The Poetry of Juan Ramón Jiménez: An Example of Modern Subjectivity by Julio Jensen (review)

Waldo Frank was one of the first writers to indicate in Virgin Spain (1926) the great difference in form and tonality between the early poems written by Juan Ramón Jiménez, and the "stark and stripped poetry" of his second epoch, which "promised [. . .] to reveal in later years what is perhaps the profoundest poetic intelligence today in Europe" (Virgin Spain 290). If the first verses of Juan Ramón Jiménez were characterized by a desire to express the poet's melancholy and need for beauty, the second period emphasized intelligence and the ability to portray with few images the subject's delight with the absolute. The third phase of Jiménez' poetry (during his exile in America) displayed the author's quest to comprehend the relationship of the self with the natural forces of the universe. Though very different in tone and style, each of these periods of Jiménez' poetry assumed the earlier ones and developed into new unexplored, lyrical territory.

Using the modern notion of subjectivity, as outlined by William of Ockham, Descartes, and Kant, Julio Jensen works backwards, trying to find those universal principles that are constant in the poetry of Jiménez throughout the poet's life, to show, among other things, the extent to which the modern subject achieves a personal identity "by means of lived experiences and their mnemonic elaboration" (163). The critic explains in the Preface of the book the philosophical implications of modern subjectivity; i.e., the metaphysical notions that are not part of reality but are the creation of the human mind. Hence, a problematic division is established between the mind and the exterior reality. Applied to the poetry of Juan Ramón Jiménez, the lyrical voice identifies with the sacred sphere of the absolute, while being simultaneously aware of his earthly conditions, marked by temporality and death. This constant split between an empirical subject and a self-founded transcendental consciousness is a fundamental part of the modern paradigm, as Jensen explains. Working from these premises, the critic indicates that anything a subject can know about the world necessarily bears the mark of the author's perspective. In the case of Jiménez' poetry, Jensen suggests that there is a constant oscillation between a finite and contingent I, and a self-posited absolute subject that can be found not in reality, but only in the literary text. For this reason, Jensen points out, one of the marks of Jiménez' poetry is the intense melancholy caused by the contrast between the contemplation of perfect beauty and the awareness of its transience. In the different chapters of the book, the critic analyzes poems written by Juan Ramón during different epochs of his life to encounter equal measures of aspirations and frustrations in every period.

Jensen's study shows that a similar longing for an escape from daily reality into a spiritual realm is apparent throughout the works of Jiménez. The six chapters into which Julio Jensen's book is divided discuss the verses of the Spanish author from the perspective of different textual spaces: mythical, infinite longing, pantheistic, temporal, remembrance and subjective memory. Though the outcome of the analysis as a whole is a set of premises on the poetry of Jiménez that are already well known and established, what is very valuable in the critical book are the individual commentaries of obscure and difficult poems that shed light on specific details, thus adding to a more complete understanding of each facet of Jiménez' poetry. Of particular importance is the study of poems from Animal de fondo (Animal of Depth), an abstract book dedicated to human consciousness and written during Jiménez' voyage by sea to Argentina in 1948. Animal de fondo is a hermetic work devoid of both narrative and mimetic representation of the world, and where all references to reality are symbolic. The analysis of...