Man’s conscious movement towards death is a recurring theme throughout Cortejo y Epinicio. However, this perspective is not the poet’s only conception of mankind; he also recognizes the possibility of the impulse to life as well. The poems of this section illustrate this impulse and how it manifests itself in the human being.
El Zócalo’s “Con su soga oportuna me ahorca…” illustrates both the movement to death and a simultaneous movement towards life.
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Con su soga oportuna me ahorca With its timely rope
la baldía intemperie de duendes: the sterile inclemency of goblins hangs me: estropajo que arrimo de emblema: rag that I bring near as an emblem:
ataúd enroscado, azacel. coiled coffin, azazel. Una gota de agua me anhela. A drop of water desires me.
Es danzar con la hostil deserción: It is to dance with the hostile desertion: el presagio al revés y cumplido. the portent reversed and fulfilled.
Por cordura de harapos garduños Through the wisdom of cutpurse tatters, aflojar lo postrero. ¡Es huirme! to let go of the last one. It’s to escape! Va a caer y mi sino se tensa, It’s going to fall and my destiny tenses, abrevando la fiebre en cenit: slaking the fever at its zenith:
¡Sí! ¡Permíteme oír cómo cae Yes! Let me hear how falls esa gota de agua, Dios mío! (31) that drop of water, my God!
The first two stanzas of this dramatic monologue contain a series of metonyms that describes a common unidentified theme, which the reader identifies through uncovering the common tenor of the poem’s metaphors and metonyms. These tropes speak either literally or figuratively of death, starting from the beginning. In the hyperbaton of the first stanza’s first two lines the speaker first declares that the hangman’s rope is “timely;” with this adjective the speaker implies that he welcomes his execution and willingly permits it.
Then, the speaker declares that he loses his life to the “sterile inclemency of goblins (“duendes”).” In Spanish mythology, “duendes” are demonic earth spirits, evoking irrationality, earthiness (including sexuality) and death. García Lorca popularized the concept of “duende”, contrasting its force that emanates from the earth and is linked to death with the grace and charm of the angel and the classical artistic norms of the muse. He called it an “emotional darkness,” residing in the blood, and asserted that it is the generating force of both life and great artistic endeavor (Maurer 48-62). With this understanding of “duende” in mind, the passage is another reference to death, and can be understood as follows: “I happily lose my life to the sterile harshness of irrationality and earthiness.”
This leads to the question: how can irrationality and earthiness be sterile and harsh? Inverting the Lorquian concept of “duende,” as he privileges the Apollonian virtues of wisdom and rationality, the poet implies that irrationality and earthiness are not the generating force of human life but instead its opposite: the abandonment of one’s real being, which is rationality and consciousness. For Rosenmann-Taub, erotic desire and irrationality are the animal functions of the human being that nature employs in its constant drive towards reproduction and death; when
the individual surrenders himself to those functions, the human aspect of his being disappears. In this sense, the poet uses the phrase “sterile inclemency” to refer to these goblins of
irrationality and earthiness that put the human being to death by preventing him from realizing the fertility and fruitfulness of his intelligence and consciousness and instead resign him to animal level of existence. In this way, the poet continues to develop the theme of man’s conscious movement towards death as portrayed in previous poems.
The metaphor “estropajo que arrimo de emblema” of the third line is situated before and after two images of death, connected to them by colons which equate it with them; as a result, this image must also refer to death. The speaker brings a rag near him to serve as his emblem, his representation of himself, much as a country represents itself with a flag. However, this flag is a tattered rag. Instead of representing himself with the highest part of himself, the individual represents himself with the worst part of himself, and as he presents that negative aspect of himself to the outside world, he devalues his life. Again, the conscious choice of death prevails. This metaphor recalls the “arambeles” of the first poem analyzed in this chapter. The “rags” of that poem symbolize the decay and deterioration throughout life that leads to death, beacons warning of the destructive nature of the passage of time. In this poem, the same metaphor symbolizes the individual’s identification with that part of him that is decaying and moving towards death.
The stanza’s fourth line contains the image of the azazel, which in the Jewish tradition is both a demon and also the scapegoat upon whom all personal and social problems are blamed. When one blames another for one’s problems, one avoids the reality of one’s own life. Linked to the preceding metonymic representation of death, that of the coiled coffin, by a comma, this image also reinforces the theme of the human’s conscious movement towards death.
In the last line of the stanza the poet introduces a new idea. In the midst of these metonymical and metaphorical movements towards death and the devaluation of life suddenly appears a contrary image: a drop of water desires the speaker. This seems to be a sign of life, since the drop of water demonstrates life with its emotion of desire. Now conscious of that desire, the speaker also seems alive.
The second stanza continues the theme of the preference for death and the individual’s perception of the lack of value in his life. The phrase “hostil deserción” seems to signify the desertion of oneself, the quintessence of hostility and another expression of the individual’s movement towards death, since the willingness to abandon oneself is the equivalent of
unconscious life. The portent “al revés y cumplido” may also be considered a representation of death: whereas a normal portent is unfulfilled and predicts the individual’s future life, this portent is already fulfilled, thus revealing the past instead of the future. Suggesting that man’s future life is determined by his past, predetermined by genetic and social structures and, as a result, not his own, the poet again highlights the automatic and mechanical nature of
predetermined life.
The images of these two stanzas thus speak of the presence of death in life, the
desirability of death and the ways that the individual seeks it. When understood as metonyms, linked through punctuation, contiguity and the semantic unity that is the poem’s fundamental characteristic, these images illustrate, amplify and deepen the poet’s vision of mankind’s desire for and movement towards death. There is one exception. In the midst of these images of death has already appeared its opposite: the drop of water that represents life and consciousness and that not only exists but “desires” the speaker.
The third stanza develops this idea that the drop of water has introduced. In the first two lines of the third stanza, the speaker expresses the wisdom of the rags of the thief. The image of the “rag” surfaces again, but this time, with a different meaning. Unlike the “arambeles” of the previous poem or the “estropajo” earlier in this one, the “harapos” here have “cordura.”
Whereas the previous images of rags bear the connotation of deterioration to the point of uselessness, the pickpocket’s rags are the opposite; he uses them as clothing, to cover himself and keep himself warm. Actively fighting against the forces of entropy, he uses these rags and prolongs their usefulness.
Furthermore, as he breaks societal laws, the pickpocket uses his own brand of wisdom to obey a higher law: that of survival. Unlike the vast bulk of humanity, the thief privileges his own being over social or cultural norms and laws; in this sense, he is closer to living his real life than the vast majority of people who routinely accede to these societal norms and laws. The speaker understands that he is a human being like the pickpocket; unlike the pickpocket, however, he is trapped with his belongings, his social position, and his own preconditioned physical and mental processes that enslave him. Now, following the wisdom of the pickpocket and his rags, he wants to let go of everything, to escape convention, and perhaps to live his real life.
The speaker identifies with the drop of water: just as the pickpocket relinquishes social acceptability, just as the water escapes and finds its freedom, so does the speaker escape from his own externally motivated roles. He finds his own freedom vicariously as he feels the tension of his own destiny linked with that of the water about to fall. The poet’s choice of the word “sino” to signify destiny is significant: the internal words “sí and “no” that the word contains imply the possibility that man does indeed have the ability to choose and thus the ability to determine his
own destiny. “Abrevando la fiebre en cenit” evokes the story of the flight of Icarus: like the myth, the drop of water falls into space, lives a glorious life for an instant, and then ends its life evaporated, as extinct and worthless as a pin embedded in clay.
Describing the trajectory of the drop of water, the poet uses the word “abrevando.” With its similarity to the words “abreviar” and “breve,” the word suggests the brevity of life. Also, the phrase “en cenit” may refer to the drop of water instead of the fever. The line thus suggests that a person’s life has a trajectory with apogee and perigee, and as a result becomes a powerful exhortation to the individual to let go of conventional thinking, to risk consciousness, and to dare to ascend unthinkable heights as he lives his real life.
In the last stanza, the speaker addresses God as he pleads to experience his real life by being able to “hear”–experience–that brief moment between the instant when the drop of water is freed, performs its function of “slaking the fever at its zenith”, and the moment of its death. This is in direct opposition to the images of the poem’s first two stanzas, and to those images
discussed in previous poems. In fact, the powerful images of the first two stanzas of this poem bring the speaker’s prayer for consciousness into high relief. The hangman’s rope, the
“duendes,” the coffin, the “azazel” , the dance with “hostile desertion” and the fulfilled portent all metonymically represent death and the movement towards death in life. Yet, in contrast to all these negative images, this insignificant drop of water, this most humble manifestation of nature imaginable, takes on life and lives with apparent consciousness and purpose. Rosenmann-Taub evokes the myth of Icarus to present the portrait of a glorious and conscious life. The final stanza, with its exclamatory “Yes!” and plea to “hear”—to internalize the conscious life of that drop of water—is the most forceful affirmation of all: it seems as if the speaker is saying “Yes” to life in this line, and implicitly encouraging the reader to do the same.
The presence of this wish for fulfillment in one’s life is clearly the first step in the individual’s self-realization, and poem XL from El Zócalo demonstrates the presence of this desire in similar manner to that of “Con su soga oportuna me ahorca,” but in a more extended and forceful way. The poem begins,
Ah ser la triste oveja que ante el perro temible Ah to be the sad sheep that facing the
fearsome dog insiste en bizarrías de profuso desmaña, insists in gallantries of profuse clumsiness, y acercarme, acercarme al brío incomodado, and to approach, approach the troubled energy y acercarme, acercarme y olerlo, y ser el ímpetu and to approach, approach, and smell it, and
to be the impetus
que muerde montaraz y con liana de baba that bites coarsely and with lianas of drool salpica las pupilas del eclipse sangrante, splashes the pupils of the bleeding eclipse, y gozar del dolor: ser un dolor alegre: and to delight in pain, to be a happy pain: la ola más alegre de los mares inmensos the happiest wave of the immense seas y la nube más roja de todos los ocasos. (90) and the reddest cloud of all the sunsets.
As the poem continues, the speaker expresses many more of his desires: “ah ser el asesino, ser la irisada hoja [“to be the assassin, to be the irridescent blade…,”] “Ah ser la rauda cópula del rijoso león / y la muchacha nítida [“to be the quick copulation of the lustful lion / and the pure young girl:”] “ser el cuello de mirra” [“to be the collar of myrrh…,”] “ah ser la fugaz grima de las algas atónitas, / … ah ser la inexorable parasceve de fuego…” [“ah to be the fleeting disgust of the astonished algae” / … to be the inexorable Sabbath of fire…”](90-91). The poem consists of fifty-five lines, and with one exception adheres to the same regular pattern
throughout: six lines, followed by the refrain: “y gozar del dolor: ser un dolor alegre: / la ola más alegre de los mares inmensos / y la nube más roja de todos los ocasos” (91). This refrain is repeated throughout the poem and concludes with an exclamation to add additional force to its message.
As the central semantic structural element of the poem, the refrain captures its essence: the speaker wants to do all, experience all, be all, know all; he wants to extend himself to the
limit in both positive and negative directions, to feel what it is like to be the giver and receiver of pain as well as delight and joy. The breadth of the variety of desires expressed, the repetition of the refrain, and the exclamatory note on which the poem finishes enable it to match the
emotional intensity of "Con su soga oportuna me ahorca….” However, instead of wishing for the nothingness of non-being as the speaker wished for in “Cómo me gustaría…,” the speaker in this poem wishes the opposite: to experience all that can be experienced, both good and evil, in his current state of being that is life.
Rosenmann-Taub uses oxymoron and catachresis as well as syntax to increase the potency of these images. For example, the phrase “to delight in pain, to be a happy pain” is a way to express the desire for intensity of experience to the maximum degree possible. “To be the fleeting disgust of the astonished algae” is a phrase that has no literal meaning to the reader; its appearance in the poem invites the reader to imagine experience beyond his normal
perceptions of experience. The personification of the wave in the phrase “ser la ola más alegre de los mares inmensos” in combination with the phrase’s syntactic construction—the use of the infinitive verb form to imply desire and the use of the superlative—invites the reader not just to imagine himself as a wave, but to imagine a happiness that could be at the level of one in a million.
As shown above, “Con la soga oportuna me ahorca” illustrates man’s tendency towards death at the same time that it manifests the possibility of and desire for conscious life; and in “Ah ser la triste oveja que ante el perro temible…” the wish for the total experience of all that life has to offer as well. A poem from El Mensajero that is the poet’s homage to his maternal
grandmother, “Jávele” suggests that the tendency of the conscious individual is to move towards the realization of a fully conscious life.
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Jávele Jávele
Lentiscos, Lentisks, pestañas delatoras, tell-tale eyelashes, los dedos del granizo the fingers of hail entornan la petunia: half-close the petunia: te asomas: you appear:
el rocío te alumbra. (15) the dew illuminates you.
For Riffaterre, the poem’s significance is created through displacement, distortion, and/or creation, all of which threaten mimetic representation and create ungrammaticalities.14 The poem “Jávele” demonstrates these varying forms of indirection as explained by Riffaterre’s method of semiotic analysis.
The title encapsulates the poet’s feelings toward his grandmother by using her Yiddish name in the diminutive, a term of endearment (Java – Jávele). At first blush, the poet appears to be comparing his grandmother to the mastic tree as well as to a petunia, with their corresponding characteristics of strength and beauty. The leaves of the mastic tree may correspond to her “pestañas delatoras,” and its hard fruit may be the “dedos de granizo” which enclose her. Nevertheless, ungrammaticalities abound in this text. The mastic tree is far removed from the petunia, so the fruit of one cannot enclose the flower of the other. “Lentiscos” is plural, so it is impossible to reconcile this image as a description of his grandmother, who is singular. There is no explanation for the description of the leaves as “delatoras.” And there is no recognizable connection between the first four lines of the poem and the last two: Jávele’s appearance in the penultimate line and the dew that illuminates her have no direct connection to the lentisks, eyelashes, hail and petunia of the poem’s first four lines. Since this mimetic representation of the grandmother fails, we turn to semiotic analysis to understand the poem.
At the hermeneutic level of reading, we find that the isotopy of concealment and revelation runs throughout every line in the poem. The first two lines of the poem contain the appositions “Lentiscos” and “pestañas delatoras.” Syntactically, these nouns function as adjectives and describe the “dedos de granizo” that “entornan la petunia” in some way. Mastic trees are bushes with leaves that partially conceal the flowers and fruit that are the essential part