Rhetorical Structure and Poetic Vision: The Frame and Title Poems of Seguro Azar by Pedro Salinas

RHETORICAL STRUCTURE AND POETIC VISION: THE FRAME AND TITLE POEMS OF SEGURO AZAR BY PEDRO SALINAS by David Lee Garrison Wright State University For Polo Coronado ALL of the nine volumes of poetry by Pedro Salinas are carefully ordered and organized to develop a central theme.1 The poet gathers his third book around a series of dichotomies that elaborate in various ways the theme expressed in its paradoxical title, Seguro azar. The fifty poems in this collection offer “a vision which is simultaneously decisive and mutable” (Friedman 52) through the interplay and tension between certainty and chance, nature and artifice, appearance and reality, presence and absence, time and eternity, a tú and a yo. The fundamental and most pervasive duality in the book is between poetry and silence, between la palabra and la nada, for this is a book about the writer’s struggle to create. As Jonathan Mayhew argues, “virtually every poem in Seguro azar comments upon the process of writing” (124); or, as José Bergamín states so perceptively and succinctly in a newspaper review of the book, “Arte poético: seguro azar” (Barrera López 162).2 The first and last poems in the collection, as well as the poem from which the title is taken, “Fe mía,” deal with the phenomenon of literary creation most directly. In the first, “Cuartilla,” the poet describes the experience of facing the blank page and the victory of getting his first word down.3 “Fe mía,” the last line of which is “seguro azar,” does not resolve the struggle, rather it states the central paradox that every writer faces and that the persona in this title poem accepts: the mortality and the immortality implicit in poetic creation . In the last poem, “Triunfo suyo,” Salinas rages at the defeat that he 65 knows is inevitable at the hands of silence, for he realizes that ultimately his poetic voice will be silenced by death. In this study I will examine these three poems and the correlations between them in an attempt to demonstrate how they reflect the rhetorical structure of Seguro azar and Salinas’s vision of the art of poetry. 1 “CUARTILLA” The title of this poem suggests one of the things necessary for writing – a sheet of paper. Yet “Cuartilla” opens with a description of various kinds of whiteness other than that of paper: “Cuartilla” Invierno, mundo en blanco. Mármoles, nieves, plumas, blancos llueven, erigen blancura, a blanco juegan.4 The first line has no verb at all and simply posits a static world of whiteness. The next three lines, however, set this world in motion with the verbs “llueven,” “erigen,” and “juegan.” “Mármoles, nieves, plumas” all produce whiteness, and yet it is not clear which of the verbs describe these things, or if perhaps all the verbs go with all the subjects. The image created in these first lines is understandable in its general depiction of different kinds of whiteness, and yet the white things appear in a chaos of motion. The next sentence suggests once again something static – a strange, columned edifice of whiteness: Ligerísimas, escurridizas, altas, las columnas sostienen techos de nubes blancas. Rupert Allen describes the scene in this way: “Snow is falling and the observer , sitting indoors at his writing table, looks out upon a tour de force of whiteness . The columns of large buildings appear to be holding up white clouds” (84). The image of clouds as ‘roofs,’ so to speak, is an oxymoron in that it suggests both movement and permanence. As in the opening lines of the poem, something static turns out to be in motion. In the next few lines the focus of the poem shifts away from the general vision of whiteness to things visible within it: 66 David Lee Garrison Bandas de palomas dudosas entre blancos, arriba y abajo, vacilantes aplazan la suma de sus alas.¿Vencer, quién vencerá? Los copos inician algaradas. Sin ruido choques, nieves, armiños, encontrados. We are confronted here with more activity, and this time elements of the scene struggle with one another for victory – “¿Vencer, quién vencerá?” Doves, snows, ermines, all of these white things...