critical survey of poetry - european poets

CRITICAL SURVEY OF

PoetryFourth Edition

European Poets

CRITICAL SURVEY OF


European Poets

Volume 1Endre AdyJorge Guillen

Editor, Fourth EditionRosemary M. Canfield Reisman

Charleston Southern University

Salem PressPasadena, California

Hackensack, New Jersey

Cover photo: Petrarch (The Granger Collection, New York)

Copyright 1983, 1984, 1987, 1992, 2003, 2011, by Salem PressAll rights in this book are reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any informa-tion storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner except in the case of briefquotations embodied in critical articles and reviews or in the copying of images deemed to be freely licensed or inthe public domain. For information, address the publisher, Salem Press, at [email protected].

Some of the essays in this work, which have been updated, originally appeared in the following Salem Press pub-lications, Critical Survey of Poetry, English Language Series (1983), Critical Survey of Poetry: Foreign LanguageSeries (1984), Critical Survey of Poetry, Supplement (1987), Critical Survey of Poetry, English Language Series,Revised Edition, (1992; preceding volumes edited by Frank N. Magill), Critical Survey of Poetry, Second RevisedEdition (2003; edited by Philip K. Jason).

The paper used in these volumes conforms to the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper forPrinted Library Materials, X39.48-1992 (R1997).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataCritical survey of poetry. 4th ed. / editor, Rosemary M. Canfield Reisman.

v. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-1-58765-582-1 (set : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-58765-756-6 (set : European poets : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-58765-757-3 (v. 1 : European poets : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-58765-758-0 (v. 2 : Europeanpoets : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-58765-759-7 (v. 3 : European poets : alk. paper)1. PoetryHistory and criticismDictionaries. 2. PoetryBio-bibliography. 3. PoetsBiographyDictionaries. I. Reisman, Rosemary M. Canfield.

PN1021.C7 2011809.1'003dc22

2010045095

First Printing

printed in the united states of america

Editor in Chief: Dawn P. DawsonEditorial Director: Christina J. Moose

Development Editor: Tracy Irons-GeorgesProject Editor: Rowena Wildin

Manuscript Editor: Desiree DreeuwsAcquisitions Editor: Mark Rehn

Editorial Assistant: Brett S. Weisberg

Research Supervisor: Jeffry JensenResearch Assistant: Keli TrousdaleProduction Editor: Andrea E. MillerPage Desion: James HutsonLayout: Mary OverellPhoto Editor: Cynthia Breslin Beres

PUBLISHERS NOTE

European Poets is part of Salem Presss greatly ex-panded and redesigned Critical Survey of Poetry Series.The Critical Survey of Poetry, Fourth Edition, presentsprofiles of major poets, with sections on other literaryforms, achievements, biography, general analysis, andanalysis of the poets most important poems or collec-tions. Although the profiled authors may have written inother genres as well, sometimes to great acclaim, the fo-cus of this set is on their most important works of poetry.

The Critical Survey of Poetry was originally pub-lished in 1983 and 1984 in separate English- and for-eign-language series, a supplement in 1987, a revisedEnglish-language series in 1992, and a combined re-vised series in 2003. The Fourth Edition includes allpoets from the previous edition and adds 145 new ones,covering 843 writers in total. The poets covered in thisset represent more than 40 countries and their poetrydates from the eighth century b.c.e. to the present. Theset also offers 72 informative overviews; 20 of these es-says were added for this edition, including all the liter-ary movement essays. In addition, seven resources areprovided, two of them new. More than 500 photo-graphs and portraits of poets have been included.

For the first time, the material in the Critical Surveyof Poetry has been organized into five subsets by geog-raphy and essay type: a 4-volume subset on AmericanPoets, a 3-volume subset on British, Irish, and Com-monwealth Poets, a 3-volume subset on European Po-ets, a 1-volume subset on World Poets, and a 2-volumesubset of Topical Essays. Each poet appears in only onesubset. Topical Essays is organized under the catego-ries Poetry Around the World, Literary Movements,and Criticism and Theory. A Cumulative Indexesvolume covering all five subsets is free with purchaseof more than one subset.

European PoetsThe 3-volume European Poets contains 188 poet

profiles, arranged alphabetically. For this edition, 18new essays have been added, and 6 have been signifi-cantly updated with analysis of recently published booksor poems.

Each volume begins with a list of Contents for thatvolume, a Complete List of Contents covering the en-tire subset, and a Pronunciation Key. The poet essaysfollow in alphabetical order, divided among the threevolumes. The third volume contains the Resources sec-tion, which features three tools for interpreting and un-derstanding poetry: Explicating Poetry, Languageand Linguistics, and Glossary of Poetical Terms.The Bibliography, Guide to Online Resources,Time Line, Major Awards, and ChronologicalList of Poets provide guides for further research andadditional information on European poets; comprehen-sive versions appear in Topical Essays and CumulativeIndexes. The Guide to Online Resources and TimeLine were created for this edition.

European Poets contains a Geographical Index ofPoets; a Categorized Index of Poets, in which po-ets are grouped by culture or group identity, literarymovement, historical period, and poetic forms andthemes; and a Subject Index. The Critical Survey of Po-etry Series: Master List of Contents identifies poetsprofiled in European Poets as well as poets profiledin other Critical Survey of Poetry subsets. The Cu-mulative Indexes also contains comprehensive ver-sions of the categorized, geographical, and subjectindexes.

Updating the essaysAll parts of the essays in the previous edition were

scrutinized for currency and accuracy: The authors lat-est works of poetry were added to front-matter list-ings, other significant publications were added to back-matter listings, new translations were added to listingsfor foreign-language authors, and deceased authorslistings were rechecked for accuracy and currency. Allessays bibliographieslists of sources for further con-sultationwere revised to provide readers with the lat-est information.

The 6 poet essays in European Poets that requiredupdating by academic experts received similar andeven fuller attention: All new publications were addedto listings, then each section of text was reviewed to

v

ensure that recently received major awards are noted,that new biographical details are incorporated for still-living authors, and that analysis of works includesrecently published books or poems. The updating ex-perts names were added to essays. Those original arti-cles identified by the editor, Rosemary M. CanfieldReisman, as not needing substantial updating were nev-ertheless reedited by Salem Press editors and checkedfor accuracy.

Online accessSalem Press provides access to its award-winning

content both in traditional, printed form and online.Any school or library that purchases European Poets isentitled to free, complimentary access to Salems fullysupported online version of the content. Features in-clude a simple intuitive interface, user profile areas forstudents and patrons, sophisticated search functional-ity, and complete context, including appendixes. Ac-cess is available through a code printed on the insidecover of the first volume, and that access is unlimitedand immediate. Our online customer service represen-tatives, at (800) 221-1592, are happy to help with anyquestions. E-books are also available.

Organization of poet essaysThe poet essays in European Poets vary in length,

with none shorter than 2,000 words and most signifi-cantly longer. Poet essays are arranged alphabetically,under the name by which the poet is best known. Theformat of the essays is standardized to allow predict-able and easy access to the types of information of in-terest to a variety of users. Each poet essay containsready-reference top matter, including full birth and(where applicable) death data, any alternate namesused by the poet, and a list of Principal Poetry, followedby the main text, which is divided into Other LiteraryForms, Achievements, Biography, and Analysis. A listof Other Major Works, a Bibliography, and bylinescomplete the essay. Principal poetry lists the titles of the authors major

collections of poetry in chronological order, by dateof original appearance. Most of the poets in Euro-pean Poets wrote in a language other than English.The foreign-language title is given in its entirely, fol-

lowed by the first English publication and its date ofpublication, if a translation has been made.

Other literary forms describes the authors work inother genres and notes whether the author is knownprimarily as a poet or has achieved equal or greaterfame in another genre. If the poets last name is un-likely to be familiar to most users, phonetic pronun-ciation is provided in parentheses after his or hername. A Pronunciation Key appears at the beginningof all volumes.

Achievements lists honors, awards, and other tangi-ble recognitions, as well as a summation of thewriters influence and contributions to poetry and lit-erature, where appropriate.

Biography provides a condensed biographical sketchwith vital information from birth through (if applica-ble) death or the authors latest activities.

Analysis presents an overview of the poets themes,techniques, style, and development, leading into sub-sections on major poetry collections, poems, or as-pects of the persons work as a poet. As an aid to stu-dents, those foreign-language titles that have not yetappeared in translation are followed by a literaltranslation in roman and lowercase letters in paren-theses when these titles are mentioned in the text. If acollection of poems has been published in English,the English-language title is used in the text. Singlepoems that have not been translated are followed bya literal translation in parenthesis. Those that havebeen translated are referred to by their English-language title, although the original title, if known, isalso provided.

Other major works contains the poets principalworks in other genres, listed by genre and by year ofpublication within each genre. If the work has beentranslated into English, the date and title under whichit was first translated are given.

Bibliography lists secondary print sources for fur-ther study, annotated to assist users in evaluating fo-cus and usefulness.

Byline notes the original contributor of the essay. Ifthe essay was updated, the name of the most recentupdater appears in a separate line and previous up-daters appear with the name of the original contrib-utor.

vi

Critical Survey of Poetry

AppendixesThe Resources section in volume 3 provides tools

for further research and points of access to the wealth ofinformation contained in European Poets. Explicating Poetry identifies the basics of versifica-

tion, from meter to rhyme, in an attempt to demon-strate how sound, rhythm, and image fuse to supportmeaning.

Language and Linguistics looks at the origins of lan-guage and at linguistics as a discipline, as well ashow the features of a particular language affect thetype of poetry created.

Glossary of Poetical Terms is a lexicon of more than150 literary terms pertinent to the study of poetry.

Bibliography identifies general reference works andother secondary sources that pertain to Europeanpoets.

Guide to Online Resources, new to this edition, pro-vides Web sites pertaining to poetry and Europeanpoets.

Time Line, new to this edition, lists major milestonesand events in European poetry and literature in theorder in which they occurred.

Major Awards lists the recipients of major Europeanpoetry-specific awards and general awards whereapplicable to poets or poetry, from inception of theaward to the present day.

Chronological List of Poets lists all 188 poets cov-ered in European Poets by year of birth, in chrono-logical order.

IndexesThe Geographical Index of Poets lists all poets cov-

ered in European Poets by country or region. The Cate-gorized Index of Poets lists the poets profiled in Euro-pean Poets by culture or group identity (such as Jewishculture, gay and lesbian culture, and women poets), lit-erary movements (such as Dadism, Modernism, Surre-alist poets, and Symbolist poets), historical periods(Spanish Golden Age and Hellenistic poets), and poeticforms and themes (such as political poets, religious po-etry, epics, and visionary poetry). The Critical Surveyof Poetry Series: Master List of Contents lists not onlythe poets profiled in European Poets but also those inother subsets, allowing users to find any poet coveredin the complete series. The Subject Index lists all titles,authors, subgenres, and literary movements or termsthat receive substantial discussion in European Poets.Listings for profiled poets are in bold face.

AcknowledgmentsSalem Press is grateful for the efforts of the original

contributors of these essays and those of the outstand-ing academicians who took on the task of updating orwriting new material for the set. Their names and affili-ations are listed in the Contributors section that fol-lows. Finally, we are indebted to our editor, ProfessorRosemary M. Canfield Reisman of Charleston South-ern University, for her development of the table of con-tents for the Critical Survey of Poetry, Fourth Editionand her advice on updating the original articles to makethis comprehensive and thorough revised edition an in-dispensable tool for students, teachers, and generalreaders alike.

vii

Publishers Note

ix

Contributors

Claude AbrahamUniversity of California, DavisPaul AckerBrown University

Robert AckerUniversity of MontanaSidney AlexanderVirginia Commonwealth University

Peter BakerSouthern Connecticut State

University

Lowell A. BangerterUniversity of WyomingJames John BaranLouisiana State University-

Shreveport

Stanisuaw BaraczakHarvard University

Theodore BaroodyAmerican Psychological Foundation

Jean-Pierre BarricelliUniversity of California, RiversideEnik Molnr BasaLibrary of CongressFiora A. BassaneseUniversity of Massachusetts, BostonWalton BeachamBeacham Publishing Corp.

Todd K. BenderUniversity of Wisconsin-MadisonPeter BienUniversity of Massachusetts,

Dartmouth

M. D. BirnbaumUniversity of California, Los AngelesNicholas BirnsEugene Lang College, The New

School

Franz G. BlahaUniversity of Nebraska-LincolnAndrs Boros-KazaiBeloit College

David BromigeSonoma State University

Joseph P. ByrneBelmont University

Glauco CambonUniversity of ConnecticutH. W. CarleSt. Joseph, Missouri

John CarpenterUniversity of MichiganJoseph CarrollCommunity College of Rhode IslandFrancisco J. CevallosOrono, Maine

Carole A. ChampagneUniversity of Maryland-Eastern

Shore

Luisetta Elia ChomelUniversity of HoustonPeter CocozzellaState University of New York at

Binghamton

Steven E. ColburnLargo, Florida

Robert ColucciPittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Victor ContoskiUniversity of KansasCarrie CowherdHoward University

J. Madison DavisPennsylvania State College-Behrend

College

Andonis DecavallesFairleigh Dickinson University

Mark DeStephanoSaint Peters College

Lillian DohertyUniversity of MarylandDesiree DreeuwsSunland, CaliforniaClara EstowUniversity of MassachusettsWelch D. EvermanUniversity of MaineJack EwingBoise, Idaho

Christoph EykmanBoston College

Robert FaggenClaremont McKenna College

Rodney FarnsworthIndiana University

Thomas R. FellerNashville, Tennessee

Daniel H. GarrisonNorthwestern University

Katherine Gyknyesi GattoRichmond Heights, Ohio

Tasha HaasUniversity of KansasDonald P. HaaseWayne State University

Steven L. HaleGeorgia Perimeter College

Shelley P. HaleyHoward University

Todd C. HanlinUniversity of ArkansasRobert HauptmanSt. Cloud State University

Sarah HilbertPasadena, CaliforniaAnn R. HillRandolph-Macon Womans College

Elizabeth A. HoltzeMetropolitan State College of DenverDonald D. HookTrinity College

David Harrison HortonPatten College

Tracy Irons-GeorgesGlendale, CaliforniaMiglena IvanovaCoastal Carolina University

Maura IvesTexas A&M University

Karen JaehneWashington, D.C.

Juan Fernndez JimnezPennsylvania State University

Judith L. JohnstonRider College

Irma M. KashubaChestnut Hill College

Theodore L. KassierUniversity of Texas-San AntonioJrgen KoppensteinerUniversity of Northern IowaPhilip KrummrichUniversity of GeorgiaKatherine C. KurkNorthern Kentucky University

Rebecca KuzinsPasadena, CaliforniaNorris J. LacyUniversity of KansasCarolina D. LawsonKent State University

John M. LeeJames Madison University

Raymond LePageGeorge Mason University

Marie-Nolle D. LittleClinton, New York

John D. LyonsUniversity of Massachusetts,

Dartmouth

Dennis McCormickUniversity of MontanaMagdalena MczyskaThe Catholic University of AmericaDavid MaiselWellesley, Massachusetts

Richard Peter MartinPrinceton University

Anne Laura MattrellaSoutheastern University

Richard A. MazzaraOakland University

Laurence W. MazzenoAlvernia College

Michael R. MeyersPfeiffer UniversityVasa D. MihailovichUniversity of North CarolinaLeslie B. MittlemanCalifornia State University, Long

Beach

Christina J. MoosePasadena, CaliforniaC. L. MossbergLycoming College

Adriano MozSpring Hill College

Kroly NagyMiddlesex County College

Moses M. NagyUniversity of DallasCaryn E. NeumannMiami University of OhioEvelyn S. NewlynVirginia Polytechnic Institute and

State University

Hermine J. van NuisIndiana University-Purdue

University, Fort Wayne

David J. ParentNormal, Illinois

John P. PaulsCincinnati, Ohio

La Verne PaulsCincinnati, Ohio

Margaret T. PeischlVirginia Commonwealth University

Susan G. PolanskyCarnegie Mellon University

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xi

Contributors

John PoveyUniversity of California, Los AngelesVerbie Lovorn PrevostUniversity of Tennessee at

Chattanooga

James ReeceUniversity of IdahoSylvie L. F. RichardsNorthwest Missouri State University

Helene M. Kastinger RileyClemson University

Joseph RosenblumGreensboro, North Carolina

Sven H. RosselUniversity of ViennaNorman RothUniversity of WisconsinVictor Anthony RudowskiClemson University

Todd SamuelsonCushing Memorial Library &

Archives

Minas SavvasSan Diego State University

Paul J. SchwartzGrand Forks, North Dakota

Robert W. ScottAmerican University

Roberto SeverinoGeorgetown University

Jack ShreveAllegany Community College

Thomas J. SienkewiczMonmouth College

Jean M. SnookMemorial University of

NewfoundlandJanet L. SolbergKalamazoo College

Madison U. SowellBrigham Young University

Richard SpulerRice University

Kenneth A. StackhouseVirginia Commonwealth University

Tuula StarkHermosa Beach, CaliforniaLaura M. StoneMilwaukee, Wisconsin

George ThanielUniversity of TorontoRogelio A. de la TorreIndiana University at South Bend

Thomas A. VanUniversity of LouisvilleGordon WaltersDePauw University

Shawncey WebbTaylor University

David Allen WhiteUnited States Naval Academy

Michael WitkoskiUniversity of South CarolinaHarry ZohnBrandeis University

CONTENTS

Publishers Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vContributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ixComplete List of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . xvPronunciation Key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix

Endre Ady . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Rafael Alberti . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6Vicente Aleixandre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12Anacreon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17Guillaume Apollinaire. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22Apollonius Rhodius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30Louis Aragon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35Jnos Arany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42Archilochus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50Ludovico Ariosto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56Hans Arp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

Mihly Babits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68Ingeborg Bachmann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72Stanisuaw Baraczak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77Charles Baudelaire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80Samuel Beckett . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87Gustavo Adolfo Bcquer . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95Pietro Bembo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101Gottfried Benn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107Thomas Bernhard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112Wolf Biermann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119Johannes Bobrowski . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126Giovanni Boccaccio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131Matteo Maria Boiardo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135Nicolas Boileau-Despraux . . . . . . . . . . . 138Yves Bonnefoy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142Bertolt Brecht . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149Andr Breton. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157Breyten Breytenbach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

Pedro Caldern de la Barca . . . . . . . . . . . 170Callimachus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175Lus de Cames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180Giosu Carducci . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185Rosala de Castro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190Catullus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

Constantine P. Cavafy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204Guido Cavalcanti. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210Paul Celan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214Luis Cernuda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220Ren Char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226Charles dOrlans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230Alain Chartier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236Christine de Pizan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240Paul Claudel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244Jean Cocteau . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253Tristan Corbire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260

Gabriele DAnnunzio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264Dante . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270Joachim du Bellay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289Jovan Du5i6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292

Joseph von Eichendorff . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299Gunnar Ekelf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306Paul luard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313Odysseus Elytis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317Hans Magnus Enzensberger . . . . . . . . . . . 323

J. V. Foix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329Jean Follain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335Ugo Foscolo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340Girolamo Fracastoro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345

Federico Garca Lorca . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355Garcilaso de la Vega . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362Thophile Gautier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368Stefan George . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377Guido Gezelle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384Giuseppe Giusti . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391Johann Wolfgang von Goethe . . . . . . . . . . 396Eugen Gomringer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405Luis de Gngora y Argote . . . . . . . . . . . . 410Gottfried von Strassburg . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415Gnter Grass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418Guillaume de Lorris and

Jean de Meung . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424Jorge Guilln . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430

xiii

COMPLETE LIST OF CONTENTS

Volume 1

Publishers Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vContributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ixContents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiiiPronunciation Key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix

Endre Ady . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Rafael Alberti . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6Vicente Aleixandre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12Anacreon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17Guillaume Apollinaire. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22Apollonius Rhodius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30Louis Aragon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35Jnos Arany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42Archilochus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50Ludovico Ariosto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56Hans Arp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

Mihly Babits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68Ingeborg Bachmann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72Stanisuaw Baraczak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77Charles Baudelaire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80Samuel Beckett . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87Gustavo Adolfo Bcquer . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95Pietro Bembo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101Gottfried Benn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107Thomas Bernhard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112Wolf Biermann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119Johannes Bobrowski . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126Giovanni Boccaccio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131Matteo Maria Boiardo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135Nicolas Boileau-Despraux . . . . . . . . . . . 138Yves Bonnefoy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142Bertolt Brecht . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149Andr Breton. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157Breyten Breytenbach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

Pedro Caldern de la Barca . . . . . . . . . . . 170Callimachus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175Lus de Cames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180

Giosu Carducci . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185Rosala de Castro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190Catullus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197Constantine P. Cavafy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204Guido Cavalcanti. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210Paul Celan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214Luis Cernuda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220Ren Char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226Charles dOrlans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230Alain Chartier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236Christine de Pizan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240Paul Claudel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244Jean Cocteau . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253Tristan Corbire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260

Gabriele DAnnunzio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264Dante . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270Joachim du Bellay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289Jovan Du5i6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292

Joseph von Eichendorff . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299Gunnar Ekelf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306Paul luard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313Odysseus Elytis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317Hans Magnus Enzensberger . . . . . . . . . . . 323

J. V. Foix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329Jean Follain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335Ugo Foscolo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340Girolamo Fracastoro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345

Federico Garca Lorca . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355Garcilaso de la Vega . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362Thophile Gautier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368Stefan George . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377Guido Gezelle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384Giuseppe Giusti . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391Johann Wolfgang von Goethe . . . . . . . . . . 396Eugen Gomringer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405

xv

Luis de Gngora y Argote . . . . . . . . . . . . 410Gottfried von Strassburg . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415Gnter Grass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418

Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung . . . . 424Jorge Guilln . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430

Volume 2

Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxviiComplete List of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . xxixPronunciation Key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxiii

Paavo Haavikko . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435Hartmann von Aue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441Piet Hein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447Heinrich Heine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451Zbigniew Herbert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 458Hesiod . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465Hermann Hesse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471Hugo von Hofmannsthal . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478Friedrich Hlderlin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485Miroslav Holub . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 492Arno Holz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497Homer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 502Horace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 510Victor Hugo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518

Gyula Illys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 528

Juan Ramn Jimnez. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533Saint John of the Cross . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539Judah ha-Levi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 549Juvenal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 553

Nikos Kazantzakis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557Karl Kraus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 563Reiner Kunze. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 570

Jean de La Fontaine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577Jules Laforgue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 584Alphonse de Lamartine . . . . . . . . . . . . . 591Luis de Len . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 597Leonidas of Tarentum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 602Giacomo Leopardi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 607Elias Lnnrot. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 617

Lucan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 621Lucretius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 627

Antonio Machado . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 633Franois de Malherbe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 639Stphane Mallarm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 644Itzik Manger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 650Jorge Manrique. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 657Alessandro Manzoni . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 660Marie de France . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 666Giambattista Marino . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 674Martial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 678Harry Martinson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 681Meleager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 685Henri Michaux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 688Michelangelo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 694Adam Mickiewicz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 702Czesuaw Miuosz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 709Eugenio Montale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 721Christian Morgenstern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 727Eduard Mrike . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 732Alfred de Musset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 736

Grard de Nerval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 741Novalis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 748

Blas de Otero. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 757Ovid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 763

Giovanni Pascoli . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 771Pier Paolo Pasolini . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 776Cesare Pavese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 783Miodrag Pavlovi6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 786Charles-Pierre Pguy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 791Nikos Pentzikis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 797Saint-John Perse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 801Persius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 806

xvi


Fernando Pessoa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 811Sndor Petfi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 816Petrarch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 828Pindar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 836

Poliziano . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 841Francis Ponge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 848Vasko Popa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 856

Volume 3

Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xliComplete List of Contents. . . . . . . . . . . . xliiiPronunciation Key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xlvii

Jacques Prvert. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 861Sextus Propertius. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 866

Salvatore Quasimodo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 873

Mikls Radnti. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 879Pierre Reverdy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 883Rainer Maria Rilke. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 889Arthur Rimbaud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 897Yannis Ritsos. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 904Pierre de Ronsard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 912Tadeusz R/ewicz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 917

Umberto Saba . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 925Nelly Sachs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 930Pedro Salinas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 936Sappho . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 941Friedrich Schiller. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 949George Seferis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 957Jaroslav Seifert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 961Antoni Suonimski . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 968Juliusz Suowacki . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 972Edith Sdergran . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 981Dionysios Solomos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 987Gaspara Stampa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 993Statius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 998Anna Swir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1004Wisuawa Szymborska . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1007

Torquato Tasso . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1014Esaias Tegnr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1020Theocritus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1023Theognis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1029Georg Trakl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1033

Tomas Transtrmer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1039Tristan Tzara . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1044

Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo . . . . . . . . . . 1051Giuseppe Ungaretti . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1056

Paul Valry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1065Lope de Vega Carpio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1073Vergil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1080mile Verhaeren . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1089Paul Verlaine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1093Alfred de Vigny. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1099Franois Villon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1106Mihly Vrsmarty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1112Walther von der Vogelweide . . . . . . . . . . 1119

Adam Wa/yk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1126Wolfram von Eschenbach . . . . . . . . . . . 1130

Adam Zagajewski. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1137Stefan Zweig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1141

RESOURCESExplicating Poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1151Language and Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . 1160Glossary of Poetical Terms . . . . . . . . . . . 1172Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1185Guide to Online Resources . . . . . . . . . . . 1199Time Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1202Major Awards. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1205Chronological List of Poets . . . . . . . . . . 1211

INDEXESGeographical Index of Poets . . . . . . . . . . 1217Categorized Index of Poets . . . . . . . . . . . 1220Critical Survey of Poetry Series:

Master List of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . 1229Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1240

xvii

Complete List of Contents

PRONUNCIATION KEY

To help users of the Critical Survey of Poetry pronounce unfamiliar names of profiled poets correctly, phoneticspellings using the character symbols listed below appear in parentheses immediately after the first mention of thepoets name in the narrative text. Stressed syllables are indicated in capital letters, and syllables are separated by hy-phens.

VOWEL SOUNDSSymbol Spelled (Pronounced)a answer (AN-suhr), laugh (laf), sample (SAM-puhl), that (that)ah father (FAH-thur), hospital (HAHS-pih-tuhl)aw awful (AW-fuhl), caught (kawt)ay blaze (blayz), fade (fayd), waiter (WAYT-ur), weigh (way)eh bed (behd), head (hehd), said (sehd)ee believe (bee-LEEV), cedar (SEE-dur), leader (LEED-ur), liter (LEE-tur)ew boot (bewt), lose (lewz)i buy (bi), height (hit), lie (li), surprise (sur-PRIZ)ih bitter (BIH-tur), pill (pihl)o cotton (KO-tuhn), hot (hot)oh below (bee-LOH), coat (koht), note (noht), wholesome (HOHL-suhm)oo good (good), look (look)ow couch (kowch), how (how)oy boy (boy), coin (koyn)uh about (uh-BOWT), butter (BUH-tuhr), enough (ee-NUHF), other (UH-thur)

CONSONANT SOUNDSSymbol Spelled (Pronounced)ch beach (beech), chimp (chihmp)g beg (behg), disguise (dihs-GIZ), get (geht)j digit (DIH-juht), edge (ehj), jet (jeht)k cat (kat), kitten (KIH-tuhn), hex (hehks)s cellar (SEHL-ur), save (sayv), scent (sehnt)sh champagne (sham-PAYN), issue (IH-shew), shop (shop)ur birth (burth), disturb (dihs-TURB), earth (urth), letter (LEH-tur)y useful (YEWS-fuhl), young (yuhng)z business (BIHZ-nehs), zest (zehst)zh vision (VIH-zhuhn)

xix

CRITICAL SURVEY OF


European Poets

AEndre Ady

Born: rdmindszent, Austro-Hungarian Empire(now Ady Endre, Romania); November 22, 1877

Died: Budapest, Hungary; January 27, 1919

Principal poetryVersek, 1899Mg egyszer, 1903j versek, 1906 (New Verses, 1969)Vr s arany, 1908 (Blood and Gold, 1969)Az Ills szekern, 1909 (On Elijahs Chariot, 1969)A minden titkok verseibl, 1910 (Of All Mysteries,

1969)Szeretnm, ha szeretnnek, 1910 (Longing for Love,

1969)A menekl let, 1912 (This Fugitive Life, 1969)A magunk szerelme, 1913 (Love of Ourselves, 1969)Ki ltott engem?, 1914 (Who Sees Me?, 1969)A halottak ln, 1918 (Leading the Dead, 1969)Margita lni akar, 1921Az utols hajk, 1923 (The Last Ships, 1969)Rvid dalok egyrl s msrl, 1923Poems of Endre Ady, 1969 (includes New Verses,

Blood and Gold, On Elijahs Chariot, Longingfor Love, Of All Mysteries, This Fugitive Life,Love of Ourselves, Who Sees Me?, Leading theDead, and The Last Ships)

Other literary formsEndre Ady (O-dee) was a journalist who wrote nu-

merous articles, reports, reviews, criticisms, essays,and short stories for the press. These were collected af-ter his death under the titles Az j Hellsz (1920; newHellas), Levelek Prizsbl (1924; letters from Paris),Prizsi noteszknyve (1924; Paris notebook), and Hahv az aczlhegy rdg (1927; if the steel-tipped devilcalls). In his lifetime, Ady published Vallomsok stanlmnyok (1911; confessions and studies), contain-

ing his important prose writings, both political and lit-erary. Some of these writings are available in Englishtranslation in The Explosive Country: A Selection ofArticles and Studies, 1898-1916 (1977). His collec-tions of short stories combine subjective, personal con-fession with a depiction of early twentieth centuryHungary. They are Spadt emberek s trtnetek(1907; pale men and stories), gy is trtnhetik (1910; itcan happen thus also), A tzmillis Kleoptra s egybbtrtnetek (1910; Cleopatra of the ten millions andother stories), j csapson (1913; on a new track), andMuskts tanr r (1913; Professor Muskts). His let-ters have been published in Ady Endre vlogatottlevelei (1956; selected letters of Endre Ady), with anintroduction by Bla Gyrgy.

AchievementsEndre Ady is one of Hungarys greatest lyric poets.

Inspired by Western European models, primarily French,he created a new lyrical style that both shocked and in-spired his contemporaries. At the same time, he revital-ized indigenous Hungarian literary traditions, lookingback to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ratherthan to the example of his immediate predecessors. Histopics, too, were considered revolutionary: physicalpassion and erotic love, political and social reform. Heremained, however, within the tradition of the greatnineteenth century Hungarian poets who expressed thespirit of the nation in their works.

BiographyEndre Adys heritage and birthplace had a profound

influence on his poetry. His ancestry was the relativelypoor nobility, or gentry, which on his mothers sidealso boasted a tradition of Calvinist ministers. In thesmall village of rdmindszent, he came to know thepeasantry intimately, for his own familys life differedlittle from theirs. His father wished him to enter thecivil service, so he was educated with a view to obtain-ing a legal degree. The area in which Ady grew up (to-day Salaj, Romania) is situated in the Partium, a regionof eastern Hungary that had stormy ties to Transylvaniaduring the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, whenthat principality had been a bulwark of Hungarian au-tonomy and traditions while the rest of the country was

1

Ady, Endre

under Turkish or Habsburg rule. The Partium was thusdoubly a frontier area in whose Calvinist and kuruc(anti-Habsburg) traditions Ady saw justification for hisown rebellious, individualistic nature. He was alwaysproud of his ancestry and considered himself muchmore Magyar than many of his contemporaries withmore mixed ethnic backgrounds.

After completing five elementary grades in his vil-lage, Ady was sent first to the Piarist school in Nagy-kroly, then to the Calvinist gymnasium at Zilah, whichhe regarded as his alma mater; he always fondly re-membered his teachers there. Several of his classmateswere later to become prominent among the more radi-cal thinkers and politicians of the early years of thetwentieth century. He also read voraciously, both ear-lier Hungarian literature and European naturalisticwriters, and became acquainted with the works of Ar-thur Schopenhauer. After a brief period in law school inDebrecen and time spent as a legal clerk in Temesvr(Timisoara, Romania) and Zilah (Zalau), he realizedthat his true vocation was in journalism. He followedthis career until his death.

Ady first worked in Debrecen, and in this period notonly did his horizons widen, but his critical theses be-gan to crystallize as well. Life and truth becameimportant bywords for him, and he continued his read-ings: Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, FriedrichNietzsche, Henrik Ibsen, Fyodor Dostoevski, and espe-cially the late eighteenth century poet Mihly CsokonaiVitz, a native of Debrecen. It was in Nagyvrad (todayOradea, Romania) that Ady became familiar with thelife of a large city and the more cosmopolitan society itrepresented. He wrote for liberal papers, and for a whilehis political views agreed with the pro-governmentstance of such journals. In time, however, he becamedisillusioned with their reluctance to press for universalsuffrage and other reforms affecting the poor and thenational minorities. It was at this time that he becameacquainted with Huszadik szzad, a progressive journalbegun in 1900.

The years in Nagyvrad were also important inAdys personal life and poetic development, for it wasduring this period that he met Adl Brll, whom he wasto immortalize as the Leda of his poems. This older,married woman (her married name was Disi)more

experienced, more worldly, more cultured than hewas an important influence on his life. Their passionateand at times tempestuous love affair, which finallyended in 1912, is recorded in poems that were to revo-lutionize Hungarian love poetry. When Ady went toParis as the foreign correspondent of his paper, Brllwas there, and his impressions of the French city wereacquired under her tutelage. When he returned from the1904 trip, he burst on the world with a new poetic style.

By 1905, Ady was working in Budapest for the lib-eral Budapesti napl. In numerous articles, he wrote ofthe need for radical reforms; independence from Aus-tria was also debated. At this time, Ady turned his atten-tion to the social problems that were destroying thecountry; in both his poetry and his prose writings, hechampioned the disenfranchised. The important jour-nal Nyugat was started in 1908, and Ady soon becameassociated with itall the more so as his increasinglyradical views did not agree with the middle-of-the-roadliberalism of the Budapesti napl.

When war broke out in 1914, Ady opposed Hungar-ian participation in the conflict, increasing his isolationfrom official political life. His antiwar poems were in-spired by humanism and patriotism. The poor and thepolitically powerless suffered most heavily, Ady ar-gued, and he believed that the war was being foughtagainst Hungarian interests, purely for Austrian goals.During this time, Ady lived mostly in rdmindszentand at Csucsa, the estate of Berta Boncza, whom he hadmet in 1914 and married the following year. Berta, thedaughter of a well-to-do nobleman and prominent poli-tician, was considerably younger than Ady; she hadbeen attracted to him some time earlier, when she readhis Blood and Gold while still in school in Switzerland.The poems written to her reflect a different mood fromthat of the Leda poems: The love is deeper and less in-tensely erotic. They project the hope that Csinszka (asBerta is called in the poems addressed to her) will pre-serve the thoughts and ideals of the poet. By this time,Ady was gravely ill with the syphilis that had been pro-gressively destroying him since his Nagyvrad days.

The revolution that Ady had awaited came to Hun-gary in October of 1918. Ady went to Budapest, wherethe revolutionary government celebrated him, eventhough he had reservations about the Socialist system.

2

Ady, Endre Critical Survey of Poetry

He also doubted whether the Karolyi governmentscourting of the Entente powers would bring any positiveresults. As it turned out, his instincts were right, and theEntente did little for Hungary. Ady died in January of1919, spared the knowledge that Hungarys territorywould be drastically reduced and that his own birth-place and home region would be awarded to Romania.

AnalysisEndre Ady came from the deep center of the nation,

and he sought to raise the nation to a new conscious-ness, just as Jnos Arany and others had done beforehim. Ady was an innovator because the literary and po-litical establishment had failed to grasp the need forchange. Adys Hungarianness is a central part of hiswork; he was intensely aware of his struggle with Eu-rope for Europe.

Ady never abandoned his native traditions. He builtinstead on folklore, the kuruc poetry of the eighteenthcentury, the folk-song-inspired lyrics of Mihly CsokonaiVitz, and the revolutionary verse of the great nationalpoet of nineteenth century Hungary, Sndor Petfi.Ady also drew heavily on Hungarian Calvinism and therich vernacular tradition of Protestant writings to createa highly personal modern style, animated by the ten-sion between Hungarian and Western European influ-ences. His great love poems to Leda and Csinszka, hispoems on materialism and on national traditionsall incorporated European philosophies, preoccupa-tions, and styles, reflecting the influence of FriedrichNietzsche and Henri Bergson as well as of Charles Bau-delaire and Paul Verlaine. Today, Ady is recognizedas one of the most important of the generation ofwriters and thinkers who transformed the intellectuallife of Hungary in the first decades of the twentieth cen-tury.

New VersesAdys first two volumes of verse, Versek (poems)

and Mg egyszer (once more), did not attract great in-terest; they were relatively insignificant collections inthe traditional vein. In 1906, however, Adys own styleemerged in New Verses. Here, he presented new sub-jects and new themes, new images and a fresh, newstyle. The emphasis in New Versesan emphasis con-tinued in Adys next three collectionswas on brevity

and impact: short, concise lines; short poems packedwith meaning; condensed language with multiple lev-els of reference. Many of the early poems develop a sin-gle metaphor. A very conscious innovator, Ady pref-aced New Verses with a manifesto that identifies thetension that persists throughout his oeuvre: Hungary isa nation caught at the crossroads between East andWest. While proudly claiming his descent from theconquering Hungarians of the ninth century, who camethrough the Eastern gate, he asks if he can break in fromthe West with new songs of new times. Answering ina defiant affirmative, he states that, in spite of opposi-tion by conservatives, these poems are still victorious,still new and Hungarian.

TransformationsAfter the burst of energy that characterized his style

in the period from 1906 to 1909, Ady paused in mid-career to adopt a quieter style and grayer moods. Histhemes and concerns remained much the same, butthere was a deepening of thought, and a more pessimis-tic note entered his poems. His concern for the fate ofthe country, particularly its ordinary citizens, grew ashe saw policies that could only bring ruin being blindlyfollowed by the political elite. His relationship withBrll also cooled.

After 1914, during the war years, Adys style under-went another transformation. His sentences becamemore complex as his verse became increasingly reflec-tive, and he turned from softer, French-inspired tonesto the somber and sublime style of the Bible and of six-teenth century Calvinist poetry. In this late poetry, Adyretained two themes from his earlier collection: patrio-tism, which broadened into humanitarianism, andloveno longer the unfulfilled and unsatisfying eroticencounters of earlier years but the deeper, more fulfill-ing passion of the Csinszka poems.

Leda poemsAdys poems can be organized thematically into

four large groups (love, death, religion, patriotism),though there is considerable overlapping; also, someimportant minor themes are eventually subsumed intoone or another of the major ones reflecting Adys intel-lectual development. One of Adys most enduringthemes was romantic love. The Leda cycles, with theirportrayal of destructive yet irresistible passion, reveal

3

Critical Survey of Poetry Ady, Endre

the influence of Baudelaire. These poems represented abreak with Hungarian tradition in their emphasis on thephysical aspects of love. Adys poems to his wife, onthe other hand, are more in the tradition of Petfi, inwhich the emotional-spiritual content is on a par withthe physical. It would be misleading, however, to dis-miss the Leda poems as purely physical: Brll offeredAdy much more than physical excitement, and thesepoems reflect a world of shared ideas. They are moresignificant and generally more successful than the po-ems on fleeting alliances with insignificant partners.

Flig cskolt csk (Half-Kissed Kiss), fromNew Verses, and Lda a kertben (Leda in the Gar-den), from Blood and Gold, emphasize the intense de-sire that cannot be satisfied even in physical union. Thehalf-kissed kiss is a metaphor for an erotic relation-ship that leaves the lovers still restless for fulfillment:tomorrow, then perhaps tomorrow. Nature sympa-thizes with them in their eternal hunger, as an imagefrom Leda in the Garden suggests: even the poppy/pities us, [itself] satisfied. Consummation, Ady sug-gests in Hja nsz az avaron (Kite-Wedding on theLoamy Earth), can come only in death. In A minsznagyunk (Our Best Man), Ady returns to thistheme. There are also love poems of great tenderness inthe Leda cycles, as Add nekem a szemeidet (GiveMe Your Eyes) illustrates. The beloveds eyes al-ways see him grand . . . always build, have mercy . . . seehim in a better light, yet they kill, burn, and desire.The poem, comprising four stanzas of three lines each,repeats the title line as the first line of each stanza andfollows it with two rhymed lines. This abb tercet in ana-pestic meter echoes the lyrical mood and the melody ofthe words as well as the expansive ideas.

Of All MysteriesThe 1910 volume Of All Mysteries chronicles the

waning of Adys love for Brll. This collection offers avirtual outline of Adys characteristic themes, as is in-deed suggested in the poems motto: youthful All van-quished, with the spear of Secrecy, Death in my heart:but my heart lives, and God lives. Here, Ady seemsdetermined to hope in spite of disappointments. TheDecadent pose of earlier poems is shed as the poet de-velops a real faith in humankind that culminates in thehumanism of the war poems. Each of the six cycles in

Of All Mysteries is devoted to a secret: of God, oflove, of sorrow, of glory, of life, and of death. In theLove cycle, dedicated to Leda, the poem A trelembilincse (The Fetters of Patience) significantly re-fers to the fetters of their love in the past tense. Theirwhole life was fetters, yet the kisses, exhaustions,flames, oaths were all good fetters. The farewell be-comes explicit in Elbocst, szp zenet (Dismiss-ing, Beautiful Message), where pity wins over the re-gretful remembrance of love.

Love poemsThe poems of 1912 to 1914 show a man in search of

love. In the final volumes, this love is found. A Kalotapartjn (On the Banks of the Kalota) records the se-curity, summer, beauty and peace brought to his lifeby Berta Boncza. The poems two long free-verse stan-zas depict a summer Sunday in which the peace and joyof the service and of the feast (Pentecost) mingle tooverwhelm the poet, and the eyes of his beloved drawhim into a magic circle.

DeathAdy saw life and death not as opposing forces but as

two components of the same force. Prizsban jrt azsz (Autumn Passed Through Paris) is a beautifulevocation, through the breath of autumn on a summerday, of the presence of death. Although death comes forall people, it need not be accepted passively, as Ady sug-gests in the melodic A hall lovai (Deaths Horse-men). The riderless horse with the unclaimed saddle isalways in the troop of deaths horses, but He beforewhom they stop/ Turns pale and sits into the saddle. Theact is presented as voluntary. In Hulla a bza-fldn(Corpse on the Wheat-Field), a corpse, forgotten onthe snowy plain, will not have carnations, artemisia,and basil blooming on its grave, but the victoriouswheat-kernel will win through; life will triumph.

Religious poemsTo some extent, Adys God-fearing poems continue

the life-death theme. They chronicle the same doubtsand seek answers to the same questions. In time, Adyfound the answers and the refuge, but as with JohnDonne, the struggle was a fierce one; indeed, Adyslove poems, much as in Donnes case, have a close anddirect relationship to his religious verse. Althoughmany of Adys religious poems describe his struggle to

4

Ady, Endre Critical Survey of Poetry

achieve union with God, others reflect the peace ofchildlike faith. Ady seeks rest and forgiveness and cre-ates powerful symbols to concretize these feelings.

In A Sion-hegy alatt (Under Mount Sion), hecreates an image of God as a man in a huge bell coat in-scribed with red letters, ringing for the dawn Mass. Thefigure is kindly yet sad; he cannot answer the poetsplea for simple, unquestioning faith. The poem is a poi-gnant expression of the dilemma of modern human-kind. In Hiszek hitetlenl Istenben (I Believe, Un-believing, in God), Ady longs for belief in the greatmystery of God, convinced that such faith will bringpeace to his tormented soul.

The poems from the cycle Esaias knyvnekmargjra (To the Margins of the Book of Isaiah),often prefaced by biblical quotations that emphasizetheir prophetic intentions, transcend the personal reli-gious quest and become pleas for the nation and forhumanity. Volt egy Jzus (There Was a Jesus)not only testifies to a personal acceptance of JesusChrist but also proclaims the need for all humankindto heed his teachings on peace and brotherhood. Asztszrds eltt (Before the Diaspora), anotherpoem with a biblical inspiration, scourges the nation forits sins, concluding with the powerful line: And wewere lost, for we lost ourselves.

Patriotic poemsMany of Adys poems can be classified as patriotic.

This group, however, unites several different themesthat were significant at different points in his career.Two important early threads are the I poems and themoney poems. The I poems are more than personallyrics; they present the speaker (the poet) as a represen-tative of the nation. As such, they evolve into the patri-otic poems in a fairly direct line. The money poemsstartled readers with their nonpoetic theme: Adywent beyond complaints against poverty to questionthe role of money in society at large.

The kuruc themeAn important thread in Adys patriotic-revolution-

ary poetry is the use of the kuruc theme. Kuruc was thename applied to the supporters of Ferenc Rkczi II,who had led a popular uprising against the Habsburgsin the eighteenth century. In Adys vocabulary, thekuruc is the true but disenfranchised Hungarian, a

fighter for national goals betrayed by his self-servingmasters to Austrian interests. In the war years, Adyidentified the kuruc with the common person every-where, oppressed by political power plays.

Man in InhumanityAdys last poem, Ember az embertelensgben

(Man in Inhumanity), was an appeal to humanity ad-dressed to the victors of the war. He appealed, fruit-lessly, to the Allies not to tread too harshly on Hun-garian hearts. The nation sought reform, but sufferedinstead War, the Horror. Defeated in a war foughtagainst Hungarian sentiments and interests, Hungarypaid for its all-too-recent union with Austria with theloss of much of its territory and millions of its citizens.Foreseeing this tragedy even before the war, Ady of-fered a poignant comment on its aftermath.

Although Ady was a very subjective poet, one of thefirst purely personal lyric voices in Hungarian poetry,he did not break with the national tradition of commit-ted literature. Deeply influenced by Western Europeanmodels, he transformed what he took by the force of hisgenius, exploiting the rich resources of the Hungariantradition in the service of a powerfully modern vision.Thus, it is not surprising that Ady continues to inspirepoets in Hungary today.

Other major worksshort fiction: Spadt emberek s trtnetek,

1907; gy is trtnhetik, 1910; A tzmillis Kleoptra segybb trtnetek, 1910; Muskts tanr r, 1913; jcsapson, 1913.

nonfiction: Vallomsok s tanlmnyok, 1911; Azj Hellsz, 1920; Levelek Prizsbl, 1924; Prizsinoteszknyve, 1924; Ha hv az aczlhegy rdg,1927; Ady Endre vlogatott levelei, 1956; The Explo-sive Country: A Selection of Articles and Studies, 1898-1916, 1977.

BibliographyBka, Lazlo. Endre Ady the Poet. New Hungarian

Quarterly 3, no. 5 (January-March, 1962): 83-108.A biographical and critical study of Adys life andwork.

Cushing, G. F. Introduction to The Explosive Country:A Selection of Articles and Studies, 1898-1916, by

5

Critical Survey of Poetry Ady, Endre

Endre Ady. Budapest: Corvina Press, 1977. Cush-ing offers some biographical insight into Adys life.

Frigyesi, Judit. Bla Bartk and Turn-of-the-CenturyBudapest. Berkeley: University of California Press,1998. A broad perspective on Bartks art groundedin the social and cultural life of turn-of-the-centuryHungary. Includes a discussion of Ady and his in-fluence on Bartk.

Hank, Pter. The Garden and the Workshop: Essayson the Cultural History of Vienna and Budapest.Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998.Ady is one of the central figures in his collection ofessays. Deals with Adys transition from journalismto poetry.

_______. The Start of Endre Adys Literary Career(1903-1905). Budapest: Akadmiai Kiad, 1980. Abrief study of Adys early work, with bibliography.

Land, Thomas. Endre Ady: Six Poems. Contempo-rary Review 279, no. 1627 (August, 2001): 100-105.Land briefly describes Adys life, particularly hispolitical activism, and translates six personal poems.

Nyerges, Anton N. Introduction to Poems of EndreAdy. Buffalo, N.Y.: Hungarian Cultural Founda-tion, 1969. Nyerges gives some biographic detailsof Adys life.

Remnyi, Joseph. Hungarian Writers and Literature.New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press,1964. A history and critical analysis of Hungarianliterature including the works of Ady.

Enik Molnr Basa

Rafael Alberti

Born: Puerto de Santa Mara, Spain; December 16,1902

Died: Puerto de Santa Mara, Spain; October 28,1999

Principal poetryMarinero en tierra, 1925La amante, 1926El alba del alhel, 1927

Cal y canto, 1929Sobre los ngeles, 1929 (Concerning the Angels,

1967)Consignas, 1933Verte y no verte, 1935 (To See You and Not to See

You, 1946)Poesa, 1924-1938, 1940Entre el clavel y la espada, 1941Pleamar, 1944A la pintura, 1945 (To Painting, 1997)Retornos de lo vivo lejano, 1952Baladas y canciones del Paran, 1954 (Ballads and

Songs of the Parana, 1988)Poesas completas, 1961Rafael Alberti: Selected Poems, 1966 (Ben Belitt,

translator)The Owls Insomnia, 1973Alberti tal cual, 1978

Other literary formsAlthough Rafael Alberti (ol-BEHR-tee) established

his reputation almost entirely on the basis of his poetry,he became involved in drama after emigrating to Ar-gentina, writing plays of his own and adapting Miguelde Cervantes El cerco de Numancia (wr. 1585, pb.1784; Numantia: A Tragedy, 1870) for the modernstage in 1944.

Albertis most notable achievement in prose, a workof considerable interest for the student of his poetry,was his autobiography, La arboleda perdida (1942;The Lost Grove, 1976). In addition, he was a talentedpainter and supplied illustrations for some of his latervolumes.

AchievementsRafael Alberti had at once the ill luck and the singu-

lar good fortune to flourish during Spains second greatliterary boom. Despite his acknowledged worth, he wasovershadowed by several of his contemporariesinparticular, by Federico Garca Lorca. Although Alber-tis name is likely to come up in any discussion of thefamous generacin del 27, or Generation of 27, hegenerally languishes near the end of the list. On theother hand, the extraordinary atmosphere of the timesdid much to foster his talents; even among the giants, he

6

Alberti, Rafael Critical Survey of Poetry

earned acceptance and respect. He may occasionallyhave been lost in the crowd, but it was a worthy crowd.

His Marinero en tierra (sailor on dry land) wonSpains National Prize for Literature in 1925, andthroughout his long career, his virtuosity never fal-tered. Always a difficult poet, he never gave the im-pression that his obscurity stemmed from incompe-tence. His political ideologyAlberti was the first ofhis circle to embrace communism openlyled him tocovet the role of poet of the streets, but Alberti will beremembered more for his poems of exile, which cap-ture better than any others the poignant aftermath of theSpanish Civil War.

Ultimately, Alberti stands out as a survivor. Manyof his great contemporaries died in the civil war or sim-ply lapsed into a prolonged silence. Despite his whole-hearted involvement in the conflict, Alberti managed topersevere after his side lost and to renew his career. Hecontinued to publish at an imposing rate, took up newactivities, and became a force in the burgeoning literarylife of Latin America, as evidenced by his winningof the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking worldshighest literary honor, in 1983. Consistent in his adher-ence to communism, he received the Lenin Prize for hispolitical verse in 1965. Oddly enough, then, Albertiemerges as a constantan enduring figure in a worldof flux, a practicing poet of consistent excellence dur-ing six decades.

BiographyRafael Alberti was born near Cdiz in Andalusia,

and his nostalgia for that region pervades much of hiswork. His genteel family had fallen on hard times, andAlbertis schoolmates made him painfully aware of hisinferior status. In 1917, the family moved to Madrid,where Alberti devoted himself to painting in the cubistmanner, attaining some recognition. Illness forced himto retire to a sanatorium in the mountainsa stroke ofluck, as it happened, for there he subsequently met suchluminaries as Garca Lorca, Salvador Dal, and LuisBuuel and began seriously to write poetry. He won theNational Prize for Marinero en tierra and therebygained acceptance into the elite artistic circles of theday. Personal difficulties and an increasing awarenessof the plight of his country moved Alberti to embrace

communism. In 1930, he married Mara Teresa Len,also a writer, and together they founded the revolution-ary journal Octubre in 1934.

Albertis new political credo enabled him to travelextensively and to encounter writers and artists from allparts of Europe and the Americas. After participatingactively in the civil war, he emigrated to Argentina in1940. There, he began to write for the theater, gave nu-merous readings, and resumed painting. Hard work andfatherhoodhis daughter Aitana was born in 1941preserved Alberti from embittered paralysis, and hisproduction of poetry never slackened. Indeed, many ofhis readers believe that he reached his peak in the late1940s.

In 1964, Alberti moved to Rome, where he lived un-til 1977, when he was finally able to return to Spain, af-ter almost thirty-eight years in exile. He was welcomedby more than three hundred communists carrying red

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Critical Survey of Poetry Alberti, Rafael

Rafael Alberti (Cover/Getty Images)

flags as he stepped off the airliner. Im not comingwith a clenched fist, he said, but with an open hand.He enjoyed a resurgence of popularity after his returnand proceeded to run for the Cortes, giving poetry read-ings instead of speeches, and won. Alberti resigned hisseat after three months to devote himself to his art. Hebecame a well-respected literary figure in his last twodecades in Spain; the lost Andalusian had returnedhome. He died there on October 28, 1999, from a lungailment; he was ninety-six years old.

AnalysisThroughout his long career, Rafael Alberti proved

to be a remarkably versatile poet. His facility of compo-sition enabled him to shift smoothly from fixed formsto free verse, even within the confines of a single poem.Whether composing neomedieval lyrics, Baroque son-nets, or Surreal free verse, he always managed to be au-thentic. His deep emotions, sometimes obscured by hissheer virtuosity, found expression in all modes. Histechnical skill did not allow him to stagnate: Commen-tators on Alberti agree in their praise of his astonishingtechnical mastery. He might continue in the same veinfor three volumes, but he would invariably break newground in the fourth. His massive corpus of poetrycomprises a remarkable array of styles, themes, andmoods.

Although he was a natural poet with little formaltraining, Alberti always kept abreast of current devel-opments in his artindeed, he kept himself in the van-guard. He associated with the best and brightest of histime and participated in their movements. When theluminaries of Spain reevaluated Luis de Gngora yArgote, Alberti wrote accomplished neo-Baroque po-etry; when Dal and Buuel were introducing Surreal-ism in Spanish art and film, Alberti adapted its princi-ples to Spanish poetry; when most of the intellectualsof Spain were resisting General Franciso Franco andembracing communism, Alberti was the poet of thestreets. He remained withal a genuine and unique lyricvoice. Even his political verses are not without poeticmeritan exception, to be sure. Alberti changed byadding and growing, never by discarding and replac-ing; thus, he became a richer talent with each new phaseof his creative development.

Albertis poetry is suffused with nostalgia. The cir-cumstances of his life decreed that he should continu-ally find himself longing for another time, a distantplace, or a lost friend, and in his finest poems, heachieves an elegiac purity free of the obscurity and self-pity that mar his lesser works. From first to last, the sad-ness for things lost remains Albertis great theme, onehe explored more fully than any other poet of his gener-ation.

Alberti was a poet who could grow without discard-ing his past. The youthful poet who composed marvel-ous lyrics persisted in the nostalgia of exile; the angrypoet of the streets reasserted himself in diatribes againstYankee imperialism in Latin America. At ease in allforms and idioms, forever the Andalusian in exile, al-ways growing in his art and his thought, Alberti wrote astaggering number of excellent poems. In the vast trea-sure trove of twentieth century Spanish poetry, he left ahoard of pearls and sapphireshidden at times by therubies and the emeralds, but worthy nevertheless.

Marinero en tierraThe doyens of Spanish letters received Marinero en

tierra with immediate enthusiasm, and the young Al-berti found himself a de facto member of the Genera-tion of 27, eligible to rub elbows with all the signifi-cant writers of the day. Although Alberti seems to havebeen happy in the mid-1920s, his early volumes glowwith poignant nostalgia for the sea and the coasts of hisnative Andalusia. He expresses his longing in exquisitelyrics in the medieval tradition. Ben Belitt, introducinghis translations collected in Selected Poems, confessesthat he could find no way to render these lyrics in En-glish. They depend entirely on a native tradition, thevast trove of popular verses from Spains turbulentMiddle Ages. Albertis genius is such that the poemshave no savor of pedantry or preciosity. Luis Mongui,in his introduction to Belitts translations, suggeststhat it is far from unlikely that they are being sung inthe provinces today by many in complete ignoranceof their debt to Rafael Alberti. The notion is a tributeboth to the poet and to the tradition he understoodso well.

The verses themselves may seem enigmatic, butonly because the modern reader is accustomed to probeso far beneath the surface. One of the best of them,

8


Gimiendo (Groaning), presents the plaint of asailor who remembers that his shirt used to puff up inthe wind whenever he saw the shore. The entire poemconsists of only six brief lines; there is only one image,and only one point. That single image conveys a feelingclose to the hearts of those born within smell of theseaa need unfulfilled for Alberti. He speaks for allseafarers who are marooned inland, the sailors on land.

Pradoluengo, an aubade in the same style, is onlyseven lines long and conveys an equally simple mes-sage. The beloved to whom the poem is addressed istold that the cocks are crowing, that we need crossonly river waters, not the sea, and is urged to get upand come along. With all the richness of the genre, Al-berti hints at a wealth of erotic possibilities and naturalsplendors. Only William Butler Yeats, in modern En-glish poetry, matches this exquisite simplicity and feel-ing for tradition.

Cal y cantoAs noted above, Alberti took a leading role in the

Gngora tricentennial of 1927, and many of the poemsin Cal y canto owe much to the Baroque model. Here,Alberti reveals a new facet of his technical mastery,particularly in his handling of the sonnet, perhaps themost difficult of forms. Amaranta, a sonnet that fre-quently appears in anthologies, shows how completelyAlberti was able to assimilate the poetics of Gngoraand to adapt them to the twentieth century. The octavedescribes, in ornate and lavish terms, the beauty ofAmaranta; as with Gngora, the very exuberance of thedescription disquiets the reader. Her breasts, for exam-ple, are polished as with the tongue of a greyhound.The sestet conceals the scorpion sting so often found inGngoras conclusions: Solitude, personified, settleslike a glowing coal between Amaranta and her lover. Inthis poem, Alberti displays his affinity with Gngora intwo respects: an absolute control of his idiom and anobscurity that has deprived both poets of numerousreaders. As Alberti himself remarked in his autobiogra-phy, this was painterly poetryplastic, linear, pro-filed, confined.

Concerning the AngelsConcerning the Angels differs sharply from Alber-

tis previous work. Bouts of depression and a loss offaith in his former ideals drove him to abandon nostal-

gia and to confront despair. Suddenly, all the joy andtender sorrow of his early work is gone, replaced by an-guish and self-pity. The revolution in content corre-sponds to a rebellion in form: Free verse prevails asmore appropriate to the poets state of mind than anytraditional order. Alberti does not despair utterly, asMongui indicates, but the overall tone of the collec-tion is negative.

Tres recuerdos del cielo ("Three Memories ofHeaven"), a tribute to the great Romantic poet GustavoAdolfo Bcquer, constitutes a noteworthy exception tothe depressing tone of the volume. Here, Alberti dis-plays the subtlety and tenderness that characterize hiswork at its most appealing. Evoking a condition of be-ing before time existed, Alberti recaptures the tenuousdelicacy of Bcquer, the sense of the ineffable. Themeeting between the lovers, for example, takes place ina world of clouds and moonlight: When you, seeingme in nothingness/ Invented the first word. Alberti im-itates Bcquer masterfully, at the same time finding anew way to express his own nostalgia.

Three Memories of Heaven, however, is atypicalof the collection. Virtually all the other poems treat ofangels and ultimately of a world turned to worm-wood and gall. El ngel desengaado (The AngelUndeceived) debunks the ideals of the younger Al-berti, particularly in its desolate conclusion: Im goingto sleep./ No one is waiting for me. El ngel decarbn (Angel of Coals) ends no less grimly: Andthat octopus, love, in the shadow:/ evil, so evil. Sev-eral of the poems offer a kind of hope, but it is a wanhope, scarcely better than despair. Like the T. S. Eliotof The Hollow Men, however, Alberti maintains hispoetic control, even with the world withering awayaround him.

To See You and Not to See YouTwo pivotal events in Albertis life helped him out

of this quagmire: meeting his future wife and becominga communist. The political commitment, while it didlittle to benefit his poetry, provided him with a set of be-liefs to fill the void within. Of his proletarian verse, onecan say only that it is no worse than most political po-etry. Like his friend and contemporary Pablo Neruda,Alberti mistook a sincere political commitment for anartistic imperative; like Neruda, he eventually returned

9


to more personal themes, although he never whollyabandoned doctrinaire verse.

Even at the height of his political activism, how-ever, Alberti was capable of devoting his gifts to the el-egy; the death of Ignacio Snchez Mejas in the bullringmoved him to write the sonnet series that makes up ToSee You and Not to See You in 1935. The same tragedyalso inspired Federico Garca Lorca to compose one ofthe most famous poems in the Spanish language,Llanto por Ignacio Snchez Mejas (Lament forIgnacio Snchez Mejas). A comparison of the two po-ems reveals the radical differences between these twosuperficially similar poets. Garca Lorca chants com-pellingly, At five in the afternoon, evoking the dramaof the moment and the awful immediacy of the bull. Al-berti reflects on the bulls calfhood, its callow chargesas it grew into the engine of destruction that destroyedSnchez Mejas. Garca Lorca goes on to convey, inmuted tones, his sense of loss. Alberti expresses thatsense of loss in terms of distance: As his friend dies inthe bullring, Alberti is sailing toward Romania on theBlack Sea. The memory of the journey becomes perma-nently associated with the loss of the friend and thus aredoubled source of nostalgia.

In Garca Lorcas ShadowAs usual, Garca Lorca enjoys the fame, and Alberti

is lost in his shadow. No doubt Garca Lorcas elegyspeaks more clearly and more movingly; it probably isbetter than its counterpart. Alberti himself admired theLament for Ignacio Snchez Mejas without reserva-tion. The pattern, however, is only too familiar: Alberti,so like Garca Lorca in some ways, found himself out-matched at every turn while his friend and rival was stillalive. Alberti wrote exquisite medieval lyrics, but GarcaLorca outdid him with the Romancero gitano (1928;The Gypsy Ballads, 1953). Alberti captured the essenceof Andalusia, but the public identified Andalusia withGarca Lorca. Alberti wrote a noble and moving elegyfor Ignacio Snchez Mejas, but his rival composedsuch a marvelous lament that Albertis has been ne-glected.

All this is not to imply conscious enmity betweenthe two poets. Alberti had cause to envy his contempo-rarys fame, and his bitterness at playing a secondaryrole may have been reflected in Concerning the Angels.

Indeed, although Alberti gave many indications, inverse and prose, of his profound regard for GarcaLorca, his relationship with the poet of Granada repre-sents an analogue to the dilemma of his literary life. Thecompetition must have stimulated him, but, because hispoetry was less accessible and less dramatic in its im-pact, he tended to be eclipsed. After the Spanish CivilWar, Alberti emigrated to Argentina, mourning hisslain and dispersed comrades, including Garca Lorca,who was senselessly gunned down at the outset of thehostilities. The war poems in the Alberti canon com-pare favorably with any on that subject, not least be-cause his lively imagination enabled him to look be-yond the slaughter.

Entre el clavel y la espadaFor all his faith, the poet soon found himself across

the Atlantic, listening to reports of World War II, pick-ing up the pieces. Somehow he managed to recover andto emerge greater than ever. A poem from his first col-lection published outside Spain, Entre el clavel y laespada (between sword and carnation), sounds the key-note of his renewed art:

After this willful derangement, this harassedand necessitous grammar by whose haste I must live,let the virginal word come back to me whole and

meticulous,and the virginal verb, justly placed with its rigorous

adjective.

The poem, written in Spain, anticipates the purity of Al-bertis poetry in exile. The poet forgot neither the hor-rors he had seen nor his love for his homeland.

Another elegy deserves mention in this context.Written after news of the death of the great poet Anto-nio Machado, De los lamos y los sauces (from pop-lar and willow) captures the plight of Alberti and hisfellow exiles in but a few lines. The man in the poem iscaught up in the life of his distant dead and hears themin the air. Thus, Alberti returns grimly to his leitmotif,nostalgia.

Retornos de lo vivo lejanoWith his return to his nostalgic leitmotif, Alberti

reached his full potential as a poet during the 1940sand 1950s. He poured forth volume after volume ofconsistently high quality. Retornos de lo vivo lejano

10


(returns of the far and the living), a book wholly de-voted to his most serviceable theme, may well be thefinest volume of his career. The poems are at once ac-cessible and mysterious, full of meaning on the surfaceand suggestive of unfathomed depths.

Retornos del amor en una noche de verano (Re-turns: A Summer Nights Love) recalls in wondrousimagery the breathlessness of a time long past. For ex-ample, two pairs of lips, as they press together, becomea silent carnation. Retornos de Chopin a travs de unasmanos ya idas (Returns: Chopin by Way of HandsNow Gone) evokes some of the poets earliest memo-ries of his family. After many years, the poet is reunitedwith his brothers by an act of imagination, supported bythe memory of Frdric Chopins music as played bythe poets mother. This is the quintessential Alberti, themaster craftsman and the longing man in one.

To PaintingAmid the melancholy splendor of his poems of ex-

ile, Alberti distilled a curious volume entitled To Paint-ing. In contrast to all that Alberti lost in exile, paintingstands as a rediscovered treasure, and the Alberti of theearly 1920s comes face to face with the middle-agedmigr. The collection includes sonnets on the tools ofpainting, both human and inanimate; free-verse medi-tations on the primary colors; and poems on variouspainters, each in a style reminiscent of the artists own.Beyond its intrinsic value, the volume reveals muchabout the mutual attraction of the two arts.

Ballad of the Lost AndalusianA poem from Ballads and Songs of the Parana, de-

serves special mention. Balada del Andaluz perdido(Ballad of the Lost Andalusian), as much as any sin-gle poem, reflects Albertis self-image as a poet in ex-ile. Written in terse, unrhymed couplets, it tells of awandering Andalusian who watches the olives growby the banks of a different river. Sitting alone, he pro-vokes curious questions from the Argentine onlookerson the opposite bank of the river, but he remains a mys-tery to them. Not so to the reader, who understandsthe pathos of the riderless horses, the memory of ha-tred, the loneliness. The final question admits of no an-swer and in fact needs none: What will he do there,what is left to be done/ on the opposite side of the river,alone?

Other major worksplays: El hombre deshabitado, pb. 1930; El trbol

floride, pb. 1940; El adefesio, pb. 1944; El cerco deNumancia, pr. 1944 (adaptation of Miguel de Cervantesplay).

nonfiction: La arboleda perdida, 1942 (The LostGrove, 1976).

BibliographyGagen, Derek. Marinero en tierra: Albertis first Libro

organico de poemas? Modern Language Review88, no. 1 (January, 1993): 91. Albertis Marinero entierra is examined in detail.

Havard, Robert. The Crucified Mind: Rafael Albertiand the Surrealist Ethos in Spain. London: TamesisBooks, 2001. A biographical and historical study ofthe life and works of Alberti.

Herrmann, Gina. Written in Red: The CommunistMemoir in Spain. Urbana: University of IllinoisPress, 2009. This work examining memoirs ofCommunists in Spain contains a chapter on MariaTeresa Len and Alberti.

Jimnez-Fajardo, Salvador. Multiple Spaces: The Po-etry of Rafael Alberti. London: Tamesis Books,1985. A critical analysis of Albertis poetic works.Includes bibliographic references.

Manteiga, Robert C. Poetry of Rafael Alberti: A VisualApproach. London: Tamesis Books, 1978. A study ofAlbertis literary style. Text is in English with poemsin original Spanish. Includes bibliographic references.

Nantell, Judith. Rafael Albertis Poetry of the Thirties.Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986. Thisstudy puts Albertis work in historical and socialcontext by analyzing the influences from a turbulentdecade in which civil war erupts, ignites a Euro-pean conflagration, and ends in societal crises. Theauthor discusses political poems that are not asmemorable as his earlier works but deserve recogni-tion for their artistic as well as social value.

Soufas, C. Christopher. The Subject in Question: EarlyContemporary Spanish Literature and Modernism.Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of AmericaPress, 2007. This overview of Spanish literature andmodernism contains a chapter examining the poetryof Alberti and Luis Cernuda.

11


Ugarte, Michael. Shifting Ground: Spanish Civil WarExile Literature. Durham, N.C.: Duke UniversityPress, 1989. Examination of the importance ofSpanish exile literature during and after the civilwar. The second section of the book explores the in-tellectual diaspora of the civil war, and an analysisof Albertis The Lost Grove is featured prominently.

Philip KrummrichUpdated by Carole A. Champagne and Sarah Hilbert

Vicente Aleixandre

Born: Seville, Spain; April 26, 1898Died: Madrid, Spain; December 14, 1984

Principal poetrymbito, 1928Espadas como labios, 1932 (Swords as if Lips,

1989)La destruccin o el amor, 1935 (Destruction or

Love: A Selection, 1976)Pasin de la tierra, 1935, 1946Sombra del paraso, 1944 (Shadow of Paradise,

1987)Mundo a solas, 1950 (World Alone, 1982)Nacimiento ltimo, 1953Historia del corazn, 1954Mis poemas mejores, 1956Poesas completas, 1960Picasso, 1961En un vasto dominio, 1962Presencias, 1965Retratos con nombre, 1965Poemas de la consumacin, 1968Poems, 1969Poesa superrealista, 1971Sonido de la guerra, 1972Dilogos del conocimiento, 1974The Caves of Night: Poems, 1976Twenty Poems, 1977A Longing for Light: Selected Poems of Vicente

Aleixandre, 1979

A Bird of Paper: Poems of Vicente Aleixandre,1981

Primeros poemas, 1985Nuevos poemas varios, 1987El mar negro, 1991En gran noche: ltimos poemas, 1991Noche cerrada, 1998

Other literary formsVicente Aleixandre (o-lehk-SON-dreh) published a

great number of prologues, critical letters, memoirs,and evocations of friends and literary figures, many ofthem later included or rewritten for his major prosework, Los encuentros (1958; the encounters). Aleix-andre also made several speeches on poetry and poets,later published in pamphlet or book form.

AchievementsAfter receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in

1977, Vicente Aleixandre stated that the prize was aresponse symbolic of the relation of a poet with allother men. In Aleixandres own estimation, winningthe Nobel was his only worthy achievement. All otherinfluences on the development of poetry were insignifi-cant compared with the poets call to speak for his fel-low humans.

The extent of Aleixandres influence is consider-able, however, even if he denied its importance. He wasa member of the Royal Spanish Academy (1949), theHispanic Society of America, the Academy of the LatinWorld, Paris, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of SanTelmo, Mlaga, the Spanish American Academy ofBogot, and the Academy of Arts and Sciences ofPuerto Rico, and, as of 1972, an honorary fellow of theAmerican Association of Spanish and Portuguese.

All these honors recognize Aleixandres lifelongdevotion to the production of a unified body of poetry.A member of the celebrated Generation of 27, whichincluded Jorge Guilln, Pedro Salinas, Federico GarcaLorca, Rafael Alberti, and Gerardo Diego, Aleixandrewas one of the central figures of Spanish Surrealism.Although influenced by Andr Breton and his circle,the Spanish Surrealists developed to a great extentindependently of their French counterparts. WhileFrench Surrealism is significant for its worldwide im-

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Aleixandre, Vicente Critical Survey of Poetry

pact on the arts, it produced a surprisingly smallamount of lasting poetry. In contrast, Spanish Surreal-ismboth in Spain and, with notable local variations,in Latin Americaconstitutes one of the richest poetictraditions of the twentieth century, a tradition in whichAleixandre played a vital role.

BiographyVicente Aleixandre Merlo was born on April 26,

1898, in Seville, Spain, the son of Cirilo AleixandreBallester, a railway engineer, and Elvira Merlo Garcade Pruneda, daughter of an upper-middle-class Anda-lusian family. Married in Madrid, Aleixandres par-ents moved to Seville, the base for his fathers travelswith the Andalusian railway network. Four years afterAleixandres birth, the family moved to Mlaga, re-maining there for seven years, spending their summersin a cottage on the beach at Pedregalejo a few milesfrom the city.

Aleixandre seems to have been very happy as a boyin Mlaga, where he attended school, frequented themovie theater across the street from his house (he par-ticularly liked the films of Max Linder), and read theBrothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. Happymemories of Mlaga and the nearby sea appear fre-quently in Aleixandres poetry: He calls them ciudaddel paraso (city of paradise) and mar del paraso(sea of paradise), respectively.

In 1911, the family moved to Madrid, where Aleix-andre continued his studies at Teresiano School, but hefound the strict requirements for the bachelors degreetedious and preferred reading the books in his grand-fathers library: classical and Romantic works and de-tective novels, especially those by Sir Arthur ConanDoyle. Aleixandre frequently visited the National Li-brary, where he read novels and drama from SpainsGolden Age to the Generation of 98. During the sum-mer of 1917, his friend Dmaso Alonso loaned him avolume by Rubn Daro, a book that, Aleixandre said,revealed to him the passion of his lifepoetry. Thenext year, he discovered the works of Antonio Ma-chado and Juan Ramn Jimnez, as well as the Roman-tic world of Gustavo Adolfo Bcquer, and his interestin poetry was firmly established.

At the age of fifteen, Aleixandre began to study law

and business administration, finishing the two pro-grams in 1920. He became an assistant professor at theSchool of Commerce of Madrid and worked at nightediting a journal of economics in which he publishedseveral articles on railroads. In 1921, he left his teach-ing post to work f

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