in the Chinese Empire a model for the United
States . From this too his admiration for M ussolini. Th e ghost
of Justinian of the final Can tos corresp onds also to this imperial
VISIOn .
The center of the world is not the place where the re ligious
word is manifest , as in Eliot ; it is the source of nergy that
moves men and j oins them in a COmmon cause r()U !l d 's order is
1 25
1 26
I 27
1 28
Anglican Church . Pound d iscovered not one but many tradi tions
and embraced them all ; along with plurality he chose j u x ta
position and syncretism . E liot ch ose only one tradition, b u t his
vision was no less eccen tric . Eccentrici ty was not a mistake on
the part of these two poe t s ; it was embodied in the very origin
of the m ovement and in i ts contradictory nature . Anglo
American "modernism " conceived of i tself as a "classical
revival . " It is with precisely this ex pression that T .E . H ulme
opened his essay " Romanticism and Classicism . " The y oung
English p oet and critic had found an aesthetic and a p olitical
credo in the ideas of Charles Maurras and hi s moveme n t
1 29
1 30
131
1 32
and the M onarchy , Pou nd proposes for the United States the
image of Leader-Philosopl)er-Savior, a mixture of Confucius,
/
Malatesta, and M ussolini,; for the European avan t-garde the ideal
the
1 33
elow :
1 34
t('importan t"
),)
1 35
The Waste Land are real and mythic . Reversibility of signs and
image o f cards leads to that of dice, and the latter once again to
the image of the constellations. I n the mirror of the e m p ty
room described in the "Sonnet en ix," Mallarme sees the seven
stars of the Great Bear reflected like seven notes which "relient
au ciel seul ce logis abandonne du monde . " In A rcane 1 7
(once again Tarot and the magic of the cards), Andre B re ton
looks from the window of his room and sees the night doubly
night, earthly night echoed by the nigh t of twentieth-cen tury
136
1 37
1 38
1 39
'\
electricity produces l igh t . B u t Huidobro resembles cummings
rather than Williams. Botl1 are descendants of Apollina ire ,
both are lyrical and erotic, both scandalized with their syntactic
and typographic innovations . cummings is m ore concen trated
and perfect ; Huidobro more vast. His language was international
(that is one of his limitations), and more visual than sp oken .
Not a language of earth but of aerial space . An aviator's lan
guage : the words are parachu tes which open in midair. Before
touching earth they burst and are dissolved in colored explo
sions. H uidobro 's great poem is A ltaz or ( 1 93 1 ) : the hawk
assaulting the heigh ts and disappearing , burned up by the sun.
Words lose their meaningful weight and become not signs
but traces of an astral catastrophe . The Romantic myth o f
Lucifer reappears i n the form o f the aviator-poe t .
Spanish American avant-garde and Anglo-American "modern
ism " were as much transgressions of the canons of London
and Madrid as flights from Ameri can provincialism . In both
movements oriental poe try , especially haiku , exercised a benefi
cent influence . The poet who introduced haiku into Castilian
was J ose J uan Tablada, who also wrote ideographic and simul
taneist poems. B u t these are formal similarities. Opposed cos
mopolitanisms : what Pound and Eliot sough t i n Europe was
the exact opposite of what H uidobro , Oliverio Girond o , and the
Borges of those years were seeking. Anglo-American m odernism
1 40
141
1 42
critics foll owed . B u t the resu rre ction of the great And alusian
poet results from two circumstances : the first is that a m ong the
cri tics was a poe t , D'imaso A lonso ; the second , decisive factor
is the coincidence which the young Spaniard s noticed between
Gongora 's aesthetic and that of th e avant-garde . In his A n tologia
del arte .
Two p oets resisted both trad i tionalism and neo-Gongorism :
Pedro Salinas and Jorge Guillen . The form er composed a kind of
lyrical monologue in which the th ings of modern life -movies,
automobiles, telephones, rad iators-are reflected in the clear
waters of an eroticism which stems from Provence . Guillen's
work , as I once wrote, "is an island and a bridge . " An island ,
since i n the face of the upheaval of the avan t-garde Guillen had
the incredible insolence to say that perfection is also revolu
tionary ; a bridge , becau se "from the beginning Guillen was
a master, as much for his con temporaries (Garcia Lorca) as for
those of us who came later . "
A new breach : the parasurrealist explosion . I n English
speaking countries the i n flue nce of Surrealism was belated and
1 43
1 44
1 45
1 46
with them they had lived through N azism , Stalinism , and the
!
1 47
1 48
art perpetuated itsel f( Only within linear time can reje ction
develop to the ful l , and only in a cri tical age like ours can
criticism be creative . Today we wi tness another mu tation :
modern art is beginning to lose its powers of nega tion. For some
years now its rejections have been ritual repeti tions : re bellion
has turned into procedure , cri ti cism into rhe toric, transgression
into cerem ony . Negation is no longer creative. I am not saying
that we are living the end of art : we are l iving the end of the
1 49
1 50
151
the workers' world revolu tion nor real socialism but only the
national resurrection of Russia, China, and other coun tries slow
to reach the age of industry and technology . The_protagonists
of these changes were not the workers, but classes and groups
hich M arxtst theory placed at the edge or in the rearof
-
More serious still : the revolu tiOns which triumphed have been
transformed into regimes which a re anomalous from a strict
M arxist point of view . It is a historical aberration that socialism
should take on the form of d ictatorship by a new bure au cratic
class or caste . The aberration disappears if we give up the con
cep tion of history as a progressive , linear process blessed
with an immanent rationality . I t is hard to resign ourselves to
this because giving up this belief implies the end of our claims
to shape the fu ture . Nevertheless, i t is not a renunciation of
socialism as e thical and political free choice , but of the idea of
socialism as a necessary product of the historical proce ss.
Cri ticism of the poli tical and moral aberrations of con temporary
"socialisms" should begin wi th criticism of our in t llec tual
aberrations. History is not single : i t is p lural ; it is the h istory of
men and of the marvelous diversity of societies and civilizations
1 52
which men have crea ted . Our fu ture , our idea of the fu ture ,
totters and hesitates : the plurality of pasts makes p lausible the
idea of a plurali ty of fu tures.
The revolts in underdeveloped countries and on the fringe
of industrialized societies belie the p revisions of revolu tionary
thought ; the rebellions and d isorders in the more advanced
countries u ndermine even more thoroughly the idea of the
future which evolutionists, l iberals, and progressive bo urgeois
had made for themselves. I t is rem arkable that the class to
which the revolutionary vocation per se was attributed has not
shared in the disturbances which have shaken the industrialized
societies . Recently an attempt has been made to explain this
phenomenon by a new social category : the more advanced
societies, especially the United S ta tes, have now passed from
the industrial to the postindustrial age . The lat ter is character
ized by the importance given to what could be called the
production of productive knowledge , i n other words, a new
mode of production in which k nowledge occupies the central
position hitherto held by industry . Soci al struggles in the
.......
i us,
1 53
1 54
tion, and other disturbances of the Third World fit into the
idea of revolu tion worked out by the linear and progre ssive con
ception of history . These movements are the expression o f
particularisms which were humiliated during the period o f
Western expansion , and for this reason they have become
models for the struggles of e thnic minori ties in the Un ited
States and elsewhere . The revolts in the Third World and the
rebellions of ethnic and national minorities in industri alized
societies are the uprisings of particularisms oppressed by
another particularism wearing the m ask of universality :
Western capitalism ."i Marxism foresaw the disappearance of the
proletariat as a class immediately after the d isappearance of
the bourgeoisie ; the dissolution of classes corresponde d to the
universa lization of mankind . Contemporary movements tend
in the opposite direction : they are affirmations qf each group 's
individu ality, and even of sexual idiosyncrasies/ M arxism
postu lated a future in which all classes and peculiarities would
dissolve in one universal society ; today's struggle is for recogni
tion here and now of the concrete and individual reali t y of
each and every one . i
.
1 55
Nowadays the rebellion of the body is also that of the imaginatiOI? . B o th rej ect l inear time : their values are those of the
present.; The body and the imagination do not know the fu ture ;
. .
where li fe and death are two halves of one and the same sphere
These various signs signal a change in our image of time. At
the beginning of the modern era , Christian e ternity lost its
ontological reality as well as its l ogical coherence ; i t became a
senseless proposition , an emp ty word . Today , the fu ture seems
1 56
dimensi ons of the prese n t , both are present -both are presences
in the now. The time has come to bu ild an E thics and a Politics
upon the Poeti cs of the now.\ Politics ceases to be a construction
of the future ; its mission is t 6 make the present habitable .
1 57
we are m ortal . 9_!!1Y facing death , life is really life . Within the
now , death is not separated from life . Both are the same reality,
__
1 58
as soon as they are born , but they spread like weeds. D iversity is
resolved in uniformity. The fragmentation of the avan t-garde
into hundreds of identical movements : in the anthill d i fferences
disappea
rJ
1 59
J.I.
nor does it exist in its own righ t : the work is a bridge , an inter
mediary . Nor does cri ticism of the subj ect imply the d estruc tion
of poet or artist b u t only of the b ourge ois idea of author. For
the Romantics, the voice of the poet was the v oice of all; for us
it is the voice of no one . "All " and "no one " are equal to
each other, and both are equally far from the author and his
"1 . " The poet is not a "little god , " as Huidobro wante d . The
otherne
1 60
s.D
for the p rincipl e of change ; poets of the d awning age l ook for
the unal terable principle that is the root of chang. We wond er
if the Odyssey and A Ia recherche du temps perdu h av e anything
in common . This question , more than denying the ava n t-garde,
is a question which extends beyond it. The aesthetic of change
accentuated the historical nature of the poem . Now we ask : is
there a point where the principle of change blends into th at of
permanence?
The historical character of the p oem is immediately evident
by virtue of its being a tex t which someone has written and
someone else reads. The writing and reading of the poem are
acts that happen ; they take place in time and can be d ated.
They are history . But, from another perspective , the contrary
is also true . While he is writing, the poet d oes not know what
his poem will be like ; he will know only when he reads it,
after it is finished . The au thor is the poem 's first reader, and
161
1 62
1 63
1 64
Notes
I.
1 65
Notes
2.
After wri ting these pages 1 received an interesting study
wri tten by Edmund L . King and entitled "What is Spanish
1 66
2 , no .
1 , Au tumn
1 898 ." My
1 67
Notes
1 68
Fil6pa tro . In
1 69
Notes
3.
E ighteen th-century rel igious criticism embraced heaven and
earth ; it was criticism of Christian divinity , i ts saints and devils,
criticism of i ts churches and priests. It criticized religion on the
one hand as revealed truth and immutable scripture ; on the
other as a man-made insti tution. Phi losophy u nd ermined the
conceptual edifice of theology , and attacked the church's
claims to hegemony and universality . I t destroyed the image
of the Christian god , not the idea of God. Philosophy was anti
Christian and deist ; God ceased to be a person and was con
verted into a concept . Confron ted by the spectacle of the
un iverse , the philosophers waxed enthusiasti c : they believed
they had discovered in i ts movements a secret order, a hidden
inspiration which could only be d ivine . Double perfection :
the un iverse was moved by a ra tional design which was a lso a
moral design . Natural rel igion replaced revealed religion , and
the plzilosoplzes replace d the Council of Cardinals. The idea
of order and the idea of causality were visible manifestations,
rational and sensible proofs of the existence of a divine plan ;
the movemen t of the universe was insp ired by an end and a
purpose : God is invisibl e , not his works or the intention which
animates them . The ma terialists and atheists with very few
excep tions shared this belief: the un iverse is an intelligen t order
endowed with an evident purpose , even though we do not
kn ow its final outcom e .
1 70
David Hume was the first to criticize the cri tics of religion ;
his cri ticism remains unsurpassed and is applicable to many
contemporary beliefs . I n his Dialogues Concerning Na tural
171
Notes
1 72
1 73
Notes
1 74
1 75
Notes
1 76
21
34
1 4- 1 5
16
17
54
56
58
62
68
1 77
S ources a n d Credit s
Charles Baud elaire , L 'art ro man tiq ue, Oeu vres ( Paris, Bibliotheq ue
de la Pleiade, 1 9 4 1 ).
Baud elaire, "Correspondances ," transla ted by Carlyle F . M aci ntyre ,
74
Fren ch Sy m b olist Poe try (B erk eley, University of California
Press, I 96 1 ).
75
Canto 8 3 , xxxiii, 1 1 . 86-9 1 ; t ranslated by Doro thy Sayers,
Th e Co medy of Dan te A ligh ieri th e Floren tine ( 3 vols. , Ham
mondsworth , Penguin , 1 9 6 5 -1 9 7 2 ).
7 6-7 7 Mallarme, Oe uvres com pletes ( Paris, Bib liotheque d e la Pleiade,
1 9 5 6 ), and Corresp ondan ce ( 2 vols. , Paris, Gallimard , 1 9 5 9 ).
7 9-80 Vice nte Llorens , Lib erales y romdn ticos (2nd ed . , Madrid , 1 9 68 ) ,
a nd Juan Goytisol o , A n tologza de Jose Maria Bla n co Wh ite in
Libre ( no. 2, Paris, 1 9 7 1 ).
84-85 Unlike other Spanish Am eri can writers, the Argentinians sought
inspiration directly fro m French mod els. Although its romanticism
w as also external and declam at ory , the Argent inian mo vemen t
a lit t le lat er, and in the guise of regionalism , prod uced the only
great Spanish American poem of t his perio d , Mar tzlz Fierro , b y
J ose Hernandez ( I 8 34- 1 8 6 6 ) .
B audelaire , " La pein ture de l a vie mod ern e" ( 1 8 63 ) , Curiosites
90
7 0-7 1
Estlz etiques.
Paz, Til e Oth er Mexico : Cri tiq u e of tlz e Py ra m id, trans. Lysander
Kemp ( Ne w York , Grove , 1 9 7 2 ).
L ectures from 1 940-1 94 1 . L iterary Curren ts in Hispan ic A me rica
93
( Ca mbridge, Mass. , Harvard University Press, 1 94 5 ).
94-9 5 B reto n , A rcane I 7 e11te d 'ajours (Paris, Sagittaire , 1 9 47 ).
95
Dario, Poema X I I I , Otros po e m as, part 3 of Can tos de vida y
espera n za ( 1 9 0 5 ).
96-98 Lugo nes, L os crepusculos del jardz'n ( Buenos Aires, 1 90 5 ) ; Lo pez
Velarde, Ob ras (M exico, F.C. E., 1 9 7 1 ); M achado, Poesias ca m
p/etas (B uenos Aires, 1 9 5 9 ) ; Ji menez, Tercera a n to logia poe tica
( Madrid, 1 9 5 7 ).
99
Fernando Pessoa , "Maritime Ode," translated and used by per
mission of Edwin Honig.
1 00
Jose Mart 1', "Two Countries" ; t ranslated and used by permission of
William Ferguson.
92
1 78
1 79
Sources a nd Credits
though they may have been. I use the word "revolt" to re fer to
t he uprisings and liberation move ments of the Third World and
Latin America ( the lat ter , strictly speaking, does not belong to t he
Third World) , and "rebellion " for the protest movements of
e thnic minorities, women's liberat ion , stud ent and other g roups,
in industrialized so cieties .
1 80
Index
ABC of Reading ( Po u nd ), 1 27
161
Albert i , Rafael, 1 42 , 1 4 4
A/cools ( A po llinaire ) , 1 1 9
Aleixa ndre , Vicente, 1 4 4
Alo nso , Damaso, 1 4 3
A/razor ( H uidobro), 1 4 0
Alt ematiltg Current, 1 7 9
181
I ndex
1 82
Children of t he Mire
Dante Alighieri, 1 6 , 2 1 -2 3 , 27 , 5 2 , 6 2 ,
6 3 , 7 5 , 7 6 , 1 24 , 1 2 8, 1 30 , 1 34, 1 4 1
Danton, Georges Jacques, 8 7
Dario, Ruben, 9 0 , 9 2 , 9 5 -9 7 , 1 1 8 , 1 4 1 ,
1 4 2, 1 6 8
Debou t , Simo ne, 69
Delacr oix, Eugen e, 4 , 8 2 , 1 3 1
Deshumanizacion del arte, La ( Or t ega y
Gasset), 1 4 3
Destrnccion o el amor, La ( Aleixandre),
1 44
Do nne , John, 1 2 1 , 1 27
Dostoevski, Fyodor, 48
Dream ( Rich t er), 46-48
Du champ, Marcel, 3, 1 1 0 , 1 1 2 , 1 1 4 ,
1 36 , 1 5 9
Dumezil , Georges, 7
Ecuatorial (Huidobro ), 1 39
Ediso n , Thomas A . , 9 2
Ehrenburg, llya, 1 1 8
Elio t, T. S . , 5 5 , 6 6 , 9 9 , 1 1 9 - 1 2 1 ,
1 2 3- 1 25 , 1 2 7- 1 30 , 1 3 2- 1 36 , 1 4 0,
1 42
Esenin , Sergei, I 0 3- 1 04
Espanol constitucioual, El, 1 69
"Esthetique d u m al , " (S tevens) , 1 3 5
Estrada Cabrera, Ma nuel, 9 2
Europe and Christianity, 1 2 9
Expressionism , 1 2 1 , 1 3 1
Fourier, Charles, 6 8 , 6 9 , 7 5 , 9 4 , 1 1 3,
1 27
Fragments (Navalis), 60
Freu d , Sigmund , 6 9 , 1 7 2
Fu t urism, 1 05 , 1 06 , 1 2 1 , 1 3 1
Galiano Alcala, Antonio , 1 6 9
Garcia Lo r ca , Federico , 1 1 5 , 1 1 8,
1 4 2- 1 44 .
Garcilaso d e I a Vega , 7 9 , 9 3 , 1 0 1 , 1 2 2
Gau tama, 1 3
Gau tier , Theophile, 6 6 , 1 06 , 1 1 9
Ginsberg, Allen, 1 4 7
Girond o , Oliverio , 1 4 0
Girri. Alberto, 1 4 6
Glorious Lie, The. See Glory of til e
Lie, The
Glory of the L ie, 171 e ( M allarme), 7 6
Goethe, J o hann, 5 5 , 95
GO mez-Correa , Enrique, 1 4 4
Gongora, Luis d e Argot e , y , 3 , 8 1 , 1 0 1 ,
1 1 3 , 1 2 2 , 1 3 2, 1 4 2 , 1 4 3
Goy tisolo , Juan, 1 7 8
Gorost iza, J ose, 1 46
Graci<!n, Baltasar , 2, 3
Guillen , Jorge , 1 39 , 1 4 3
Hegel , Georg , 26 , 27 , 1 07
Heidegger, Marti n , 1 7 2
Heine, Heinrich, 8 1 , 1 2 9
Hemingway, Ernest , 2 1
Henriquez Urena , Pedro , 9 3
Heraclitus, 1 3 0
Heraldos negros, Los (Vallejo), 1 4 1
Herder , J o hann, 4 , 5 1 , 6 2, 99
Hoffmann, E. T. A., 8 1
Holderlin, Friedrich , 39 , 44 , 5 5 , 6 0 ,
62, 1 61
Ho mer , 6 2
Honig, Edwin , 9 9
Huelsenbeck , Richard, 1 1 9
Hugo, Victor, 44 , 65 , 6 6 , 7 8 , 9 4 , 1 1 7
Hu idobro , Vicen te, 1 1 8- 1 2 0, 1 3 7 ,
1 3 9- 1 4 1 , 1 4 3 , 1 44 , 1 6 0
1 83
Index
Hulme, T. E. , 1 2 9-1 3 1
Hume, David , 57 , 1 0 8, 1 5 7 , 1 7 1 - 1 7 3
Hymns to tile Night (Navalis), 6 0
Hyperion ( Holderlin) , 3 9
Jacob, Ma x , 1 1 9
Jakobson, Roma n , 6 7 , 1 6 3
Jean Paul. See Richter, J ean Pa ul
Jefferson, Thomas, 8 7
J imenez, J uan Ramon, 8 0 , 9 0 , 9 8 , 1 37 ,
1 3 9, 1 4 2 , 1 6 7
Johnso n , J ack, 1 I 8
Joyce , James, 3 2 , 4 8 , 1 0 9 , 1 1 2 , 1 1 4 ,
1 59
J uana Ines de Ia Cruz , Sor. See Cruz, Sor
J uana lnes de Ia
J uarroz, Roberto, 1 46
Julio Jurenito , 1 1 8
Kandinsky , Wassily, 1 3 2
Ka n t , Immanuel, 2 7 , 5 2 , 8 2 , 1 29
Khlebnikov , Velemir , 1 1 8
Khrushchev, 1 45
King, Edmund L . , 1 6 6 , 1 6 7
Kora in Hell: Jmprotisations (Williams),
1 1 9 , 1 20
Krause, Karl Christian Friedrich, 8 7 , 90,
1 67
Kubla Khan (Coleridge), 60
Lafargue, Jules, 6 6 , 9 6 , 1 1 9-1 2 1
Lam, Wifredo , 1 44
Lamartine, Alpho nse , 6 6
Large Glass, The. See Bride Stripped
Len in, 1 04 , 1 05
Levi, Eliphas, 94
Levin, Harry , 1 20
Lezama Lima , Jose, 1 46
Lib erales y ronuinticos ( Llorens), 1 6 9
Lib ertad bajo palabra (Paz) , 1 4 6
Li Po , 8 1
Lloren s, Vicente, 1 6 9
Locke, John, 5 4 , 1 6 9
LOpez Velarde, Ramon, 6 6 , 97 , 9 8 ,
1 2 1 , 1 39
Louis Lam bert (Balzac) , 6 9
Lowell, Robert, 1 47
Lucinda ( F . S chlegel), 4 0
Lugones, Leo polda, 6 6 , 95 -97 , 1 3 9,
141
Lull, Raimundo, 1 5
Lunario sentimen tal ( Lugo nes) , 96
Mo der n ism , 8 8 , 1 1 0 , 1 2 3 , 1 29 , 1 3 5 ,
1 40
Modern ismo, 88-90 , 9 2 , 95 -9 9 , 1 35 ,
1 4 2, 1 6 8
Mohammed, 1 7 3
Molina , Enrique, 1 4 6
Molinari, Ricard o , 1 4 5
Molotov, 1 45
Mondrian, Pie t , 1 3 2
Montale, Eugenio , 1 2 1
Mo n tesquieu, Baron de, 1 6 9
Moro, Cesar, 1 44
Muerte sin fin (Gorostiza), 1 46
Musicien de Saint-Merry , Le ( A pollinaire) , 1 20
Musse t , Alfred de, 66
Mussolini, Benito , 1 2 5 , 1 3 3
Ma chado, Antonio , 9 0 , 9 8 , 1 3 9
Madame Bovary ( Aaubert ) , 1 6 2
Malatesta, Alberto, 1 3 3
Mallarme, Stephane, 3 2 , 48 , 5 5 , 6 6 , 7 6 ,
7 7 , 80, 8 1 , 1 1 2-1 1 4, 1 1 7 , 1 36, 1 3 7 ,
161, 162
Mandelsta m , Osi p , 4 3
Mandragora, 1 44
Manifestes (Breto n), 1 4 9
Mao Tse Tung, 1 45
Marinetti, Filippo , 1 1 8
"Maritime Ode" (Pessoa), 9 9
Marti J ose, 9 1 , 9 9 , 1 1 8
Martin Fierro ( Hermindez), 1 7 8
Ma r tinson, Harry , 1 0 7
Marx , Kar l , 6 8 , 1 05 , 1 07 , 1 26 , 1 5 1 ,
1 5 2, 1 5 7 , 1 7 3, 1 75
Mat t a Ech aurren, Rober to, 1 44
Maurras, Charles, 1 29-1 3 1
Mayakovsky , Vlad imir, 4 3 , 1 04-1 0 7
Me/moth reconcilie ( Balzac), 6 9
Mephistopheles, 6 2
Michaux, Henri, 1 1 0
Mil to n , Joh n , 5 2
Miro , Joan , 1 44
Mirza Abu Taleb, Khan , 1 7
Napoleon Bonaparte, 3 9 , 4 1 , 1 1 0
Nat uralism , 1 1 5
Neruda, Pablo , 1 3 3 , 1 4 4 , 1 4 6
Nerval , Gerard de, 44, 4 9 , 5 5 , 6 5 , 6 6 ,
84 , 1 07
Nervo, Amad o , 95
Netzahualcoy otl, Prince, 9 2
Newton, I saac, 1 7 , 5 4 , 6 8
Niet szche, Friedrich, 2 7 , 44 , 4 8 , 4 9 ,
54, 6 2
Nocturnos (Villaurru tia) , 1 44
Nodier , Charles, 6 5 , 66
Nord-Sud, 1 1 9
"Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction "
( Stevens), 1 35
1 84
Children of t he Mire
(Fourier) , 6 9
Navalis, 3 6 , 4 0 , 4 4 , 5 3 , 5 7 , 6 0 , 1 07 ,
1 1 2, 1 29
"Oda a Walt Whi t man" ( Lorca ) , 1 44
Odyssey, 1 28 , 1 6 1 , 1 62
O'Hara, Frank , 1 44
Olson, Charles, 1 4 7
On Germany ( Stael ) , 4 8 , 1 29
"Only One, The" (Hold erlin), 44
Oppen, George, 1 4 2
Ort ega y Gasset, Jose, 1 4 3
Pa n t isocra cy, 40
Parmenides, 1 30
Parnassianism , 88
Parra, Nicanor, 1 46
Pas t ernak, Boris, 4 3
Pellicer , Carlos, 1 42
Per e t , Benjamin, 1 45
Pessoa, Fer na ndo , 4 9 , 5 5 , 9 4 , 9 9 , 1 1 8 ,
1 2 1 , 147
Petrarch, Francesco , 7 9
Picabia , Francis, 1 1 8 , 1 44
Picasso , Pablo , 1 1 5 , 1 1 6
Pilniak , Boris, 1 0 5 , 1 07
Pla to, 1 5
Poe , Edgar Allan , 1 1 6 , 1 1 7
Poemas articos ( Huidobro}, 1 39
Poeta en Nue1a York ( Lorca), 1 44
Post moder nismo , 96 , 9 8 , 1 3 8
Pou nd , Ezra. 4, 6 6 , 1 1 5 , 1 1 9, 1 20 ,
1 2 3- 1 30 , 1 3 2- 1 3 8 , 1 4 0
Prajna Para mita, 1 7 3
Pra 1da, 1 04
Prelude, Th e (Wordswor t h ) , 4 1 , 1 3 5
Proper t ius, 1 4 2
Purgatorio ( Dante), 1 28
Quetzalcoa t l , 1 2 , 45
Quevedo, Francisco de, 8 1 , 1 0 1
Racine , Jea n , 6 2 , 1 3 0 , 1 3 1 , 1 6 2
Reed , Joh n , 6
Renga, 1 6 0
Residencia en Ia tierra ( Neru da ) , 1 44
Restif de Ia Breto nne, N icolas, 6 8
Rever d y , Pierre, 1 1 9 , 1 20 , 1 39 , 1 4 3
Reyes , Alfonso, 1 39
Ricardo , David, 1 07 , 1 26
Richelieu, Cardinal, 3 8
Richter , Jean Paul, 3 6 , 4 6 , 4 8 , 4 9 , 5 7 ,
84
Ri1ke, Rainer Maria, 5 5 , 1 2 1
1 85
I ndex
Surrealis m , 5 5 , 1 1 5 , 1 1 9 , 1 20 , 1 3 1 , 1 3 3 ,
1 34 , 1 4 3 , 1 44 , 1 4 7 , 1 4 9
Swedenborg, Emanuel, 69, 94
Symbolism , 88, 96, 1 1 5 , 1 1 9, 1 35 ,
1 39 , 1 5 9 , 1 6 9
Tablad a , J o se Juan, 95 , 1 4 0
Tit o , Marshal, 1 4 5
Tradition of th e New, Tile ( Rosenberg),
2
Trilce ( Va llej o ) , 1 4 1
Tristan , Flora , 69
Tro tsk y , Leon D . , 1 0 3, 1 04 , 1 0 6, 1 07 ,
1 33, 145, 1 76
Tu Fu , 8 1
Ultraismo, 1 2 0 , 1 39
Unamuno , Miguel de, 90, 9 8 , 1 6 8
Ungar e t t i , Giuseppe, 1 1 9 , 1 2 1
Valery , Pa ul, 4 8 , 1 39
Valle l n clan , Ramon del, 98
Vallejo , Cesar , 4 3 , 1 3 7 , 1 4 1 , 1 44
Vallo n , Anne Marie ( Annet te), 4 2
1 86
Vanguard ia , 88, 97
Vanguard ismo , 9 6
Vega Carpio, Lope de, I 0 1
Verlaine, Paul, 80
Villaur rutia , Xavier , 1 44 , 1 46
Virgil, 1 6 , 2 1 . 4 6 , 6 2 , 1 4 2
Vit ier , Cin tio , 1 46
Vo ltaire, Fran!;ois Marie Aro ue t de,
54, 1 69
1 36
Weber, Ma x, 1 1 7
Whit man, Wal t , 8 0 , 1 1 7 , 1 1 8 , I 23-1 2 5
Wharf, Benjamin Lee , 7
Williams, William Carlo s , 1 1 9, 1 35 ,
1 37, 1 4 0 , 1 42
Wordsworth, Do rothy, 4 2
Wo rdswor t h , William , 3 6 , 4 1 -4 3, 5 7 ,
60, 80
Yea ts, W . B . , 5 5 , 94 , 1 3 7
Zau m, 1 1 8