Jorge Guillén's Pastoral Search for the Lyric Present

This essay examines two décimas from Jorge Guillén's decades-long poetic project, Cántico. "Pan" and "Copa de vino" are representative of Guillén's practice of seeking a moment of atemporal perfection in the instant of lyric enunciation, especially in his cultivation of the décima. The present analysis submits these poems to a historical scrutiny, both with regard to their putatively timeless subjects and in relation to Guillén's poetic moment, the "return to order" following the most irreverent manifestations of the historical avant-garde. Guillén's site for timelessness is, in fact, a pastoral construct, a product of confused human and literary histories. While acknowledging Guillén's formal achievement, my analysis urges a reconsideration of the assumptions on which the "return to order" and Guillén's aesthetics were predicated in their time and from which they have been studied since, including an injunction for renewed critical attention to the historical avant-gardes.