Luis Cernuda

Monument to Luis Cernuda in the town of Dos Hermanas, province of Seville

The poet's home in number 6 of the old street of Conde de Tojar, currently Acetres Street, in Seville.

Luis Cernuda Bidou or Bidón (Seville, September 21, 1902-Mexico City, November 5, 1963) was a prominent Spanish poet and literary critic. member of the Generation of '27.

Biography

Early years and training

Luis Cernuda's maternal grandfather, Ulises Bidou, was of French origin, but he Spanishized his surname as "Bidón" when he settled as a druggist in Seville; Later, in exile, his grandson Luis de Él would recover his original French surname. His upbringing was rigid and intransigent due to the character of his father, the military man Bernardo Cernuda y Bousa, who retired with the rank of engineer colonel. On the occasion of the transfer of Bécquer's remains, at the age of nine he began to read poetry and, later, a teacher encouraged him to write verses and corrected the ones he composed. He began to study Law at the University of Seville in 1919, being one of his professors Pedro Salinas, who helped him with his first publications. Salinas immediately noticed the singularity of his student:

Hard to meet. Delicate, most powerful, keeping his intimacy for himself, and for the bees of his poetry that go and come trajinaring in there - no more garden- making his honey. Your hobby, your person's dress, the suit of good cut, the well ironed hair, those perfect tie knots, is nothing but a desire to hide, the shy wall, the mockery of the bad bull of public attention. Inside, glass. Because he is the most Licentiate Vidriera of all, the one who most separates the people from himself, for fear of breaking something, the most strange.

The following year his father died. In 1923 he left the university to do military service and joined the Seville Cavalry Regiment. In 1924 he returned to finish his degree, which he achieved in 1926. He attended the literary gatherings organized by Salinas with Higinio Capote and Joaquín Romero Murube, read Spanish classics and French authors, especially André Gide, who was a revelation for him. In 1925 he met Juan Ramón Jiménez and published his first poems in Revista de Occidente . In 1926 he traveled to Madrid; collaborates with La Verdad, Mediodía and Litoral, the Malaga magazine of the couple Manuel Altolaguirre and Concha Méndez, who will always be joined by a great friendship, even in Mexican exile, despite his surly and reserved character, which his friends (among them, perhaps the elders Concha de Albornoz and Rosa Chacel) endured despite everything, as the painter Gregorio Prieto pointed out. Read to the French surrealists, and he was particularly influenced by Pierre Reverdy and Paul Éluard, whom he later translated.

Beginnings of his literary career

In 1927 he published his first lyrical book, Perfil del aire in the Málaga press of Emilio Prados and Manuel Altolaguirre, receiving a great majority of negative reviews. Even his mentor Aleixandre considers this book too influenced by Jorge Guillén. In December he attended the events held at the Ateneo de Sevilla on the occasion of the third centenary of the death of Góngora, but only as a listener, although he had already met several members of what would later be called the Generation of 1927. In 1928 his mother died and, after liquidating the family inheritance, he leaves Seville forever, first visiting his friends from Malaga (Altolaguirre, Prados, Méndez and Hinojosa); there he has a brief love affair with Gerardo Carmona and goes to Madrid, where he meets Vicente Aleixandre; in November Salinas helps him get an assistantship in Spanish at the University of Toulouse; At that time she wrote and published Ecloga, Elegy, Ode , where she paid homage to Salinas himself, Bécquer and Garcilaso de la Vega. She also travels to Paris, where she is fond of cinema.

He later moved to Madrid in 1929 and there, since 1930, he worked in the León Sánchez Cuesta bookstore, attended various gatherings in the company of Vicente Aleixandre and Federico García Lorca. The latter introduces her (1931) to a young Galician actor named Serafín Fernández Ferro and she Cernuda falls in love with him; but this only corresponds to him when he needs money. This unsatisfied love will inspire her books Where oblivion dwells and Forbidden pleasures . Gerardo Diego included it in his Anthology (1932) and, after his relationship with Serafín ended, Cernuda became involved in the Pedagogical Missions project, first in the Libraries section and later in the Mobile Museum. With them she toured the towns of Castilla and Andalusia and met Ramón Gaya and the painter Gregorio Prieto; He also collaborated in the magazine October by Rafael Alberti (1933). The following year he publishes Where oblivion dwells and begins to read the poets of European Romanticism; he visits Malaga again. He collaborates in the magazine Cruz y Raya by José Bergamín and publishes his translations of Hölderlin (1934) in it, to which he had been encouraged by the German poet Hans Gebser, better known as Jean Gebser. Mexico would make a second edition of these translations in 1942. In 1936, shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War, he took part in the tribute to Valle-Inclán and published the first edition of his complete poetic work up to then, under the title Reality and desire. By then he was a big movie buff.

He learns of the murder of Federico García Lorca and writes him a heartfelt elegy, "To a dead poet (F. G. L.)", the last two paragraphs of which were censored. He spent two months as an attaché to the Spanish Embassy in Paris with his friend Concha de Albornoz and returned to Madrid, where he enlisted in the Alpine Battalion; with him he is sent to the Sierra de Guadarrama. In April 1937 he moved to Valencia, where he collaborated with Hora de España and published the aforementioned elegy to Lorca. There he participates in the II Congress of Anti-Fascist Intellectuals in Valencia, where he meets Octavio Paz, whom he will see again later in Mexico, and his wife Elena Garro, who finds him sunbathing on the beach, as he writes in his Memories of Spain 1937:

In Valencia, when I was escaping the beach, I saw every day an English man lying on a white towel and a blue bather. No one bathed, just that lone and me. Chiringuitos were closed and the desolate beach. It was not he who spoke to me, it was me: "Are you English?" "No, I'm Spanish." "Well, it has a nicer color than mine," I said. "It's been a long time since I came to the beach," he replied. "I can hardly come. I am married to a poet and those people don't like sport..." I said. The young blond redounded even more: "I am also a poet, my name is Luis Cernuda," he said. I almost didn't know what to say, but I saw it was true that Concha Albornoz was her only friend..

In the summer he plays the role of Don Pedro in the performance of Mariana Pineda directed by Altolaguirre. And, remembering those days of war, he will write:

The natural nostalgia of leaving Paris united to the uncertain and difficult of the Spanish situation. At the beginning of the war, my ancient conviction that the social injustices that I had met in Spain called for reparation, and that this was near, made me see in the conflict not so much their horrors, that I still did not know, as the hopes that seemed to bring for the future. Naked in front of me I saw, on the one hand, the sempiterna, the immortal reaction, always living, between ignorance, superstition and intolerance, at an average age of his propiate; and, on the other (I in full wishful thinking), the forces of a young Spain whose opportunity was to arrive. Then I would be surprised, not only the luck of getting out of that slaughter, but the complete ignorance of it in which I was, even though it happened around me. "History of a book", in Poetry and literature, Barcelona / Mexico: Seix Barral, 1960, n. 11, p. 256.

The Years of Exile

In 1938, he left for the United Kingdom to give a series of lectures and met Rafael Martínez Nadal, who would later be one of his scholars. In Oxfordshire he tutored refugee Basque children, which inspired him to write the poem "Dead Child". He then works as a teacher at Cranleigh School. He reads the English classics, especially the metaphysical poets, and T. S. Eliot, as well as Constantino Cavafis. He works as a Spanish lecturer at the University of Glasgow, the University of Cambridge (1943) and the Spanish Institute of London (1945)., spending the summers in Oxford in the company of the painter Gregorio Prieto.

The gloomy landscape of Scotland deeply depresses the southern poet, but also the readings he frequents those days: philosophers like Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard, English poets who will have a decisive influence in his work as T. S. Eliot, Shelley or Keats, and more classics of Spanish letters. fruit of everything These are the poetic prose of Ocnos (1942) and the collection of poems Las nubes (1943). In 1944, a new love inspired him to write the poems of Vivir sin estar viviendo and he developed an intense work as a literary critic, publishing several essays on Spanish poetry in the Bulletin of Hispanic Studies ; he also translates Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida (1945).

In 1947 his American exile began; Concha de Albornoz gets him a position as a literature teacher at the Mount Holyoke (Massachusetts) girls' school, a position he will hold until 1952: it is already his long-awaited economic stability. Three trips to Mexico in 1949, 1950 and 1951 make him want to return to live in a land where Spanish is spoken, in the company of the vast Republican exile who took refuge there thanks to the hospitality of President Lázaro Cárdenas. In 1951 he was invited by the magazine Origenes to give lectures in Cuba and became friends with the writer José Lezama Lima; he also meets again with María Zambrano.

He finally manages to leave his post and settle in Mexico City in 1952; There she falls in love with a bodybuilder, Salvador Alighieri (1930-), whom she had met on vacation in 1951; The 16 Poems for a Body are dedicated to him:

I don't think I've been, if not so in love, as well in love, as I may be able to interverse in the above verses, which gave expression to that late experience. But by calling it late I must add that I never felt as young as in those days in Mexico (L.C., History of a book1958.

In Mexico, he saw Octavio Paz and the Altolaguirres again, especially his wife, Concha Méndez, to whose house in Coyoacán he moved in 1953. Since 1954 he has worked at the National Autonomous University of Mexico as a part-time professor and researches with a scholarship from El Colegio de México; He collaborates in various Mexican magazines. The Mexican poet José Emilio Pacheco defines it precisely: «He lived in a harsh solitude, surrounded by resentment on all sides: legitimate defense of an extremely vulnerable being, of someone fallen into hell who accepts evil and, by expressing it, expresses it. conspires". In Mexico, she joins her long list of long-suffering friends (María Zambrano, Rosa Chacel, Concha de Albornoz, María Teresa León and Concha Méndez) Nieves Madariaga, eldest daughter of Salvador de Madariaga, Sara Hernández-Catá and the writers María Dolores Arana and Guadalupe Dueñas.

In 1955 his figure was vindicated in Spain by a group of young poets from Cordoba, the Grupo Cántico, which was a great satisfaction for him; In 1956 he began writing the first poems of Desolation of the Chimera and in 1957 the Poemas para un cuerpo and his Studies on contemporary Spanish poetry . He publishes in México en la Cultura his literary biography, “Historial de un libro”, on the occasion of the third revised and expanded edition of Reality and Desire (1958). In 1959, on the occasion of the death of Manuel Altolaguirre, he took care of editing the Complete Poems of his friend and began to correspond with young Spanish poets. In 1960 Carlos Barral published in Barcelona the essays contained in the two parts of Poetry and Literature and in the summer he taught a course at the University of California in Los Angeles. Between 1961 and 1962 he was a visiting professor in San Francisco and in the latter year Desolation of the Chimera” was published in Mexico. Between 1962 and 1963 he returned to teach a course in Los Angeles.

On November 5, 1963, she died in Mexico City, at the home of her friend Concha Méndez. He was buried a few days later in the Spanish section of the Panteón Jardín.

Poetry

For the anthology Spanish Poetry: 1915-1931 by Gerardo Diego, in 1932, Luis Cernuda wrote the following poetry:

It was not worth gradually forgetting reality, so that, now, I would remember it and to what people. I hate her as I hate everything that belongs to her, my friends, my family, my country. I don't know anything. I don't want anything. And if I could still wait for something, it would only be to die there where I had not yet penetrated that grotesque civilization that vanishes men.

Sounds like a proclamation of supreme independence. Cernudian poetry is a poetry of meditation, and consists of four stages, according to Octavio Paz: the years of learning, youth, maturity and the beginning of old age.

• At the initial stage belong the first poetry, published in 1927 with the title of Air profile —which shows an elegant poet in his elegious contemplation of the world—and Egloga, choose, oda, written between 1927 and 1928, which pays homage to the classical tradition while playing some very cernudian themes: love and eros in particular.

• The youth cycle begins with A river, a love and The forbidden pleasureswritten between 1929 and 1931. These two books reveal Cernuda's commitment to surrealism, which frees him from his psychic and social repressions. Although the classicist who always existed in him often contemplates the formal rupture, the essentials of those poems is his spirit of rebellion against the established order: "I don't know anything, I don't want anything, I don't expect anything. And if I could expect anything, it would only be to die there where that grotesque civilization would not have penetrated men." In The forbidden pleasures rebellion grows with the open claim of homosexuality. Where oblivion dwells (1934) is a neo-Romantic book, "superbecquerian", which develops a loving choice. Invocations1934–1935, he presents the neo-Romantic by dilating himself in broad poems that celebrate the glories of the world and exalt the mission of the poet.

House of the poet Luis Cernuda on Calle Aire (Sevilla).

• The maturity period starts with The clouds (1940 and 1943), one of the most beautiful books of poetry on the Civil War, where the elected reaches its fullness. Under the stimulus of the English lyric, it includes dramatic monologues, such as "The Worship of the Magi." Long tone and style Like the one waiting for the dawn (1947). Obsessed with his Sevillian memories, he produces in prose Ocnos (1.a ed. in 1942, then expanded: 1949 and 1963), essential to understand his mythology of the lost Eden and of which in 2002 Huerga and Fierro editors published in the exquisite collection Signs with prologue of the Academician Francisco Brines a unique edition that also includes the first facsimilar edition of Dolphin, London (1942).

• In Mexico, its last stage is developed. There he would Variations on Mexican Issues (1952), Living without living (1944-1949) and With the hours countedof 1950–1956, which in later editions will incorporate Poems for a body (Malaga, 1957). It is perceptible to replace the previous elegant musicality, garcilasiana, for a dry, hard rhythm, and for the renunciation of all ornamentation in favor of the concept. This style reaches its fullness in Chimera desolation (1962).

Cernuda is the author of a critical work (Studies on contemporary Spanish poetry, 1957, or Poesía y literatura, I and II, 1960 and 1964). In it, Cernuda vindicates Campoamor, expresses his admiration for his friend Federico García Lorca and severely judges the work of Rubén Darío, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Pedro Salinas and Jorge Guillén.

In 1985 his only play was published, La familia interruptida.

Poetic theory

It was Luis Cernuda himself who outlined his poetic evolution in «Historial de un libro», a work originally published in Papeles de son Armadans and later included in his Poesía y literatura. All literary criticism of his work must necessarily refer to this work of the author.

Tradition and originality

For Cernuda, respect for literary tradition and the contribution of originality in his work must go in perfect balance. Greater weight should not be given to one or the other. For him, respect for tradition is fundamental, but he does not understand that tradition only as respect for the work of Spanish authors, but rather encompasses the whole of European literature since Homer. Among the presences of tradition that are most clearly seen in his poems we find:

1. Garcilaso. Both by its metric (as seen in the book) Egloga. He chose. Oda), as for its themes (love, idealized vision of nature and the presence of classical mythology).
2. Bécquer, and the poets who begin French symbolism (Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Paul Valéry, Mallarmé), although it is also known that, in the letter that Cernuda wrote about the poetry of Juan Ramón Jiménez, criticizes the influence of French poetry by saying that it is more rhetorical than expressive.
3. Platonic poets (Fray Luis de León, T.S. Eliot), give him the vision of nature as a world of order and peace, against human chaos.
4. In History of a book He also notes the influence on him of the poetry of the English metaphysical poets and that of Hölderlin.

Along with all these presences of the European cultural tradition, Cernuda will also take into account the work of his contemporaries:

1. Juan Ramón Jiménez, for the subjective vision of reality and for the idea that true literature is the one that addresses the essence of things, eliminating superficiality.
2. The poets of 27 teach him to confront the literary work from the perspective of Surrealism.

In Cernuda's poetry, finally, the presence of tradition will be combined with the originality of his contribution, the result of his biographical peculiarities.

The role of the poet

The function of the poet in the work of Luis Cernuda connects perfectly with the romantic tradition, according to which the artist appears as a solitary being endowed with a supernatural gift that allows him to see and express what others cannot. In this line, Cernuda is presented to us as a member of a tradition that began with the romantics, especially with the Germans such as Hölderlin, Novalis or Heinrich Heine and who in Spain represents the figure of another Sevillian, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer. The poet is, therefore, a "chosen one", either by God or by the Devil. He is a cursed being, marginalized by society, a fact from which he derives his total loneliness. In the case of Cernuda, this condition of being cursed, of being different, is reinforced by his different way of understanding love. His homosexuality clashes head-on with the customs and norms of the bourgeois society to which he belongs and in which he lives. As a consequence of the feeling of difference, the attitude of the Sevillian poet towards the world will be defined by rebellion and by the feeling of frustration caused by the constant clash between the reality in which he lives and the desire to live, to love, in a different way.

The themes of the poetic work

The thematic core of Cernuda's work is the antithesis between reality and desire, a fact that explains why from 1936 he titled all of his poetry with this opposition. This antithesis arises, without a doubt, from the peculiar vital circumstances of the Sevillian poet, but it connects perfectly with what in the romantic and symbolist poets was the collision between individual freedom and bourgeois society, as well as being a characteristic theme of the poetry of the XX century, as evidenced by its appearance in poems by very varied authors, from Antonio Machado to Federico García Lorca, through Rafael Alberti, to mention only a few of Cernuda's contemporaries.

The theme of reality as opposed to desire can be specified in Cernuda's work in a series of recurring thematic motifs:

1. Soledad, isolation, marginalization and feeling of difference.
2. I want to find a living world that does not suppress or attack the individual who feels and knows differently. In the attempt to find that desired living world, sometimes the poet addresses the past, to childhood, with what we link with the theme of the "lost paraisos", so characteristic of contemporary literature.
3. I want to find the perfect beauty, which is not dirty by reality, by materiality.
4. Love, like the great Cernudian theme. This motive adopts different approaches throughout his work that we can reduce to four moments:

   • A love not enjoyed, but presented. Copy more as a literary experience, read. It's what we found, mainly, in the book. The forbidden pleasures.
   • The loving experience marked by dissatisfaction, pain and failure, by incomprehension. We can find it, mainly, in the book Where oblivion dwells.
   • Love as a happy, exalted experience, but marked by brevity. So we read it in the Poems of the body.
   • Time and its passage is another of the great themes of the Sevillian poet. Linked to this thematic motif we will find the desire of eternal youth, marked by loving experiences, by beauty and by the force of spirit that allows it to maintain a rebellious attitude towards the world that oppresses it; the nostalgia of childhood, associated with naivety and, therefore, to the happiness and desire of eternity, to become merged with Nature in a perfectly ordained universe.

5. Nature. It is clear the opposition that occurs in the poems of Cernuda between the bourgeois world, against which the poet reacts in various ways, and the natural world, considered as a paradise in which the artist can live in perfect harmony. That bourgeois social world is marked by chaos, it is reality, and in front of it, natural order, desire. This Cernudian nature is dominated by spontaneity and by the free projection of feelings and instincts that in the bourgeois sphere must be repressed.

Work

Poetry

• Air profile (1927)
• Egloga, Elegía, Oda (1928)
• A river, a love (1929)
• The forbidden pleasures (1931)
• Where oblivion dwells (1933)
• Invocations to the thanks of the world (1935)
• Reality and desire (1936) complete poetic work, which will expand in later editions (1940, 1958, 1964).
• The clouds (1943)
• Like the one waiting for the dawn (1947)
• Living without living (1949)
• With the hours counted (1956)
• Chimera desolation (1962)

Essay

• Studies on contemporary Spanish poetry (1957)
• Poetic thinking in English lyrics (1958)
• Poetry and literature I (1960)
• Poetry and literature II (1964)

Prose

• Ocnos (1942)