Tension and Poetic Imagery in Miguel Hernández's Cancionero y romancero de ausencias

Tension and Poetic Imagery in Miguel Hernandez's Cancionero y romancero de ausencias Timothy J. Rogers Miami University The poems contained in Miguel Hernandez's Cancionero y romancero de ausencias (1938-1941),1 written during the last years of his life, are filled with pathos and stand as a lasting testimony to the desolation and sense ofspiritual and physical loss expressed by a poetic voice caught in the throes of grief, hope, and despair. The title of the volume itselfestablishes the thematic focus of the poems. The negative aspects of the theme of absence pervade the volume and arise from the poet's plaintive statements concerning his incarceration , the separation from his wife and child, the untimely death of his first son, and the destruction of human relationships brought on by the Spanish Civil War in all its brutality, desolation, and dehumanization . One of the compelling undercurrents of the volume is its expression of the desire, indeed the urgency, for union, the achieving of the "coincidentia oppositorum,"2 and the establishing of a harmony between the opposite and competing internal and external forces as the lyrical voice seeks a oneness within the self and between the self and the exterior world. The idea of trying to reunite the opposites is communicated to the reader not only through the thematic content of the poems but also through the use of poetic language and imagery that is at once free from unnecessary rhetoric and anecdote. Through the juxtaposition of contrasting images and the technique of repetition of imagery whereby the image acquires an additional force and meaning Hernández establishes a dialectical proposition in which the reader is forced to participate in the poetic voice's struggle to find an elusive spiritual oneness with his external environment. This is especially evident in many of the short, epigrammatic poems of the Cancionero because the reader is drawn into those poems by way of his very reactions — cognitive and experiential — that substantiate and enhance the theme as well, as the tone of each poem. It is what Philip Wheelwright calls the effective use of tensive language which establishes a conscious relationship and interaction between the reader and the poem.3 One can see this, I believe, in a reading of Poem 1 of the volume: 114ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW De la contemplación nace la rosa; de la contemplación el naranjo y el laurel: tú y yo del beso aquél.4 This poem, simply stated and sparse of imagery, appears to lack any anecdotal message; the poetic voice simply states a truth, conceptual and perhaps even metaphysical, which we as readers may accept or reject. Indeed, we hardly sense any emotive quality since it is suggested rather than directly stated and, for the most part, the speaker seems somewhat at a distance from us. Moreover, the conceptualization of the trinary nature images (what Juan Cano Ballesta called Hernandez's use of "sintagma ternario")5 is in effect what attracts us initially to the poem. The rose is the universal symbol, archetypal if you wish, of beauty, albeit ephemeral, and perhaps for some readers the normally expected color red of a rose may conjure the idea of passion and blood — strong and vibrant synesthetic values certainly not unrelated to love. The orange tree and especially the orange itself, because of its visual qualities as well as its allusion to the sweet flowing juices palatable to one's taste, suggest the strong sexual imagery seen in Hernandez's earlier poetry.6 The laurel as a universal symbol brings to mind the sense of victory over external forces, yet one would be perhaps closer to the mark in following Juan Cirlot's observation that the laurel conveys the idea of fecundity7 which certainly would complement the two previous nature images. These nature images, as symbols of something positive, beautiful , or whatever other affirmative valence we may wish to ascribe to them, impinge upon our intellectual faculties immediately by means of the sensorial overtones that they convey. They do so in such a manner that we may not be prepared for the final brief but contrastive statement of the poem: "tú y yo del beso aquél...