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3. Cities in Ruins: The Burlesque Baroque in T.S. Eliot and Octavio Paz
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89 Chapter Three Cities in Ruins The Burlesque Baroque in T. S. Eliot and Octavio Paz In Search of Neo-Baroque Pearls The etymological definition of barroco points to something extravagant or bizarre, a pearl with an irregular shape.1 The pérola barroca is the product of the Portuguese commerce with pearls in the East, a result of their explorations abroad in the early sixteenth century.2 In a headlong dive, searching for irregular pearls in the traditional corpus of enigmatic conceits and paradoxical images, Octavio Paz and T. S. Eliot immerse themselves in the poetic and critical endeavor of recuperating from critical oblivion the Baroque and the Metaphysical poets. This is palpable in T. S. Eliot’s critical and aesthetic ties with the English Metaphysical poet John Donne, in particular his influential “The First Anniversary,” as well as in Paz’s homage and rewriting of Francisco de Quevedo’s sonnet “Amor constante más allá de la muerte.” Both Paz and Eliot use the Baroque tradition in the historical sense and as an “objective correlative” to rethink metaphors of death and decay, decomposed bodies and ruined cities in post-war Europe and America. I will discuss how they balance their desire for modern formal innovations in a “tradition against itself,” to use Paz’s expression, and the intertextual dialogue they establish with the Baroque and the Metaphysical poets, in The Waste Land and “Whispers of Immortality,” and Homenaje y profanaciones, “Himno entre ruinas,” and “Petrificada petrificante.”3 The connections between the Spanish Baroque poets and the English Metaphysical poets are various and multilayered. Helmut Hatzfeld argues that the Spanish Baroque had an immense influence over all European poetry of the seventeenth century, especially in England: “Por lo que toca a la literatura 90 Chapter Three inglesa, parece más difícil aún comprender cómo fue posible que un país protestante y sajón pudiera adoptar durante medio siglo los elementos espirituales de otro país que era precisamente su adversario en lo político y en lo religioso” (445). Although Hatzfeld suggests that the Metaphysical poets were more Mannerist than Baroque, he specifically emphasizes the influence of the Spanish Baroque on Donne: “Un poeta como John Donne con su educación católica y su viaje a Cádiz (1596) conoce bien España y sus juegos de palabras y agudezas de ingenio” (448).4 In an essay on Donne, Paz proposes a comparative study between the English poet and Quevedo.5 Paz underlines that: la poesía de Donne se inscribe dentro de la llamada escuela “metafísica,” tendencia no sin analogías con el conceptismo y el gongorismo españoles. Sabemos que el poeta inglés leía con facilidad nuestra lengua. Visitó España en su juventud y participó en la expedición y saqueo de Cádiz. En 1623 escribe a Buckingham, entonces en Madrid: “I can thus make myself believe that I am where your lordship is, in Spain, that in my poor library, where indeed I am, I can turn my eye towards no shelf, in any profession, from the mistress of my youth, Poetry, to the wife of mine age, Divinity, but that I meet more authors of that nation than any others.” (“Un poema de John Donne” 96)6 Paz uses Donne’s private confession to make a relevant point on the transnational facet of the Baroque and Metaphysical poets.7 Like Hatzfeld, Paz indicates that an aesthetic movement such as the Baroque is never a national enterprise.8 On the other hand, Eliot’s poetic and critical work concerning the Metaphysical poets was mainly written in the nineteen twenties, while Paz wrote his in the fifties and sixties. Paz’s perspective is not only chronologically different from Eliot’s vision of the past. Paz is a kind of crucible; he wants to absorb the Metaphysical, the Baroque, and the Modernist poetic discourses. He is more interested in inscribing the Spanish tradition in a more mestizo culture of international exchanges, of which he claims to be the heir. Yet, both these poets elaborate a poetics that favors a historical continuity between eras. In their quest for the eternal, these texts allude to the Classical or the Baroque tradition, exemplify- [44.213.75.78] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 21:46 GMT) 91 Eliot and Paz ing Lois Parkinson Zamora’s notion of an “anxiety of origins.” Parkinson Zamora explains her idea in contrast to Harold Bloom’s...