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

In The Poetry of Juan Ramón Jiménez: An Example of Modern Subjectivity, Julio Jenson has crafted a philosophical reading of subjectivity in Jiménez’s “obra.” His thoroughly painstaking, in-depth, even fastidious analysis is structured, he writes, around the split between an “absolute self” of plenitude and “an empirical self” of transience. In broad terms, the first half of his monograph focuses on Juan Ramón’s spatial metaphors and symbols, while the second half reflects on time and temporal figures.

There is a detailed reading of texts that manifest a dichotomous subject: heaven/earth, sacred/profane, sun/moon polarities. This is followed by a demonstration of the fact that space in Jiménez’s work is “intrinsically dynamic” because the lyrical subject is forever projecting on to spatial imagery his infinite longing for perfection. Jensen, then, proceeds to discuss the notion that pantheism permits an empirical subject to participate in a cosmic totality and thereby avails itself of an “anonymous voice” to express the self-consciousness of the universe. He also argues that the perfection achieved in numerous parts of Jiménez’s work should be seen as “monadic” plenitude: a perfect fullness that recurs eternally as, and when, future readers intuit such ecstatic fullness in their multifarious readings. Jensen also contrasts the lyrical subject’s construction of an atemporal, self-enclosed, aesthetic realm with the agonized realization, achieved in the poet’s late work, of the need to reconfigure such a realm in every moment of creative time (for example, “Estás viniendo hacia mi imán” from Animal de fondo). Added to this is an intriguing reading of the Diario in whose texts, Jensen argues, the lyrical subject attains an “ahistorical temporality” (as opposed, for example, to merely annotating an autobiographical snippet of a fleeting New York experience). A final chapter focuses on the concept of the “obra” itself: on the one hand, it expresses the perfection achieved by a divine, atemporal “I”; on the other, it will express, in Juan Ramón’s late work, a fragmentation of the self that is impossible to overcome.

Readers can encounter in this study a variety of thought-provoking insights and fascinating ideas. In addition, they can benefit, in each one of these six chapters, from the numerous, patient textual explications Jensen provides from every phase—early, mid, and late—of Jiménez’s poetic evolution. But, in all likelihood, it will be readers who are at ease with modern European philosophical thought on subjectivity (and its dense manner of expression) who will derive inspiration and satisfaction from this study. If Jensen had managed to present these thoughts in terms more accessible to those in literature rather than philosophy, his work would, no doubt, have reached a wider audience.

A further caveat concerns the author’s oversight of prior readings of Jiménez’s poetry. A single example must suffice: Jensen lists this reviewer’s 1987 Self and Image in Juan Ramón Jiménez in his bibliography but never once addresses it in his monograph; as Jensen advances a reading of Espacio’s “Fragmento Tercero” that is comparable to this reviewer’s, such an omission could raise serious questions. Hence, if Julio Jensen had incorporated into his analyses much more prior criticism of the Jiménez opus, his contribution to the field would have been stronger.