The subject in question: early contemporary Spanish literature and Modernism

4. Modernist Hieroglyphics: Geographies of Presence in the Poetry of Jorge Guillén and Vicente Aleixandre

c h a p t e r 4 Modernist Hieroglyphics Geographies of Presence in the Poetry of Jorge Guillén and Vicente Aleixandre The “hieroglyphic mode” represents an intensification of the “aesthetic of interruption” fundamental to works identified as modernist . The much greater iconicity of the poetry of Jorge Guillén and Vicente Aleixandre—in comparison to the almost anti-pictorial settings of the previous chapter—reflects as well a distinctive mode of subjectivity that in some important respects parodies the dominant middle-class subjective model. Yet it is fully appropriate to poets whose “generation” has been strongly identified with Góngora and his unparalleled creation, the monster Polifemo. As one moves from familiar names if not actual physical descriptions that locate Baroja’s Andrés Hurtado in turn-of-the-century Madrid and the Castillian countryside to the minimal backdrops across which Augusto Pérez scurries, the hybrid scenarios of Tierra Caliente, to the sketchy settings of the many “novels” of Gómez de la Serna’s Andrés Castilla, and, finally, to the perplexing narrative trains of thought in Chacel’s Estación. Ida y vuelta, it is clear that these geographies are intimately linked to a narrating consciousness that appropriates a public space in order to give form to a private, metanovelistic vision. As they aggressively dedicate their poetry to the 127 < fabrication of private, hermetic worlds—unconventional geographies that require an uncommon sensibility to engage them—Guillén and Aleixandre intensify the course of these explorations to bring forth the most extended and pronounced manifestations of what I have been calling the “monster subject” in Spanish modernism. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the subjective positions developed by these poets is that they represent radical distortions of the conventional model based on free-thinking and autonomy. Both poets parody this construct—without, of course, intending to do so—by extending the principal aspects of the conventional model to immoderate bounds. Free-thinking becomes intellectual aggressiveness and, quite often, intellectual violence to objects and landscapes, while autonomy metamorphoses into solipsism. What effectively happens is that alienation from the dominant bourgeois subjective pattern brings forth a position that, in relation to its analog, is, indeed, distorted and that produces, in the context of romantic concepts of monstrosity, self-begetting extensions of itself . Such a turn in the early decades of the twentieth century has become an observable phenomenon in other literary traditions and has provided much grist for the chorus of critics that have understood modernism as a move toward extremism. It is from this tendency that Fredric Jameson is able to make the claim that modernism in many respects—if not at the overtly political level—provides a model for fascism, or at least an approach to the world that can be considered such, an apolitical “protofascism .”1 The elements of such an understanding include the exaltation of the intellectual will, the refusal to recognize the role of historicity in the fabrication of cultural documents, and the tendency to retreat to a radically private, solipsistic understanding in response to an uninviting and alienating public reality. Although the traditional culprits in this enterprise in mainstream criticism have been Eliot, Pound, Yeats, Lewis, and, for some, even Joyce, it is my considered opinion that the most radical manifestation of precisely this type of attitude is to be found in the poetry of Jorge Guillén and Vicente Aleixandre. The subjective models they 1. Jameson, Fables of Aggression, 1–23. 128 jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre develop represent the outer limits of the type of monstrous subjectivity that has been the hallmark of Spanish attitudes throughout its modern literary history. The great difference, of course, is that for perhaps the first time what had consistently been a negative view becomes in these poets an affirmative position. The appeal to force, personal aggressive resolve, so integral to rightist theories and practices, is strongly echoed in attitudes that while indeed apolitical are nevertheless fully consonant with national policies that also preached the “triumph of the will.” Although many consider Guillén a more conventional poet than Aleixandre (Cernuda calls him the “greatest surrealist”),2 their differences have been overstated. Both Guillén and Aleixandre affirm a vision of the world that challenges bourgeois subjective models by means of the production of well-made, “better” images of a better way to be. Guillén, in fact, specifically designates imagism as the modernist tendency with which he most identifies: “El nombre americano imagists podria aplicarse a cuantos escritores de alguna imaginación escribían acá o allá por los años 20” (“The American name imagists could be applied to a number of writers with some imagination who were writing here or there during the ’20s”).3 During these years, poetry proceeds by means of the production of a different kind of image, not simply a copy of reality but as something that aspires to full immediacy and presence—a “realidad no [.....] reduplicada en copias sino recreada de manera libérrima ” (“reality not [.....] duplicated in copies but created in the freest manner,” 20)—which heralds, in turn, the full presence of being. Aleixandre ’s poetry may also be read as a progressively more focused summoning into fullness of the same type of alternative reality, an unconventional geography of full being. Whereas in Cántico (the 1936 second edition) Guillén assertively presides over his poetic landscapes fabricated by and for the poet through acts of systematic intellectual aggression, Aleixandre must explore an existential order over which his intellectual 2. Luis Cernuda, Prosa completa, ed. Derek Harris and Luis Maristany (Madrid: Barral, 1975), 429. 3. Jorge Guillén, “Generación,” in El argumento de la obra (Barcelona: Sinera, 1969), 20. jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre 129 will, at least initially, is incapable of exerting immediate control. While Guillén aggressively reconstitutes ordinary reality into a better image of full being, Aleixandre engages in an extended struggle to impose his will on a force that seemingly defies such attempts. What seem to be almost spontaneous experiences for Guillén are for Aleixandre protracted engagements to dominate a medium that, nevertheless, progressively af- firms the promise of existential plenitude. Like Guillén’s, Aleixandre’s goal is not so much self-understanding as it is the “monstrous” selfaggrandizement that accompanies the experience of the presence of being . Although their routes may seem quite different, their goal, nevertheless , is to create a private world, a geography of immediacy and fullness , for an elite and privileged consciousness. I turn first to Guillén and Cántico’s first section’s initial multisectioned poem, “Más allá” (“Beyond”), which serves almost as a manifesto of Guillén’s attitude to the mode of being he values and the type of poetic image appropriate to such values. The poem pays homage to two distinct forms of consciousness, both of which are necessary to the creative act, yet only one of which has any real value for the poet. As the title indicates, there are two distinct forms of “otherness,” both of which are assigned the same label: “más allá.” The “first” realm is empirical reality , which communicates its presence at daybreak as the poet awakens to meet the new day. Yet this “first light” is accompanied by a “second,” more aggressive presence as the consciousness affirms an unorthodox interpretation of the meaning of the “outside light” from “beyond.” The things that emerge from the light are understood to affirm another purpose , to orient and center the poet’s being: ..... van presentándose Todas las consistencias Que al disponerse en cosas Me limitan, me centran.4 ..... making their appearance All the consistencies 4. Jorge Guillén, Cántico, 2nd ed. (Madrid: Cruz y Raya, 1936), 15. 130 jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre That upon ordering themselves in things Limit me, center me. Although it is the accumulation of light particles that produces a temporal image of the day, the light is not the primary medium operating in the poem. It is incapable of effecting the significant transformation that now proceeds under the auspices of a more forceful agent: “mis ojos / Que volverán a ver / Lo extraordinario: todo” (“my eyes / That will see again / The extraordinary: everything,” 16). Temporality is suspended by the awakened activity of consciousness that reconstitutes it in an atemporal context. A second “más allá” now asserts itself, for itself: Todo está concentrado Por siglos de raíz Dentro de este minuto, Eterno y para mi. Y sobre los instantes Que pasan de continuo, Voy salvando el presente: Eternidad en vilo. (16–17) All is concentrated For ages entirely Within this minute, Eternal and for me. And above the moments That continually pass, I am saving the present: Eternity suspended. The “outside” empirical landscape elicits an active response from an intellectual will desirous of affirming its presence against precisely such a visual background: Ser, nada más. Y basta. Es la absoluta dicha.¡Con la esencia en silencio Tanto se identifica! jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre 131 ¡Al azar de las suertes Unicas de un tropel Surgir entre los siglos, Alzarse con el ser, Y a la fuerza fundirse Con la sonoridad Más tenaz: sí, sí, sí, La palabra del mar! (17–18) To be, nothing more. And that’s enough. It is absolute bliss. When being is in silence So much is recognized. At random from the unique destinies Of a throng To emerge from among the ages, To rise with being. And by force to unite With the most tenacious Sonority: yes, yes, yes, The word of the sea! This “inner” desire to be, the aggressive desire of the intellectual will to affirm an absolute status, transforms the external landscape into a vehicle to express the will to presence: Todo me comunica, Vencedor, hecho mundo, Su brio para ser De veras real, en triunfo. (18) All communicates to me, Victorious, made world, Its daring to be Truly real, in triumph. That is to say, nature provides fragmented and empty images, raw material for the activity of self-invention, that achieve plenitude by virtue of 132 jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre their incorporation into a greater unity centered in the consciousness. Indeed, the second section portrays “este / Ser, avasallador / Universal ” (“this / Being, universal / Dominator,” 21), the aggressive willconsciousness , which is also a will to form (“vaguedad / Resolviéndose en forma” [“vagueness / Transforming itself into form,” 20]). This inner realm is dark, yet at its center there resides “En lo desconocido [.....] / Un más allá de veras / Misterioso, realísimo” (“In the unknown [.....] / A beyond truly / Mysterious and most real,” 21). Here is a reality that transcends mere representation to embody a principle of artifice unavailable in the sense-dominated “outer realm.” Through the assertive activity of this interior otherness the empirically available “más allá” is made to fulfill a more valuable function: to provide the formal building blocks for being, the true and better reality (“realísimo”). The perspectival three-dimensionality of nature is not an end but rather a means to affirm the presence of more significant landscapes. The devaluation of empirical experience is expressed as a violence enacted upon the natural image that is reappropriated to the active medium of consciousness, where form acquires a new shape and meaning, in a plane, that is, a twodimensional medium. Such an active principle acknowledges the fusion of the separate functions of will and intellect that, along with the memory (which in Cántico has been effectively excised), had formed the basis for all traditional epistemological models before and since the Renaissance. No longer an accumulated record of experiences, the values of being, to which this alternate epistemology responds, require an unencumbered subject with no constraints upon “la energía / De plenitud” (“the energy / Of plenitude ,” 25). A willed intensification of the understanding redefines the outside medium in order to affirm itself as something completely new. The poem’s final strophes affirm the ascendancy of this alternative principle of image production as the inner principle affirms its dominion over the visual field of creation: ..... Y con empuje henchido De afluencias amantes jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre 133 Se abanica en el sagrado Presente perdurable Toda la creación Que al despertarse un hombre Lanza la soledad A un tumulto de acordes. (32–33) ..... And with swelled force From loving influxes Fans itself in the sacred Everlasting present All of creation, Which upon awakening a man Casts off solitude In a tumult of harmonies. The awakening is a double one: the poet opens his eyes to a visual domain that provides the raw materials by which to affirm the “más allá de veras” (“true beyond”). The vocabulary of the final strophes, dominated by aggressive, action-oriented words (“empuje,” “se ahinca,” “lanza”), suggests that a passive outside principle has been replaced with an active inside principle. The poem has been the account of the poet’s meticulous valuation of an active principle of consciousness that is also a poetic principle. By the poem’s conclusion, inner and outer realities have effectively intermingled. Three-dimensional space-reality effectively collapses by virtue of its redefinition in terms of the values of being, an inner phenomenon and the true locus of image production. The present loses its association with temporality as a consequence of a forceful act of consciousness (“con empuje henchido”) that reconstitutes an image of the real world in an atemporal setting. Indeed, the “outside” exists only as a necessary pretext for the affirmation of the fullness of being. Images acquire fullness by surrendering their three-dimensionality to become a plane projection on the activate membrane of consciousness where spatiality fully collapses. Poetic expression responds to an existential need to affirm being by 134 jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre means of a landscape appropriated for that purpose. The resultant image is quite different from that typically associated with nineteenth-century realism. The realism of this poetry corresponds not to an objective, observing eye, but to the subjective desire of the poet’s eye to seize upon objects that correspond visually to an aesthetic-existential predisposition that covets precisely such an image or landscape. The observed object , however, has status only insofar as it communicates to the poet his own aesthetic-existential agenda. The poetic object’s preexisting affinity with the active principle of will-consciousness thus signifies that the distance between subject and object has been greatly diminished from the outset. The poem, in a sense, becomes the process by which the distinction between inner and outer dimensions of the image becomes blurred. The object, in a sense, wills itself as it itself is willed to become part of a more intense and profound landscape that is invariably supplemented by an aggressive principle of consciousness, which also supplies what the object cannot, an affirmation of its own presence in the representation . In formal terms, the effect is a radical oscillation between spatial and plane dimensions, that is, three- and two-dimensional realities. Nearly every poem of the second edition of Cántico witnesses the collapse of empirical reality in favor of a “better” image, in which words and images have fused in ecstatic harmony. The words that appear on the pages of Cántico are graphic equivalents of the images from nature that have helped to initiate the creative process; that is, they function as hieroglyphs. The protagonist is never the natural landscape, but rather being, through the landscape. Words do not simply mirror a preexisting image but become the basis for a “better” image that achieves fullness in a plane reality. The most explicit expression of these values is found in “Naturaleza viva” (“Still Life Alive”) where the poet ascribes to a plane tabletop the quality of maintaining “Resuelto en una Idea / Su plano: puro, sabio, / Mental para los ojos / Mentales” (“Settled in an Idea / Its plane: pure, wise, / Mental for the eyes / Of the mind,” 34). The tabletop that was part of an expansive spatial reality, a “bosque / De nogal” (“forest / Of walnut,” 35), has now jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre 135 achieved a higher perfection. Its rings, signs of the presence of time, still refer it to the other reality, but the act of its planing has transformed its essence. It has won a victory over time and by its separation from its original spatial-temporal milieu has become exalted in a new and more intense fullness: ......¡El nogal Confiado a sus nudos Y vetas, a su mucho Tiempo de potestad Reconcentrada en este Vigor inmóvil, hecho Materia de tablero Siempre, siempre silvestre! (35) ..... The walnut tree Trusting in its knots And grains, in its great Time of power Concentrated in this Still vigor, made Matter of a tabletop Always, always natural! The unsubtle play on words of the title is very suggestive of Guillén’s low valuation of nature and things natural. As the title suggests, the tree acquires greater life by losing its natural form and achieving a plane form. This is, indeed, Guillen’s fundamental aesthetic value. The planing of the tree removes it from nature but also from temporality. It acquires, or at least is ascribed, power and autonomy that it could not possess in a spatial-temporal medium. Planing thus signifies a transcending of the flux of time. These qualities are also those associated with the production of poetic images. Not a mere cross-section but rather a dynamic receptacle , the plane represents an intensification of the capacity to produce images . The tabletop’s artificed form is a correlative for an alternative epistemology whose goal is an improvement on the natural image. 136 jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre Spatial perception, which typically characterizes the experience of everyday reality, is also temporal perception since images in space are communicated to the perceiver over a distance. Consciousness, therefore , becomes aware of time through space. The passive consciousness of the empirical model receives images in the tacit awareness that they inscribe themselves temporally. The active will-consciousness, however , imposes itself on these images, collapsing the distinction between itself and the landscape as it banishes the presence of time. In the passive mode of being, nature and time exert power over being, which is unable to establish its full presence in the spatial realm. In the poetry, as an epistemological phenomenon, the spatiality of nature is disrupted in a manner that closely parallels the act of planing glorified in “Naturaleza viva.” By excising the spatial element of the images of reality, the active consciousness transcends their temporality. The production of images shifts from space-time to an inner plane, a two-dimensional surface whose highest, and indeed only, value is being, the principal content of the poetry. The poems of Cántico that typically celebrate the presence of being represent such experiences by means of an intensified twodimensional image. The images of empirical reality have no place in poem-making until they are reassembled as a composite image superimposed in planes. The creative will understands the images of raw reality as fragments, building blocks for a better image that contains every partial , perceived image and that has fashioned the parts into a graphically represented whole. Empirical images are the building blocks of a “better” poetic image whose purpose is to affirm the fullness of being within the plane of artifice. In “El prólogo” (“The Prologue”) the poetic process is portrayed as an act of refashioning undesirable, temporally experienced images , characterized as “rodeos” (“detours,” 47). Poetry marks the moment when temporal experiences are redefined to become the means, or prologue, to the act of artifice that takes one out of the flux of daily experiences measured by the passage of days: “¡Perezcan / Los días en prólogo! / Buen prólogo: todo, / Todo hacia el Poema” (“May the days jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre 137 in prologue / Perish! / Good prologue: everything, / Everything toward the Poem,” 47). “Cima de la delicia” (“Height of Delight”) describes a moment so intense that the landscape “Henchido de presencia” (“Filled with presence,” 87) acquires the passivity necessary to collapse its spatiality to planeness: “El mundo tiene cándida / Profundidad de espejo” (“The world possesses the innocent / Depth of a mirror,” 87). The world has become a mirror for the presence of being, which in empirical reality is rendered invisible by the temporality that provokes the poet’s disaffection . The word-image, or hieroglyph, represents the fulfillment of the activity of consciousness. “Perfección del círculo” (“Perfection of the Circle”), a testimonial to the two-dimensional perfection of the circle, concludes by admiring the circle’s geometrical form, which possesses the ability to make itself fully present in the act of its representation. Such power contrasts with the difficulty in affirming the same status for being, which requires the excision, by force, of an imperfect spatialtemporal reality. The circle’s perfection thus suggests the limits of the poet’s aesthetic-existential ideal, which he underscores with the questions that close the poem: “—¿Quién? ¿Dios? ¿El poema? / —Misteriosamente ......” (“—Who? God? The poem? / —Mysteriously ......,” 89). While Guillén may admire the circle’s form, he is incapable of faithfully retracing its trajectory with words. The perfection of the two-dimensional ideal is disrupted by the reality of its closure, which also becomes the closure of the means available to understand such perfection on its own terms. This relegates the poet to an outside position from which he can only babble in ignorance about what he has just experienced. Achieving the circle’s perfection would thus require transcending consciousness, the paradoxical antithesis of the desire that has exalted the circle, like a god, as the embodiment of the highest value. The resolution to this apparent dilemma is to invent an intermediate category, between the natural and abstract, which consists of what the poet can understand, on his terms. The activity of understanding becomes instead the occasion for affirming the principles of understanding themselves but not the specific object appropriated for contemplation. 138 jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre “Jardín que fue de don Pedro” (“Garden That Belonged to Don Pedro”) portrays the poet engaged in the activity of understanding, which provides the opportunity, as the title suggests, for a transfer of ownership, from Don Pedro’s artificed landscape to the poet’s consciousness. The contemplation of the more perfect nature of the garden is paralleled by the juxtaposition of this image with an even greater perfection, the processes of understanding that “Funden lo vivo y lo puro: / Las salas de este jardín” (“Fuse the living and the pure: / The rooms of this garden,” 190). The resultant image, in the membrane of consciousness, exists in an intermediate yet understandable realm. It is not, like the perfection of the circle, pure abstraction. Nor is it alive since, as part of the understanding , it has been dispossessed of its autonomy. It is, effectively, a hieroglyph . These ideas are more explicitly addressed in Guillén’s statement in the Gerardo Diego anthology that poetry should be “poesía bastante pura ‘ma non troppo’” (“fairly pure poetry ‘ma non troppo’”),5 an equation that also affirms the basic conditions of knowledge and existence. Poetry must not be understood in absolute terms, for to do so would render it incomprehensible. Absolutely pure or absolutely alive means a poetry that is also absolutely unintelligible. Guillén is not so much concerned with affirming the aliveness of nature as he is the aliveness of being, as compared to the unintelligible purity of being that does not need to understand itself. The not infrequent declarations of his debt to nature, as in “Siempre aguarda mi sangre” (“My Blood Always Waits”), where he declares that “No soy nada sin ti, mundo” (“I am nothing without you, world,” 217), which seem to indicate an affirmative attitude, actually measure Guillén’s alienation from the fullness of being. Without recourse to the unwanted otherness of external reality, from which he has actively distanced himself, he is literally nothing, impotent to affirm the primordial value, being, from which he is also distanced. Experiential reality has value because it confirms the presence of being, not because 5. Jorge Guillén, in Gerardo Diego, Poesía española: Antología (Madrid: Signo, 1931), 344. jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre 139 of an intrinsic worth. It is “nothing” in exactly the same sense that the poet is “nothing” without the world. Literally nothing has value unless it is affirming and confirming being. Nature, things, and human beings have value only insofar as they provide the opportunities for being to embody itself. Guillén needs the world only insofar as he needs raw images with which to fashion a landscape that he understands corresponds to his desire to know the shape and substance of being. Being demands a landscape, an empty landscape neither pure nor alive. Of the 125 poems in the second edition of Cántico, many represent experiences that take place in nature or rural settings. This does not mean that Guillén has assigned these landscapes a special value. The natural landscape, for example, the rural countryside in “Relieves” (“Reliefs”) whose solitary edifices (a castle at the top of a hill and a hermitage) and horizontal landscape provide a striking three-dimensional relief, is primarily a focusing device for the production of the “better image,” that is, being. Thus the experience of a relief is superseded by a more significant relief, a product of the poet’s understanding that, paradoxically, destroys the natural relief. This destruction is characterized as activities of appropriation (“rendición”) and of possession (“Posesión”), which epitomize his aggressive epistemology. At specific moments nature acquires anthropomorphized feminine form, as in the long poem “Salvación de la primavera” (“Salvation of Spring”), to become an embodiment of fragility and subservience. A more direct rendering is developed “El manantial ” (“The Source”), which retraces the course of a river to its source, a better image of the river’s unwieldy chaos rendered imagistically, in the final strophe, as a young girl: Y emerge compacta Del río que pudo Ser, esbelto y curvo, Toda la muchacha. (53) And there emerges—compact From the slim and curved river 140 jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre That could have been, The whole girl. Affirmed here is an image, taken from nature, of nature’s renunciation of its natural role. Form triumphs over the river’s chaos. The girl becomes instead the embodiment of an aesthetic principle, a source of images produced at nature’s expense. The physical emergence of the girl from the water marks the final step in a trajectory away from a chaotic nature to a realm of compactness, the better source that affirms itself through this image. Nature exists to mirror the poet’s will-consciousness, not to fulfill a function for itself. Nature, therefore, is never recognized as something of intrinsic value. Nature’s elemental function is to provide the raw material for consciousness to fashion a “better” image, to surpass nature. Its principal value is its passivity, availability, and malleability, the ease with which it may be made to assume the forms valued by the understanding . This attitude is carried forward as well in poems set indoors that typically feature an object, ordinary or artistic, through which the poet affirms similar existential states. Perhaps the most well known is the armchair invoked in “Beato sillón” (“Blessed Armchair”), in which the invocation of the massive object within the finite space of the house leads to an unexpected generalization about the world: “El mundo está bien / Hecho” (“The world is well / Made,” 195). The poem’s brevity does not make clear, however, that Guillén’s affirmation is due only minimally to the objective physical presence of the armchair in the room. Although “La casa / Corrobora su presencia” (“The house / corroborates its presence,” 195), the chair’s massive presence in the limited space of the house provides an even more precise correlative for the presence of being, in the same massive and serene proportions. As with nature, it is not the specific object that is valued but rather the “better” image that emerges from the activity of contemplation. Indeed, the poet’s eyes do not “see,” since “No pasa / Nada. Los ojos no ven, / Saben” (“Nothing / Happens. The eyes do not see, / They know,” 236). The more passive act of observation has long preceded this moment. Not the spontanejorge guillén and vicente aleixandre 141 ous experience of an object but the ecstatic fashioning of an image of being , the true object of exaltation, has refashioned the world once again. As with the natural landscape, this well-made world also affirms itself through objects with no inherent value except as referents for being. If such affirmative moments almost invariably herald the presence of being, the consciousness of time and death threaten to nullify this capacity . Although the specific references to time are not overabundant, Guillén’s awareness of it, and its limitations, is constant. The presence of being witnesses the falling away of time. A moment of plenitude in “La Florida” becomes “Tiempo en presente mío” (“My present time,” 231), time’s redefinition in the image of being. The excision of temporality , therefore, involves simultaneously acknowledging a more profound mechanism. The unintelligibility of the force and movement of time is overcome by the more forceful activity of being in a timeless present of perfect stillness. More than the artifice of a well-made world, the artificing consciousness affirms its greater perfection in nature, but like time, at the expense of nature, in the creation of a presence that is the poetic image. In a similar vein, the poems set in cityscapes often express disorientation , confusion, and fatigue, as in “Perdido entre tanta gente” (“Lost among So Many People”). The distaste for such landscapes becomes particularly evident in “Dinero de Dios” (“Money from God”) in which the mocking image of an “Hacedor / Supremo” (“Supreme / Maker,” 181), a parody of the rationalist idea of a supreme being, wields power through the mass production of the graven image, “el signo / De la Posibilidad ” (“the sign / Of Possibility,” 181), printed on money that has acquired an absolute value “Hasta convertirse en ..... el Más Allá” (“Until Becoming the ..... Great Beyond/Afterlife,” 181). Guillén is contrasting his “better images” produced in a “más allá de veras ..... realísimo” with the mass-produced means of image production in capitalist society that has its own concept of a “más allá.” His low opinion of society’s values becomes particularly evident in the sarcastic conclusion, “—¡Dioses : gastad!” (“—Gods: spend!” 181), a reference to the fact that un142 jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre der capitalism any mortal can become a god by virtue of the acquisition of sufficient quantities of the images printed on money. The gods de- fine themselves as such through their worship of the supreme maker’s graven images, an idolatry that expresses itself in the perverse activity of spending. Such a false economy threatens the privileged status of wellmade , superior images. The only landscapes of unquestioned value are spaces where the bourgeois cityscape does not intrude and which, in turn, are rendered full, still, and plane as their space is appropriated by the productive principle . The collapsing of space is most evident in poems that contemplate works of art. Whether directed toward sculpture or painting, the activity of contemplation also affords the artificing consciousness occasion to express its own values of production. Sculpture holds an attraction not for its massiveness but because it epitomizes movement immobilized. In “Estatua ecuestre” (“Equestrian Statue”), the contemplation of an equestrian statue leads to the understanding that “Tengo en bronce toda el alma” (“My soul is bronze”) and that “Permanece el trote aquí, / Entre su arranque y mi mano” (“The trot remains here, / Between its starting point and my hand,” 177). The statue is reconstituted as an image held by the hand, a metaphor for the activity of consciousness that has understood a correspondence between the existential ideal and the atemporal, immobile ecstasy of the frozen moment represented in the statue “Inm óvil con todo brío” (“Immobile with full determination,” 177). Equally intense sentiments are expressed regarding a group of living horses in “Unos caballos” (“Some Horses”), whose “acción” is a “destino [que] acaba en alma” (“destiny [that] concludes in soul,” 237), a grace that expresses itself as an essential form that makes these horses “ya sobrehumanos ” (“already superhuman,” 237). As living correlatives of an aesthetic-existential ideal, they transcend their own unconscious “acci ón” to become “alma,” embodiments of a higher principle, movement toward full being. The activity of consciousness that renders the landscape as a wellmade world, comparable to a work of art, is only the first step in a projorge guillén and vicente aleixandre 143 cess of artifice that leads to the affirmation of the superior image, of being . As described in “Las alamedas” (“The Poplar Grove”), the poet’s task is always that of “profundizando paisajes” (“making landscapes more profound,” 197), transforming them into something of greater value in which the values of being and art exactly coincide. As expressed in “Lo inmenso del mar” (“The Immensity of the Sea”), the represented image of the sea on a poster embodies the ideal of artifice, “Monótona, lenta, plana” (“Unchanging, atemporal, plane,” 198), but also “Ductíl, manejable, mía ..... en vía / De forma por fin humana” (“Flexible, manageable , mine ..... in the process of acquiring / A form at last human,” 198). The sea’s immensity parallels the force of consciousness in relation to the landscape. As the sea becomes “por fin humana” it becomes as well the vehicle through which the poet expresses his own power to make a given landscape more profound. Closely related to these landscapes is the female form, whose value is invariably aesthetic, as in “Pasmo de amante” (“Lover’s Amazement ”) which nominally describes the contemplation of feminine beauty . What “stuns” the poet is not the human subject, however, but rather the abstract whiteness of the contemplated object: “Blancura, / Si real, más imaginaria, / Que ante los ojos perdura” (“Whiteness, / If real, more imaginary, / That persists before my eyes,” 178). As also expressed in “La blancura,” whiteness is an essential aspect of all aesthetic experience as Guillén understands it, a metaphor for the plane of consciousness on which images are inscribed and made profound: Recta blancura refrigeradora:¡Qué feliz quien su imagen extendiese, Enardecida por los colorines, Sobre tu siempre, siempre justa lámina Del frío inmóvil bajo el firmamento! (216) Straight refrigerating whiteness: How happy the one who extends your image, Fired by vivid colors, Over your always, always just sheet Of immobile coldness under the firmament! 144 jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre Thus in poems such as “Desnudo” (“Nude”), where Guillen speaks of the “Plenitud, sin ambiente, / Del cuerpo femenino” (“Plenitude, without context, / Of the feminine body”) that brings him to the experience of an “absoluto Presente” (“absolute Present,” 251), the truth is that such experiences have little to do with the female form (such as a real woman, a nude in a painting, or a naked landscape). The fullness associated with the nude exemplifies the “Monotonía justa” (“Measured monotony ,” 251) of all the poetry. There is essentially one subject, the poet, one object, a landscape in its variant forms, and one value, which is also an economy, of image production: the high valuation of being at reality’s expense. Although Aleixandre shares an ideological agenda quite similar to Guillén’s in the sense that the affirmation of the presence of being is always the constant goal, his route to such an affirmation is quite protracted and extends across the entirety of his poetry up to 1936. While Guill én’s verses respond to a perception that consciousness has seized upon an object or landscape that responds to the will to the fullness of being, Aleixandre recounts an entire process whereby a dimly glimpsed intuition of the possibility to experience just such a state eventually becomes clear. Also like Guillén, he understands that his goal can be fulfilled only by abandoning the conventional artistic means at his disposal. To af- firm a better mode of being he must also embrace a different mode of expression . The preparatory moment to a new value orientation is Ambito (Boundary, 1924–27),6 which chronicles Aleixandre’s dissatisfaction with the limitations of the given reality while it also subtly undermines and devalues traditional representational and epistemological assumptions. The volume’s most persistent image, the reflected light of the moon, epitomizes the limited possibilities of ordinary consciousness as well as the poet’s awareness, now as a young adult, of his distance from being. The dissatisfaction is intensified by passive contemplation, the principal consequence of which is the frustrated consciousness of a misspent youth. More than one poem, but notably “Retrato” (“Portrait”), alludes to mas6 . This and the following poems are from Vicente Aleixandre, Obras completas (Madrid: Aguilar, 1968). jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre 145 turbation as a means of combating the tedium of life, experiences that invariably summon an even greater sense of limitation that “cierra ya el sentido ” (“seals the senses,” 96). Self-contemplation and self-gratification are also acts of self-containment, a failure of the will: “El gesto blando que / mi mano opone al viento” (“The bland gesture / that my hand uses against the wind,” 97). Images of weakness and impotence abound in Ambito, and Aleixandre begins to understand that the shaping forces in his life have been invariably associated with mimetic reproduction and their doubled product: mirror reflections, simulacra, words translated into images. He begins to dissociate himself from these agents of existential dilution as he declares to an imaginary lover: “Lo que yo no quiero / es darte palabras de ensue- ño, / ni propagar imagen con mis labios” (“What I do not want / is to give you daydream words, / nor to propagate my image with my lips,” 108). He is looking for an alternative means of representing “love,” his better, fuller self, a new expressive mode, a “Filosofia. Nueva / mirada hacia el cielo / viejo” (“Philosophy. A new glance toward the old / sky”) and hope for a new “Definición que aguardo / de todo lo disperso” (“Definition that I await / from everything scattered,” 137). An integral aspect of the alienation from empirical values is the devaluation of memory, for memories as simulacra of past events distance the poet from being by reduplicating , inflating, and thus devaluing his presence. Indeed, in “Memoria” remembrance is portrayed as a “Valle de ausencias” (“Valley of absences”) that leaves him “sediento” (“thirsty,” 168) to experience the presence of things. The volume concludes with a sense of expectation as “Toda mi boca se llena / de amor, de fuegos presentes” (“My whole mouth fills / with love, with present fires,” 172). Pasión de la tierra (Passion of the Earth, 1928–29) chronicles Aleixandre ’s initial experience with an alternative mode of understanding and the expanded existential possibilities it heralds. In this volume he is concerned more with characterizing and describing the new landscape than with making conclusions, since the new intuitions about an intensified existence are overwhelming in every sense. There is a direct correlation 146 jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre between the prose-poem form and the female creature who populates this realm, the frequent object of address (“ella quedaba desnuda, irisada de acentos, hecha pura prosodia” [“she remained naked, iridescent with accents, made into pure prosody,” 181]), which suggests that the poetry is responding to a more powerful will and mode of production that has overturned the earlier artistic-existential premises. A new representational framework emerges as Aleixandre declares conventional understanding inoperative: “Me descrismo y derribo, abro los ojos contra el cielo mojado” (“I explode and destroy, I open my eyes against the liquid sky,” 180). Aware from the outset that his relationship with the center of being is a learning process, he tells his female companion: “Tu companía es un abecedario” (“Your company is a reading primer,” 179). The old understanding is so many “dibujos ya muy gastados” (“already used up drawings ,” 179). The principal communicative medium in this realm is a new form of language, “la tos muy ronca [que] escupirá las flores oscuras” (“the very hoarse cough [that] will spit out dark flowers,” 180), which requires new means of understanding, “esa puerta” (“that door”) that will allow “todos [a besarnos] en la boca” “all of us [to kiss each other] on the mouth,” 182), as a special but peculiar form of “love” begins to affirm itself (“qué oscura misión mía de amarte” [“what an obscure mission of mine, loving you,” 182]). Aleixandre is attracted to and repelled by an alternative space where “Los amantes se besaban sobre las palabras” (“The lovers kissed beyond words,” 182) and where he is able “sentir en el oído la mirada de las cimas de tierra que llegan en volandas” (“to hear in my ear the view from the peaks of land that come through the air,” 187). The promise of existential liberation is also a new epistemological burden. To become a worthy “lover,” the poet must overcome this realm’s power to overwhelm vision. “Ser de esperanza y lluvia” (“Being of Hope and Rain”) acknowledges his willingness to become a prisoner in “ese dulce pozo escondido [.....] en busca de los dos brazos entreabiertos” (“that sweet hidden well [.....] in search of the two half-open arms,” 187), but also his willful determination to begin to exert an influence over the rush of sounds, images, and language that he cannot underjorge guillén and vicente aleixandre 147 stand: “Horizontalmente metido estoy vestido de hojalata para impedir el arroyo clandestino que va a surtir de mi silencio” (“Horizontally situated , I am clothed with tin-plate to impede the clandestine stream that is going to spurt from my silence,” 188). This silence remains unknown, uncircumscribable, and thus powerful. The desire becomes “extender mi brazo hasta tocar la delicia” (“to extend my arm until I touch delight ”): “Si yo quiero la vida no es para repartirla. Ni para malgastarla. Es solo para tener en orden los labios. Para no mirarme las manos de cera, aunque irrumpa su caudal descifrable” (“If I want life it is not to share it. Nor to waste it. It is only to put my lips in order. In order not to look at my hands of wax, even though their decipherable volume may erupt,” 191). As he begins to decipher the strange messages of this medium, he declares that “estoy aquí ya formándome. Cuento uno a uno los centímetros de mi lucha. Por eso me nace una risa del talón que no es humo. Por ti, que no explicas la geografía más profunda” (“I am here forming myself. I count one by one the centimeters of my struggle. This is why there emerges a smile of a smokeless heel. Through you, who do not explain the deepest geography,” 192). Understanding the physical terrain of this new geography is a means of acquiring its power, which in turn endows the poet with more substantial form, a new understanding that is a means to the values of full being. Called “pretérita” (“past,” 194), the beloved is acknowledged as previous to the poet, a privileged point of origin, a better image by which to orient himself to a primal reality. Becoming her “lover,” Aleixandre also becomes her philosopher and translator . Loving means learning to speak the beloved’s new language. Naming and representing the beloved is also a means of selfaggrandizement . A force understood as both a “perla de amor inmensa caída de nosotros” (“immense pearl of love fallen from us”) and an aspect of the “infinito universal que está en una garganta palpitando” (“universal infinite that is in a palpitating throat,” 195), she is a medium of being but also uncontrollable and destructive, a “rojo callado que [crece] monstruoso hasta venir a un primer plano” (“silent red color that [grows] monstrous until it comes to the fore,” 196). Aleixandre 148 jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre must master the epistemological premises underlying his love before he can participate in its liberating energy. The beloved brings a new thesis regarding the possibilities of understanding, which impels the poet to “olvidarse de los límites y buscar a destiempo la forma de las núbiles, el nacimiento de la luz cuando anochece” (“forget the limits and seek at an inopportune moment the form of the nubile ones, the birth of the light when night falls,” 199). She is a productive principle that contradicts traditional models that cannot account for a “luz cuando anochece.” She brings her own light, independent of traditional representational formulas , and thus heralds herself as a primary apparition, a presence and not a simulacrum or copy. Although Aleixandre is still lamenting his impotence and weakness (“nunca he conseguido ver la forma de vuestros labios” [“I have never gotten to see the form of your lips,” 199]), he is also very much aware of his will to penetrate and to capture this medium ’s power: “Mi brazo es una expedición en silencio” (“My arm is an expedition in silence,” 200). In “Del color de la nada” (“About the Color of Nothingness”) he takes another step toward understanding the new reality as he describes in physical terms what has been happening epistemologically. He sees “los ojos, salidos, de su esfera [.....] [que] acabarían brillando como puntos de dolor, con peligro de atravesarse en las gargantas” (“eyes, wandered from their sphere [.....] [that] would wind up shining like points of pain, with fear of piercing each other in the throats,” 204). Like Guillén, Aleixandre is becoming convinced that it is possible to render the presence of a thing, to erase the distance between the word or image that stands for an object. Aleixandre intuits this new type of language in “El crimen o imposible” (“The Crime or the Impossible ”): “Yo espío la palabra que circula, la que yo sé un día tomará la forma de corazón. La que precisamente todo ignora que florecerá en mi pecho” (“I watch the word that circulates, the one that I know one day will take the form of a heart. The one that is precisely unaware that it will flower in my bosom,” 208–9). He is also aware of the failure of traditional words and images to summon the alternative reality: “el misterio no puede encerrarse en una cáscara de huevo, no puede saberse por más jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre 149 que lo besemos diciendo las palabras expresivas, aquéllas que me han nacido en la frente cuando el sueño” (“the mystery cannot be enclosed in an eggshell, it cannot know itself however much we kiss it while saying expressive words, those that have been born in my forehead during dreams,” 209). The concept “word” is acquiring an entirely different meaning as Aleixandre becomes progressively aware of empirical limitations , as in “El mar no es una hoja de papel” (“The Sea Is Not a Sheet of Paper”), a possible allusion to Guillén: “esperad que me quite estos grabados antiguos” (“wait so I can get rid of these old engravings,” 210), a rather pointed reference to the requirements of mimetic representation and the necessity to confront “grabados”—the printing process but also the imprinting metaphor that characterizes cognition in empiricist terminology—the presence of absences. In “El solitario” (“The Solitary One”) as Aleixandre searches for “palabras que certificarían mi altura, los frutos que están al alcance de la mano” (“word that would certify my height, the fruits within reach of my hand,” 219), he becomes more aware of the nature of his struggle and his power as a “lover.” He declares that it is he, and not this “señorita,” who is actually in control of the course of his life, metaphorized into a game of solitaire: “yo manejo y pongo en fila [esta señorita] para completar ” (“I direct and align [this girl] in order to complete myself,” 220). The true locus of the other reality is an inner silence from which emanate new words and images. This brings a new understanding about their production during “ese minuto tránsito que consiste en firmar con agua sobre una cuartilla blanca, aprovechando el instante en que el corazón retrocede” (“that transitory minute that consists in signing one’s name with water on a white sheet, taking advantage of the instant in which the heart retreats,” 221). But he will not be satisfied with a poetry that “oculta el armazón de huesos” (“hides the framework of bones”). He wants to limit the power of his “muchacha,” to transform her “en una bahía limitada , en una respiración con fronteras a la que no le ha de sorprender la luna nueva” (“into a slow-witted bay, into a breath with boundaries that the new moon will not surprise,” 222). He wants a source of strength 150 jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre to call upon in order to discover “donde los ojos podrán al cabo presenciar un paisaje caliente, una suave transición que consiste en musitar un nombre en el oído mientras se olvida que el cielo es siempre el mismo ” (“where the eyes will be able finally to witness a hot landscape, a soft transition that consists of muttering a name in my ear while it is forgotten that the sky is always the same,” 222). His “love” is a means to a better end, a “paisaje caliente” (“hot landscape”), the true source from which this hybrid language and its startling images proceed. To realize his goal, he must discover the means to unburden himself from “la cruz de la memoria contra el cielo” (“the cross of memory against the sky,” 224). The ultimate barrier to unmediated being is memory and the consciousness of temporality. Word, image, poetry, and plenitude are all contained in the same experience, which exists beyond the final empirical barrier. Aleixandre’s surrealistic songbird “busca aguas, no espejos” (“looks for waters, not mirrors,” 224), presences , not mimetic copies. In “Del engaño y la renuncia” (“Of Deception and Renunciation”), he emphasizes the inner strength available to him, symbolized in his “brazo muy largo” (“very long arm”) which is “presto a cazar pájaros incogibles” (“ready to hunt uncatchable birds”) and, especially, his “pierna muy larga [.....] destruyéndome todas las memorias ” (“extremely long leg [.....] destroying all my memories,” 226). The epistemological assault continues in “Ansiedad para el día” (“Anxiety for the Day”), where he again makes a value comparison between his empirical eyes, “dos lienzos vacilantes que me ocultaban mi destino” (“two vacillating canvases that were hiding my destiny”) and his intuition of an alternative existence, “aquella dulce arena, aquella sola pepita de oro que me cayó de mi silencio una tarde de roca” (“that sweet sand, that one gold nugget that fell to me from my silence one afternoon of rock,” 228). By now there is no question of the much higher valuation of the alternative realm even though he still fears “el monstruo sin oído que lleva en lugar de su palabra una tijera breve, la justa para cortar la explicación abierta” (“the unhearing monster that carries instead of its word brief scissors, the right size to cut off an open explanation,” 229). jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre 151 Such is also the vision in “El mundo está bien hecho” (“The World Is Well Made”), alluding to Guillen’s poem, in which he contrasts both the positive aspect of the hidden center of being, “la mujer del sombrero enorme” (“the woman with an enormous hat,” 233), and the more ominous aspect of the same force that appears as a “gran serpiente larga ” (“great long serpent,” 234). Both utter what appear to be contradictory appeals: “‘Amame para que te enseñe’” (“‘Love me so I can teach you’”) and the other, “‘Muere, muere’” (“‘Die, die,’” 234). The contradiction is not to be resolved by choosing, or seeking to avoid, one possibility over the other. Aleixandre must achieve the same understanding as the “ojo divino” (“divine eye,” 234), the unique perspective from which this alternative world truly reveals itself as “bien hecho” (“well made”) and thus capable of synthesis. At the volume’s conclusion, he calls for “un vaso de nata o una afiladísima espada con que yo parta en dos la ceguera de bruma, esta niebla que estoy acariciando como frente” (“a glass of cream or an extremely well-sharpened sword with which I may split in two the blindness of the mist, this fog that I am caressing like a forehead,” 237), that is, the raw and virile force necessary to overcome his confusion. He has understood that the knowledge he seeks can be achieved only through radically different means: “toser para conocer la existencia, para amar la forma perpendicular de uno mismo” (“to cough in order to know existence, in order to love the perpendicular form of oneself,” 239). He must understand the involuntary manifestations of “existencia” that erupt as irrationally as a cough. To “amar la forma perpendicular ” of himself he must also learn to love the involuntary “coughing ” that holds the key to the mystery of who he is and can be. Espadas como labios (Swords Like Lips, 1930–31) begins with the awareness that “[es posible] ya [.....] el horizonte, / ese decir palabras sin sentido / que ruedan como oidos [.....] entre la luz pisada” (“the horizon [.....] [is] already [possible], / that saying of words without meaning / that roll around like ears [.....] in the trampled light,” 247). He acknowledges two types of words and images, each responding to a different mode of production. The words “sin sentido” are possible only after the 152 jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre light, the source of empirically produced images, has been trampled, which leaves him at the mercy of an alternative mode of production he cannot understand. This is the posture in “La palabra” (“The Word”), where he portrays consciousness as “un caracol pequeñísimo” (“an extremely small snail”) but, nevertheless, “capaz de pronunciar el nombre, / de dar sangre” (“capable of pronouncing the name, / of giving forth blood,” 248–49), of retaining his existential integrity in the face of a force that threatens to overwhelm it. He declares que mi voz no es la tuya y que cuando solloces tu garganta sepa distinguir todavía mi beso de tu esfuerzo por pronunciar los nombres con mi lengua. (249) my voice is not yours and whenever you sob, may your throat still know how to distinguish my kiss from your force by pronouncing the names with my tongue. Aleixandre is laying claim to a more willful role in the poetic process, however insignificant in comparison to the power of the new geography. He must confront the “silencio que es carbón” (“silence that is coal,” 251), which brings unintelligible words, and, in “Muerte” (“Death”), the vision of a “morir sin horizonte por palabras, / oyendo que nos llaman con los pelos” (“horizonless death through words, / hearing that they call to us fully,” 251). “Circuito” postulates the existence of “sirenas vírgenes / que ensartan en sus dedos las gargantas” (“virgin sirens / that string together throats on their fingers,” 252), willful counterforces that will control the involuntary production of the throats, followed by the declaration that “Yo no quiero la sangre ni su espejo. [.....] Por mis venas no nombres, no agonía, / sino cabellos núbiles circulan” (“I do not want the blood or its mirror. [.....] Through my vein not names, not agony, / but rather nubile hairs circulate,” 252). Finding the correct circuit means rejecting conventional epistemology: not “nombres” or “esjorge guillén and vicente aleixandre 153 pejos,” words or images that impotently mirror each other, but a new circuit connected to a different set of intellectual-existential premises. This brings forth the “ojo profundo que vigila” (“deep eye that watches ,” 253), a counterforce “para evitar los labios cuando queman” (“in order to avoid the lips when they burn,” 253), a new willfulness that allows him to proclaim: “Soy esa tierra alegre que no regatea su reflejo” (“I am that happy earth that does not bargain away its reflection,” 257). He is the ultimate ground of the alternative reality: “he dominado el horizonte ” (“I have dominated the horizon,” 257). Rejuvenated, he becomes “alto como una juventud que no cesa” (“tall as ceaseless youth,” 257). The question now becomes “¿Hacia qué cielos o qué suelos van esos ojos no pisados / que tienen como yemas una fecundidad invisible?” (“Toward what skies or what floors go those untrammeled eyes / that have an invisible fecundity like that of yolks?” 257). Aleixandre continues his exploration in “El vals” (“The Waltz”): “Todo lo que está suficientemente visto / no puede sorprender a nadie” (“Everything that is sufficiently seen / cannot surprise anybody,” 261). Learning to see in this new way offers a means to resist the involuntary eruptions from “este hondo silencio” (“this deep silence”) of the “garganta que se derrumba sobre los ojos” (“throat that hurls itself on the eyes,” 264). It heralds the advent of the fullness of being, “la eternidad” (“eternity”), when “El tiempo [es] sólo una tremenda mano sobre el cabello largo detenida” (“Time [is] only a terrible slow hand laid on long locks,” 264). However, it is only his force of will that confirms his presence and importance in this order: La verdad, la verdad, la verdad es ésta que digo, esa inmensa pistola que yace sobre el camino, ese silencio—el mismo—que finalmente queda Cuando con una escoba primera aparto los senderos. (270) The truth, the truth, the truth is this that I say, that immense pistol which lies in the road, that silence—the same one—that finally remains when with the first broom I separate the paths. 154 jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre The poetry is progressively becoming the record of a contest of wills, the poet’s will or that of the involuntary producer of unintelligible images. Aleixandre finds himself in an adversarial relationship with the otherness that is being, the victim of a “love” whose finality seems inevitably to be the affirmation of one of the parties of this relationship at the other’s expense. Aleixandre reacts to this impasse in “Acaba” (“Finish”), which recalls his deficient understanding (“he visto golondrinas de plomo triste anidadas en ojos / y una mejilla rota por una letra” [“I have seen swallows of sad lead nested in eyes / and a cheek broken by a letter ,” 275]) and which in turn reminds him that he remains distant from “la única desnudez que yo amo” (“the only nakedness that I love”), that is, “mi tos caída como una pieza” (“my cough fallen like a coin,” 275). The means of capturing such an evasive prize is the aggressive imposition of will that arises from within, “como un ojo herido / se va a clavar en el azul indefenso” (“as a wounded eye / is going to fix its gaze on the defenseless blue”) to “convertirlo todo en un lienzo sin sonido” (“to convert it all into a soundless canvas,” 276), to remake his consciousness into “ese rostro que no piensa” (“that face which does not think,” 276). This “will to willfulness” is epitomized in the word-command “ACABA” that entitles and concludes the poem, providing substantive evidence of his aggressiveness and desire to place a framework of understanding on the force responsible for an understanding associated with a higher form of truth. In “Por último” (“Finally”), Aleixandre declares himself among “todo lo que se nombra o sonríe” (“all that names itself or smiles,” 277), an entity capable of giving order and names to a realm he earlier thought to be “palabras sin sentido” (“meaningless words,” 277). His experience has become “este aprender la dicha” (“this learning of happiness,” 283), a search for “lo ardiente o el desierto” (“the inflamed or the desert”), the absolute limits of existential possibility. He has also learned that these involuntarily produced images must be understood as means to greater truths and thus a better image of reality. “Madre, madre” (“Mother, Mother”) acknowledges precisely this. The “mother” is the transformed jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre 155 image of the beloved that has assumed various shapes throughout the poetry (“Madre, madre, está herida, esta mano tocada, / madre, en un pozo abierto en el pecho o extravío” [“Mother, mother, this wound, this touched hand, / mother, in an open well in the heart or deviation,” 258]). Here, however, the female figure becomes a self-conscious evocation of Aleixandre’s intuitions about the realm she populates. He sees this “mother” as “espejo mío silente” (“my silent mirror,” 285), which now responds to his will. The images emanating from her are now understood not as reflections but as embodiments of the poet himself. Likewise , in “Palabras” (“Words”) words become the agents by which the image of a “muchacha casi desnuda” (“almost naked girl,” 287), a familiar symbol of the alternate realm, becomes “manchad[a] de espuma delicada” (“stained with delicate foam,” 287). The conventional understanding offered by words (“palabra que se pierde como arena” [“a word that gets lost like sand,” 287]) simply does not compare to “Este pasar despacio sin sonido, / esperando el gemido de lo oscuro” (“This slow and soundless passage, / hoping for the cry of the darkness”) or to the “marmól de carne soberana” (“marble of sovereign flesh,” 288), the intuited presence of full being, which begins to loom as a greater possibility . Indeed, in “Río” (“River”) he proclaims the death of his empirical consciousness, which heralds his entrance to the unknown underworld of being: “Así la muerte es flotar sobre un recuerdo no vida” (“Thus death is to float over a memory not life,” 295). As recounted in “Suicidio ” (“Suicide”), his persistent impasse has been “saliendo del fondo de sus ojos” (“leaving the bottom of your eyes,” 301), his separation from direct and present images in order to partake of reality at a distance. As with Guillén, where the idea of an interior plane of image production is prominent, Aleixandre is affirming a representational model for which empirical theories cannot account. The desire is not to reproduce the image at a distance but rather to encounter it at its origin, to make a hieroglyphic image that effectively functions as the “thing itself.” Aleixandre understands that he can impose meaning by intellectual force or continue to be tormented. The special words and images that he encounters remain unsatisfying because he has yet to grasp that their 156 jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre means of production is also the means to a full existence. Being, not representation , is the ultimate goal, “responder con mi propio reflejo a las ya luces extinguidas” (“to respond with my own reflection to the already extinguished lights,” 304). The old representational system is characterized in “Con todo respeto” (“With All Respect”) as “esta limitación sobre la que apoyar la cabeza / para oír la mejor música, la de los planetas distantes” (“this limitation on which to rest my head / to listen to the best music, that of the distant planets,” 306). Only through the intellectual will can the poet penetrate this alternative reality: “Con mis puños de cristal lúcido quiero ignorar las luces, / quiero ignorar tu nombre, oh belleza diminuta” (“With my fists of lucid crystal I want to be ignorant of the lights, / I want to be unaware of your name, oh diminutive beauty,” 309). The new intuition of a “diminutive beauty” is a geography where words are not signs but presences, “lingotes de carne que no pueden envolverse con nada” (“ingots of flesh that cannot become enmeshed with anything,” 310). Likewise, in this realm “no sirve cerrar los ojos” (“it is useless to close your eyes,” 310) since the reality of images is also a carnal , existential one that responds to the throat, the involuntary center of production. La destrucción o el amor (Destruction or Love, 1932–33) intensifies the struggle to achieve direct knowledge of the alternative reality and thus of the fullness of being. In “La selva y el mar” (“The Jungle and the Sea”) Aleixandre expresses, in much more willful terms, his growing desire “Mirar esos ojos que sólo de noche fulgen” (“To see those eyes that only shine at night,” 323), to understand the productive principle of the alternate reality. His own understanding, characterized here as “el peque- ño escorpión [.....] con sus pinzas” (“the small scorpion [.....] with its pincers”) wants “oprimir un instante la vida” (“to oppress life for a moment ”), defined as “la menguada presencia de un cuerpo de hombre que jamás podrá ser confundido con una selva” (“the diminished presence of the body of a man that can never be confused with a jungle,” 324). Desire is equated with exercising the will to summon the full and unconfused presence of his “cuerpo de hombre,” full being. Aware of his continued distance from “ese mundo reducido o sangre mínima” (“that jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre 157 reduced world or minimal blood,” 326), he is equally aware of his will, which “busca la forma de poner el corazón en la lengua” (“seeks a means of putting the heart in the tongue,” 329), which seeks to unify his understanding. Such a presentiment of unity is expressed in “Unidad en ella” (“Unity in Her”), which again features a female figure, a “rostro amado donde contemplo el mundo” (“beloved face where I contemplate the world”), being, “la región donde nada se olvida” (“the region where nothing is forgotten,” 331). Such an experience, called “love,” is also “destruction,” as the volume’s title underscores, in the same sense that it is the antithesis of ordinary experience. The declaration that nothing “podrá destruir la unidad de este mundo” (“nothing will be able to destroy the unity of this world,” 332) is an affirmation that such a world is not a separate and distinct reality, that his alienation from being has had an epistemological origin. Affirming the fullness of being means understanding the premises under which such fullness is possible. These intuitions become intensi fied in subsequent sections, as in “Mañana no viviré” (“Tomorrow I Won’t Live”) where Aleixandre affirms to his beloved, whom he now summons to him, that “besándote tu humedad no es pensamiento ” (“kissing your dampness is not thought,” 346). He understands it as a different type of intellectual experience and says that the beloved is “amorosa insistencia en este aire que es mío” (“amorous insistence in this air that is mine,” 346). Their association is a contest of wills within a landscape of being that he now understands is all his. In “Ven, ven tú” (“Come, Come”) he also senses a domain “donde las palabras se murmuran como a un oído” (“where words whisper as to an ear”), a unifying principle under which “ni los peces innumerables que pueblan otros cielos / son más que lentísimas aguas de una pupila remota” (“not even the innumerable fish that populate other skies / are more than the slowest waters of a remote pupil,” 347). Eye and ear, as newly defined, now work in concert as the poet senses that “Esta oreja próxima escucha mis palabras” (“This nearby ear listens to my words,” 348) and as “el mundo rechazado” (“the rejected world”), conventional understanding, “se re158 jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre tira como un mar que muge sin destino” (“retreats like a sea that moos without a destiny,” 348). A “better” destiny looms as a consequence of “esa dureza juvenil” (“that youthful hardness”), the aggressive will now able “iluminar en redondo el paisaje vencido” (“to illuminate all around the defeated landscape,” 349). Aleixandre becomes more explicit in his characterization of the alternative realm, as in “Paisaje,” a reference to the existential geography acquiring added definition. As he draws closer, he is also able to speak to, and for, the otherness that defines full being: “no existes y existes, / Te llamas vivo ser” (“you do not exist and you exist, / You are called living being,” 351). The domain of being becomes “Pájaro, nube o dedo que escribe sin memoria” (“Bird, cloud or finger that writes without memory”) and “mirada que en tierra finge un río” (“a gaze that on earth simulates a river,” 352). In “A ti, viva” (“To You, Living One”), he again expresses his desire to know his beloved (“Mirar tu cuerpo sin más luz que la tuya” [“To look at your body with no more light than your own,” 355]) but, more importantly, his growing conviction that she is also the source of a more profound mode of understanding. This is consciously articulated in “Quiero saber” (“I Want to Know”), whose title emphasizes that the process of epistemological adjustment facilitating these new insights is inseparable from the goal itself. Thus when he tells his beloved that he wants to know “el secreto de tu existencia” (“the secret of your existence ,” 358) he is referring to his own. There is no separation between the experience of plentiful being and the epistemological premises of the alternate geography. Or more explicitly, “el mundo todo es uno, la ribera y el párpado” (“The world is all one, the shore and the eyelid,” 358). The truth does not lie in specific words or images the poet may happen to perceive but in the higher principle responsible for their presence , “una música indefinible, / nacida en el rincón donde las palabras no se tocan, / donde el sonido no puede acariciarse” (“an undefinable music, / born in the corner where words do not touch each other, / where sound cannot be caressed,” 372). There is no longer a separation among words, images, and their “unintelligible” origin: “Todo es sangre o jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre 159 amor o latido o existencia, / todo soy yo que siento como el mundo se calla / y como así me duelen el sollozo o la tierra” (“Everything is blood or love or heartbeat or existence, / everything am I who feels how the world grows quiet / and how the sob or the earth gives me pain,” 373). The goal becomes to summon this “amorosa presencia de un día que sé existe” (“amorous presence of a day that I know exists,” 384), to make the absent fully present. With each poem, his hope grows: “Yo sé quien ama y vive, quien muere y gira y vuela. / Sé que lunas se extinguen, renacen , viven, lloran. / Sé que dos cuerpos aman, dos almas se confunden ” (“I know who loves and lives, who dies and turns and flies. / I know that moons extinguish themselves, are reborn, live, cry. / I know that two bodies love, two souls are mingled,” 386). And further, in “Sobre la misma tierra” (“On the Same Earth”) “que la noche y el día no son lo negro o lo blanco, / sino la boca misma que duerme entre las rocas” (“that night and day are not the blackness or the whiteness, / but rather the very mouth that sleeps among the rocks,” 389). The two realities are inextricably intertwined. The desire for existential presence is to know an “inmensa mano que oprime un mundo alterno” (“immense hand that oppresses an alternative world,” 390), which brings the necessity “Matar la limpia superficie sobre la cual golpeamos, / [.....] superficie que copia un cielo estremecido” (“To kill the clean surface on which we pound, / [.....] a surface that copies a trembling sky,” 391), conventional understanding . As he further proclaims in “Soy el destino” (“I Am Destiny”): “renuncio a ese espejo que dondequiera las montañas ofrecen, / pelada roca donde se refleja mi frente / cruzada por unos pájaros cuyo sentido ignoro” (“I renounce that mirror which the mountains offer anywhere, / sheared rock where my face is reflected / traversed by some birds whose meaning I do not know,” 395). The values of mimesis cede to the experience of himself in the fullness of being: Soy el destino que convoca a todos los que aman, mar único al que vendrán todos los radios amantes que buscan a su centro, rizados por el círculo que gira como la rosa rumorosa y total. (396) 160 jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre I am the destiny that convokes all who love, only sea to which come all the lovers, like spokes that search for their center, rippling around the circle that turns like the murmuring and total rose. The geography of presence, “el oscuro chorro [que] pasa indescifrable / como un río que desprecia el paisaje” (“the dark stream [that] passes undecipherable / like a river that despises the landscape,” 399), prefers “una lengua no de hombre” (“a language not of man,” 400). “La luna es una ausencia” (“The Moon Is an Absence”) looks back to the moon, the embodiment of the inadequacies of ordinary consciousness , and to the “otro lado donde el vacío es luna” (“the other side where the emptiness is moon,” 402), where absence and emptiness dominate . In “Quiero pisar” (“I Want to Step”) Aleixandre reaffirms his will to know a different medium, “esa garganta o guijo fría al pie desnudo” (“that throat or gravel cold to the naked foot,” 403) and to confront the “pupila lentísima que casi no se mueve” (“slowest of pupils that almost does not move”), that “yo casi no veo, pero que sé que escucho; / aquel punto invisible adonde una tos o un pecho que aún respira, / llega como la sombra de los brazos ausentes” (“I almost do not see, but certainly hear; / that invisible point where a cough or a breast that still breathes, / arrives like the shadow of absent arms,” 405). The desire to confront “un amor que destruye” (“a love that destroys,” 406) is to know a loving presence capable of destroying all absent images that distance him from full being. The proximity to such a destructive encounter signals in “Cobra” the transformation of Aleixandre’s willful consciousness, now a phallic cobra, that is “todo ojos” (“all eyes,” 407) and to whom he beseeches , “ama todo despacio. [.....] Ama el fondo con sangre donde brilla / el carbunclo logrado” (“love everything slowly. [.....] Love the bottom with blood where there shines / the attained carbuncle,” 408). This leads to yet another image of the will-consciousness in “El escarabajo” (“The Scarab”), the image of the plodding, durable, and virtually indestructible scarab, an apt metaphor for the poet’s strength in the face of the alternative reality’s destructive power. The scarab’s arrival also signals that it “por fin llega al verbo también” (“at last arrives as well at the verb,” 411). jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre 161 The long-sought understanding has finally been achieved, and he is able now to descend “a unos brazos que un diminuto mundo oscuro crean” (“to some arms that create a diminutive dark world,” 412) and to the triumphal declaration in “Cuerpo de piedra” (“Body of Stone”) that “Ya no quema el fuego que en las ingles / aquel remoto mar dejó al marcharse” (“No longer burns the fire which that remote sea left behind in my groin / when it retreated,” 414). Indeed, the poet has now made contact with a much greater source of power. In the final section, Aleixandre examines even more closely his relationship to the beloved at the center of being, who is now understood to possess “ojos que no giran” (“eyes that do not turn”) and a “corazón constante como una nuez vencida” (“heart constant like a defeated walnut,” 417). He beseeches her to reveal her full presence: “Vive, vive, despierta, ama, corazón, ser, despierta como tierra a la lluvia naciente, / como lo verde nuevo que crece entre la carne” (“Live, live, awaken, love, heart, being , awaken like the land to an incipient rain, / like the new green that grows in the flesh,” 418). “La noche” (“The Night”) describes “el viaje de un ser quien se siente arrastrado / a la final desembocadura en que a nadie se conoce” (“the jouney of a being who feels dragged / to the final river ’s mouth in which no one is recognized,” 422). This climactic moment, which resists precise description, is recounted in “Se querían” (“They Were Loving”) where the male-female, conscious-unconscious, willfulinvoluntary aspects of Aleixandre’s struggle achieve a brief unity: “mar o tierra, navío, lecho, pluma, cristal, / metal, música, labio, silencio, vegetal , / mundo, quietud, su forma. Se querían, sabedlo” (“sea or earth, ship, bed, pen, windowpane, / metal, music, lip, silence, vegetable, / world, stillness, its form. They were loving, know it,” 425). The quest has been one of knowing, the affirmation of being: “la luz [.....] como el corazón [.....] / que pide no ser ya el ni su reflejo, sino el rio feliz, / lo que transcurre sin la memoria azul, / camino de los mares que entre todos se funden / y son lo amado y lo que ama, y lo que goza y sufre” (“the light [.....] like the heart [.....] / that asks to be neither it or its reflection, but rather the happy river, / that which moves along without the blue memory, / av162 jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre enue of the seas that are fused together / and that are the beloved and that which loves, and that which delights and suffers,” 426). Aleixandre has portrayed an existential quest in amorous terms. Lover and beloved are aspects of the same phenomenon, willful, aggressive self-understanding via El amor como lo que rueda, como el universo sereno, como la mente excelsa, el corazón conjugado, la sangre que circula, el luminoso destello que en la noche crepita y pasa por la lengua oscura, que ahora entiende. (427) Love like that which rolls along, like the serene universe, like the exalted mind, the conjugated heart, the blood that circulates, the luminous gleam that in the night crackles and passes through the dark tongue, which now understands. Love is self-affirmation that has required the destruction of the intellectual premises that had prevented the poet from achieving a privileged understanding. The bourgeois subject is destroyed to bring into being “lo que no vive, / lo que es el beso indestructible [.....] mientras la luz dorada está dentro de los párpados” (“that which does not live, / that which is the indestructible kiss [.....] while the golden light is inside the eyelids,” 428), an absolute value. In the concluding poem, “La Muerte” (“Death”), being brings an invocation of “death”: Mátame como si un puñal, un sol dorado o lúcido, una mirada buida de un inviolable ojo, un brazo prepotente en que la desnudez fuese el frío, un relámpago que buscase mi pecho o su destino. (433) Kill me as if a dagger, a gilded or lucid sun, a pointed glance of an inviolable eye, a strong arm in which nakedness were the cold, a lightning flash that searched for my breast or its destiny. jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre 163 The death of the bourgeois self has given birth to a new mode of being, which becomes the principal theme of the final pre–Civil War volume, Mundo a solas (World Alone, 1934–36). When Aleixandre declares in “No existe el hombre” (“Man Does Not Exist”) that “el hombre no existe. / Nunca ha existido, nunca” (“man does not exist. He has never existed, never,” 442), he is referring again to bourgeois definitions of subjectivity incapable of expressing the “better ” truth he has experienced. The true embodiment of the nature of existence is found in the “árbol [que] jamás duerme” (“tree [that] never sleeps”), which is “verde siempre como los duros ojos” (“always green like the hard eyes”) and about which it can never be said that it “quiera ser otra cosa” (“may want to be another thing,” 443). The tree symbolizes the existential state to which Aleixandre’s intuitions have led him: “un árbol es sabio, y plantado domina” (“a tree is wise, and planted it dominates ,” 443). The poetry has been, in a sense, the history of the planting of the tree of the full being that “vive y puede pero no clama nunca, / ni a los hombres mortales arroja nunca su sombra” (“lives and is able but that never clamors, / nor to mortal men does it ever extend its shade,” 444). The mortals are those necessarily lesser beings trapped in ordinary reality who must continue to experience and to think via “esos ojos que te duelen, / en esa frente pura encerrada en sus muros” (“those eyes that throb, / in that pure face enclosed in its walls,” 445). This lies in contrast , in “Bajo la tierra” (“Below the Earth”), to the geography of full being : “Debajo de la tierra hay, más honda, la roca, / la desnuda, la purísima roca donde sólo podrían vivir seres humanos” (“Below the earth there is, deeper, the rock, / the naked, the purest rock where only human beings can live,” 450). The center of being is solid, massive, silent, immobile : a frozen, statuesque, pristine realm from which a new definition of his humanity has emerged. In “Humano ardor” (“Human Ardor”) he affirms to his beloved that “Besarte es pronunciarte” (“To kiss you is to pronounce you,” 451). He has seen her “pasar arrebatando la realidad constante” (“pass taking away the constant reality,” 451) and now understands that her “labios” (“lips”), her presence, “eran, no una palabra, 164 jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre / sino su sueño mismo, / su imperioso mandato que castiga con beso” (“were, not a word, / but your dream itself, / your imperious command that punishes with a kiss,” 451–52). This love that is also death has rede fined his humanity: “Morir, morir es tener en los brazos un cuerpo / del que nunca salir se podrá como hombre” (“To die, to die is to have in your arms a body / from which one will never be able to escape as a man,” 452). At the center of being, conventional definitions of subjectivity and manhood are superseded by one that uses words not to define or describe but to be “su sueño mismo.” The eventual separation from the experience of existential fullness does not change Aleixandre’s opinion of its value, only of his capacity to summon the “otra tierra invisible” (“other invisible land,” 460). He persists in affirming that “yo te sentí, yo te vi, yo te adiviné” (“I felt you, I saw you, I foretold you,” 460). The beloved, full being’s creature, is, finally, “mínima” (“minimal,” 465), the most fitting word to describe an experience in which he has penetrated to the “Profundidad sin noche donde la vida es vida” (“Depths without night where life is life,” 470) in order to aggrandize his understanding as “un ojo inyectado en la furia / de presenciar los límites de la tierra pequeña” (“an eye injected into the fury / of witnessing the limits of the small earth,” 473). The final poem, “Los cielos” (“The Heavens”) offers what may be read as a last will, in the aftermath of his death in and after love: “buscad la vida acaso como brillo inestable, / oscuridad profunda para un único pecho” (“look for life perhaps like an unstable brilliance, / a profound darkness for a unique breast,” 478). These sentiments express in large part this poetry’s principal theme, which has been a search for a “brillo inestable” capable of being understood only by “un único pecho” whose guiding values have been “los fuegos inhumanos” (“the inhuman fires,” 479), the slow but methodical transcendence of ordinary human consciousness and subjectivity . Like Guillén’s, Aleixandre’s poetry is dedicated to the fabrication of private landscapes of will, “better images” that have brought forth “geographies of presence,” that is, fundamental positions regarding the question of being: that it is knowable and representable on their terms. jorge guillén and vicente aleixandre 165 ...