Philip Silver is an Emeritus Professor of nineteenth and twentieth century Spanish literature at Columbia University who has written extensively about Don Quixote and the Spanish Romantics. He continues to honor his immersion in Spanish culture and recently translated Alliance and Condemnation by Claudio Rodriguez, a poet who lived in Madrid during and after the Franco years.
Steeped in his native traditions, in his late teens Rodriguez wrote about the magical aspects of Castilian children’s songs, and was teaching in England from 1958 until 1964, at the University of Nottingham and at Cambridge. He had long periods of time when he did not write or publish poems, but like many writers with large gifts, this time, though somewhat mysterious to readers, made sense to him and was used in ways that show in the work. He was committed to a life of devotion to his surroundings and to making art out of them. His success was noble, in the sense that it was strong, complete in each piece, and worthy of lasting, detailed attention.
The word “mystic” and its relatives are often cheapened by over-use, in large part because while many people have mystical experiences, few, myself included, have the skills to name the events with the magnified, particular reverence they always deserve. Rodriguez had such an experience, of oneness with a night sky, and that’s why I touch on the subject. His poetry is charged with the particles of that night, in direct and indirect ways, and the poetry , even in its titles, displays an elegance found in the natural world.
“Spring Wind (Viento Primavera)” is a lyrical example .
Not even the body can withstand
so much resurrection, and it seeks shelter
from the wind that eases now, and brings
smells and a new intimacy. Now all
that was hunger is nourishment. And life
lightens, and a generous sparkling
pulses in our streets. But our sight
is still cloudy, our spittle dry
and our feet go hurrying off,
as always. And then this
sultry pressure, the still-
fragile body of spring brings
circles around the winter
of our hearts, searching for a point
of entry. And waiting here,
just around the corner,
successfully marauding,
it blows at our clothing,
dries out our labor,
sweeps our houses, eases our doors
shut dark and tight, and opens them
to I don’t know what hospitality,
overwhelms us, and even if we’re never
aware of so much youth, it rushes
us along. Yes, with the sun
just risen a delicious wind
carrying seedlings, blew around
our dryness, the injustice
of our years, inspired us to something
more lovely than all
our wariness, all our despair.
Something braver than our fear
of its sweeping rebellion,
its fierce resurrection. And now
I, who lost so much liberty,
want to hear the faint noise
of our pulse as it edges after
the warm sound of this alliance,
and together they make
an overwhelming, rhythm –less,
soundless music, by which I know,
that one day, perhaps in mid-January,
the time will come
when we’ll all know the why of the name:
“Spring Wind.”
Here and throughout this book we have a poem that is both emotionally intimate and universal, tender and filled with religious and political inferences (“resurrection” used twice, the word “liberty” and others) that never feels affected. Next to the English version, on pages that have been designed with the poet’s visuals in mind, we have the Spanish, which naturally brings us closer to the writer’s heart and to the grace of Rodriguez’s mother tongue. Here are a few lines, chosen with the hope-as is every word in this essay- that they will encourage readers to buy Alliance and Condemnation, to be wide open to its riches:
Ni aun el cuerpo resiste
tante resurrection y busca abrigo
ante este viento que ya templa y trae
olor y neuva intimidad. Ya cuanto
There are many versions of a song called ‘’Spanish is a Loving Tongue,’’ made famous by Judy Collins and other balladeers. It reminds one of the special softness that always suggests passion in Spanish sounds and that’s so well handled here. Reading Rodriguez in English and Spanish is akin to consuming a kind of miraculous double, the way love itself reproduces and expands. And Rodriguez has a straightforward wisdom , as “A Stranger” declares with such clarity :
The day is long for the one who can’t love
and who knows it. And he hears the harsh
tune in his body, its rasping song,
always with the sound of distance.
He closes the door and it stays tight shut;
he goes out and for a moment his knees
bend and take him to the ground.
But the dawn, with dangerous generosity,
refreshes and sets him on his feet.
Largo se le hace el dia a quien no ama
y el lo sabe. Y el oyse tanido
corto y duro del cuerpo, su cascada.
Cascada, I want to gush. How divine the sound. And so here, as everywhere, we have a perfect marriage, a perfect balance in both languages, of beauty and sagacity. This is spiritual acknowledgement without dogma, which is especially notable given where and when Rodriguez lived. There will never be enough of this kind of poetry, and it is rewarding to read aloud and memorize, so that it enters brain and body promising the almost- beyond- speech rewards that come with the intake of such music.
Reading Rodriguez can be so compelling, it can be difficult, in a welcome way, to stop reading, as one hates to see a special novel end, and slows down in the final pages. He is a master of elegiac tone, which adds weight to what I have just said. His “Ode to Childhood” captures the essence of what memory of those crucial years can do, and the end of this poem is his beginning, and ours:
when the high, blind, dazzling,
spring-like sun
of innocence is reborn,
never to set again on our land.
