Times Alone: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado

From Times Alone, Passageways in the House, and Other Poems (Soldedades, Galerias y Otros Poemas)

F R O M TIMES ALONE PASSAGEWAYS IN THE HOUSE AND OTHER POEMS SOLDEDADES GALERIAS Y OTROS POEMAS F I R S T E D I T I O N I Q O g E N L A R G E D I N I Q O ^ This page intentionally left blank PONIO MACHADO wrote some of his dream poems in his first book, Soledades, in 1899; Freud published his Interpretation of Dreams the same year. Machado independently makes dreams a primary subject of his poems, descends into them, looks to them for guidance, goes downward, farther and farther until he finds water. The water he has found makes Soledades refreshing. One could say that "the world" exerts tremendous pressure on the psyche, collective opinion terrorizes the soul; the demands of the world obsessthe pysche, and the world and its attractions offer to use up all the time available. Each person needs then, early on, to go inside, far enough inside to water the plants, awakenthe animals, become friends with the desires, and sense what Machado calls "the living pulse of the spirit," start the fire in the hearth, and close the door so that what is inside us has sufficient power to hold its own against the forces longing to invade. Machado has achieved this inner strengthening by the time he finishes his first book, and his praise of dreams is clear: Memory is valuable for one thing, astonishing: it brings dreams back. His deep-lying confidence he perhaps received as a reward for his labor, or perhaps it was given as a gift; we can't tell. But the confidence is unmistakable: There the good and silent spirits of life are waiting for you, and one day they will carry you to a garden of eternal spring. But She will not fail to come. ["] A In the golden poplars far off, the shadow of love is waiting for you. It's clear that his confidence rises from some source far below the intellect, far below even the security provided by the healthy mind in the healthy body. This sort of confidence seems to spring from earliest infancy. The positive, energetic mother holds the child near her heart, and he looks out on the world: it seems all blossoming, all good, and he carries that confidence with him all his life. Machado suggests that if he were a Provencal love poet, and wrote a poem to a woman's eyes, it would probably go thisway: your clear eyes, your eyes have the calm and good light, the good light of the blossoming world, that I saw one day from the arms of my mother. Even though Soledades is the book of a young man, he asks questions in it usually not asked until old age. One poem begins: Faint sound of robes brushing the exhausted earth! This is not a romantic poem about village life, as I first thought: he says that if one really wants to be depressed, one can listen to this sound—the Spanish priest's robe brushing worn-out soil. It reminds us of Blake's despair in London. Machado warns us that we are not alone: Snowy Roman ghosts go about lighting the stars. And he warns that in such situations, it is very easy for "a phantasm" to come, and throw off our sense of reality. And he asks hard questions about what is going on inside. What if we, out of fear or recklessness or carelessness have stopped the soul's growth? What if we, having invited the world to be with us, have let the life of the feeling die? [12] The wind, one brilliant day, called to my soul with an aroma of jasmine. "In return for this jasmine odor, I'd like all the odor of your roses." "I have no roses;I have no flowers left now in my garden. . . . All are dead." "Then I'll take the waters of the fountains, and the yellow leaves, and the dried-up petals." The wind l e f t . . . . 7 wept. I said to my soul, "What have you done with the garden entrusted to you?" When we have finished the book, we are aware that Machado has found certain passagewaysthat lead inward or certain paths that lead downward, and they are not collective paths; and...