The Reluctant Troubadour: Tracing the Oral Tradition in the Poetics of Juan Gelman

Juan Gelman’s declared affinities with the Spanish mystic poets or with Sephardic texts, along with the titles of collections such as Traducciones, Notas, and Citas y comentarios, underscore the significant presence of the written tradition in his poetics. In this essay, however, I argue for the importance of the oral tradition in arriving at a fuller understanding of Gelman’s work. Many of Gelman’s poems have their roots in ancient expressive modes that connect poetry to song, lamentation, incantation or curse, modes that often operate in ways distinct from those of the written word. This line of inquiry leads us to reflect on oral poetry as a verbal act more commonly associated with a public voice than with a private one, given that orality implies by definition a communal exchange. In this paper I examine two particular manifestations of the oral tradition, the charm and the lament, in order to explore the complex relationships between orality and writing, and by extension, between the intimate and the communal voice in Gelman’s work.