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Marble Heroes and MortalPoets: José Martí's Dream ofStatuaryLisa M. Rabin aa George Mason UniversityPublished online: 02 Apr 2010.

To cite this article: Lisa M. Rabin (2000) Marble Heroes and Mortal Poets:José Martí's Dream of Statuary, Romance Quarterly, 47:4, 227-238, DOI:10.1080/08831150009600336

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Marble Heroes and Mortal Poets:

JosC Marti’s Dream of Statuary

Lisa M. Rabin

oem 45 of JosP Marti’s Versos senrillos (1 891), which begins “Suefio con heroes en claustros de mdrmol,” concerns a dream Marti has about waking up marble statues of heroes. “Suefio con hCroes” has long been noted as a special poem in a collection considered by

many to be the capstone of Marti’s career.’ Citing the uniqueness of its super- natural theme and its blank verse among the other 45 rhymed c u p b in the col- lection, some literary critics have suggested that the poem has grearer affinity with Marti’s earlier collection, the I/ersos libres (1882, published 1913).* Con- versely, other critics have proposed chat the visionary setting and the political subject of “Suefio con heroes” single out its connection with a collection of poems conceived in the fullness of Marti’s revolutionary ~ p i r i t . ~ In chis article I will argue that the poem may in fact be seen as the axis of the Wrsos senciflos, and for a reason that has not yet been noted: The poem’s central feature, or the art form of a public monument, serves as a crucial figure for Marri’s sense of the nec- essary relationship of aesthetics and politics in the career of a poet. By calling on word-and-image theory on poetry about statuary, and historical and literary stud- ies that deal with the role of public monuments in nineteenth-century Spanish America, 1 will show that the artistic nature of the marble statues in “Suefio con heroes” is not only central to the poem’s outcome, it also illuminates the complex interaction of poetry and politics that subtends the Versos sencillos.

Marti’s poetic address of marble statuary is part of a broad focus on visual art that appears throughout his work. Marti wrote prolific art criticism in Mexican and U.S. periodicals, made synesthetic experiments with light and color through- our his poetry, and included ecphrastic verse, or poems on specific and imagined works of arc, in his various collection^.^ Marti’s attention to visual art parallels that of orher mudernista writers such as Ruben Dario and Juliin del Casal, who

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were prolific art critics and champions of the growth of academies and of specif- ic artists, and Jose Asunci6n Silva, whose novel De sobremesa is set in an envi- ronment filled with turn-of-the-century art objects. These modernista writers and others also wrote ecphrastic poetry and experimented with synesthetic techniques of color and perspective in their poetry and prose.

The modernistas’ focus on visual art originates in a developing interrelation between the arts that engaged writers throughout the nineteenth century.’ In general, the modernistas held a great interest in rhe art object as a new comniod- ity in modern society. Cathy Jrade writes that modcrnista texts often construct interior spaces filled with bric-a-brac and exotica that reflect the new affluence of the late-nineteenth-century middle and upper classes attempting to model them- selves after Europeans.6 For modernistu writers who saw themselves as the agents of a new culture in Spanish America during the rapid political and industrial changes of the late nineteenth century, visual art was a useful vehicle of presen- tation. Richard Stein proposes that the British Victorian writers John Ruskin, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Walter Pater found the work of visual art to be an “objective principle” through which their own personal visions could be dis- played to the reader: “The external artifact mediates between the writer inter- preting it and his audience,” Stein writes, “creating a middle ground on which the most elusive personal vision can become accessible and convincing” (10, 1 1). The good number of art critics among the modernistas and their persistent engagement with visual art in their creative texts suggests that art played a simi- lar role for late-nineteenth-century Spanish American writers who were seeking to objectify and promote their personal visions on culture.

Stein points out that Pater, Rossetti, and Ruskin, who were writing during an epoch in which traditional religion was diminishing as a source of community, went so far as to use the “objective” medium of visual art as a means of inspiring what the critic calls a new, utopian “community of belief” (32).’ The utopian spirit of the Victorians’ literature on art has a compelling parallel in the writing of Jose M a d , for whom, as Kathryn Stevens points out, the work of arr- whether poetry, visual art, or music-is a concrete representation of the spiritu- al life of the reader, spectator, or listener.’ In Marti’s elegy to the sculptor Franqoise Dumaine in the Mexican newspaper Revista Universal, the elevation of art to a communal, even quasi-religious purpose could not be clearer:

Esta f u i sin duda la vida silenciosa del artista que hubiera muerto, si en un grupo inolvidable no dejara para largos tiempos escrito tin nombre amado con justicia por sus comparieros en el taller; por 10s que con 61 dividieron fraternidades amargura y suefios; por 10s que saben que 10s pueblos latinos se salvan por el arte, como 10s sajones se salvan por el lihro, y en la religicin de la belleza fian, como auxiliadora de coda virtud, mejoradora de espiritus dibiles, y creadora fecunda de grandezas. ( I 876)‘

Later in the elegy, Marti calls the modern spirit of Dumaine’s art an “estatuaria espiritual” (653) and roots its inspiration in progressive politics: “bien merece el

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infortunado Dumaine [. . .] 10s aplausos p6sthumos que tributan a su talent0 entrgico 10s entusiastas amantes de la libertad nacional, animadora de codas las creencias del modern0 espiritu y todas las forrnas de la nueva vida” (654) . As we will see, like the passage on Dumaine and many other critical pieces o n art Marti wrote, Marti’s poem “Suefio con htroes” uses a work of visual art-in this case, a public monument-to focus his thoughts on the politics of his time and an ideal community of culture.

The fact that Marti’s message in “Sueho con hkroes” is realized in a description of a work of art in a poem and not a piece of art criticism bears special consider- ation. The poetics of ecphrasis provides for a certain self-reflexivity on the part of the poet chat implicates Marti’s own role in the shaping of community and cul- ture. W. J. 7.. Mitchell proposes that in ecphrastic verse, the visual work of art represents for the poet an “otherness” that allows him or her to portray difference in myriad ways.“’ As I noted above, the art object was significant for modernista writers. A neoclassical Greek sculpture, a symbolist painting, or a public monu- ment could represent a powerfully significant Other for modernista poets as a symbol of civilization, sophisticar ion, or politics. When modernista poets depict an encounter wirh a work of art in a poem, they are describing an image that embodies a certain cultural prestige in society-and that may resonate with the vision they have of their own poetry as a standard of culture in late-nineteenth- century Spanish America. Marcella Trambaioli points out that in the poem “El poeta a las musas,” Dario conflates the “crumbling” of Greek statues with the demise of high culture, or its rendition before technology, and yearns for its restoration.” Oscar Montero writes that Casal’s ecphrasis of Gustave Moreau’s paintings in the series “Mi museo ideal” figures the Cuban poet’s critical stance toward foreign influences.”

When the work of art thac a modernista poet describes is a public monument, the inherent political nature of rhe statuary offers a particularly interesting foil for the modernista poet. Michael North in his book The Final Sculpture propos- es that the art of the public monument can be a figure for the modern poet‘s con- cerns about society and his or her role in its development. The art of monuments, after all, is closely associated wirh a civic message. As Natalia Majluf writes in Esculrura y espacio publico. Limn 1850-1879, “En la escultura pliblica se percibe de manera n i h obvia que en otros tipos de obras las cualidades tangibles de la ideologia, la materialidad del discurso.” The following passage from Marti’s 1883 article on the statue of Bolivar by Rafael de la Cova in La AmPrica demonstrates the poet’s fusion of civic virtue and public monument: “La estatua entera, noble- mente compuesta, descansa con la modesta arrogancia de un triunfador con- movido sobre su pedestal desnudo de ornamentos; quien lo es de un continente, no 10s necesita.”13 Marti’s emphasis on the statue’s pedestal and lack of decora- tion connects the artistic nacure of the monument with the monumentalig of Bolivar’s persona.

Significantly, Marti’s unequivocal parallel between statue and symbol in the prose text is disrupted in “Suerio con heroes.” In the poem, Marti releases the

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statues from their pedestals, and they subsequently become very unstatesmanlike, turning on him violently in anger. Seven years later spurred on by his political context and permitted the more imaginative space of the poem, Marti expresses greater ambiguity about monuments than in the descriptive text of his art criti- cism. As it turns out, the poem reflects a more general attitude about monuments among Spanish Americans in the nineteenth century. Historical and literary doc- uments from the late nineteenth century suggest that for the public, instead of being a clear-cut icon of nationhood, the monument was indeed a more ambigu- ous one than what Marti describes in the article on Cova’s statue.

Natalia Majluf tells a pertinent story of public monuments in midcentury Lima in her book Escultura y espacio pdblico. A statue to Bolivar by the Italian neoclassical sculptor Adarno Tadolini was inaugurated in 1859 under electric light (30). The commission of a European artist and the statue’s display in the ambience of technology point to the state’s conception of the monument as a bourgeois symbol of order and progress. The Conception of the statue, moreover, as not merely a commemorative figure but as an art form marks a new notion of a statue as public ornamentation and symbolizes, as Majluf points out, the pre- sumption of a public space that “perteneciera a todos por medio del Estado” (16). Indeed, the Bolivar statue and many other monuments that were commissioned at the same time by the government to be built throughout Peru were intended ro displace both the old colonial plazas and people’s homes, demarcating a new, solely “public” space that would reflect “civic” values (37-38). Majluf points out that these values firmly belonged to the elite class:

A diferencia de las rejas, del empedrado, y de las bancas, las esculruras no cumplian ninguna funci6n direcramenre urilitaria dentro de 10s nuevos proyectos urbanos. Eran sin embargo piezas fundamentales, pues legitimaban con su presencia aquellos valores culrurales idealizados por 10s nuevos grupos dirigentes. La esculrura fue una de Ias primeras manifestaciones del gusto de una elite local que buscaba emplazarse dentro de una nueva culrura internacional. (29)

In Peru, the ambirions of the elite behind the erection of public statuary met with some tension. Pointing to complaints in Lima newspapers about trash being thrown on statues (38) and the destruction of monuments on the Plaza de Chor- rillos after a failed war with Chile (39), Majluf remarks that the so-called public monument was increasingly interpreted as elitist in the later part of the century. She writes, ”Aunque se parti6 del ideal de crear una hegemonla de consenso, se terminb intentando imponer un orden cultural. Los espacios creados, mis que dorninantes, acabaron siendo solo espacios exclusivos y excluyentes” (39).

This historical reading on public monuments is paralleled in a reading of a dyad of famous prose texts from the turn of the century, where statuary is used as a vehicle in which to contest national ideologies. T h e first is Enrique Rodb’s famous Arief (1900), which concerns the fictional lectures of a teacher to a group of young males who are meant to be the future of Spanish America. T h e teacher is called “Prbspero” because he lectures next to a statue called “Ariel” after the

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airy, intellectual sprite of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Pr6spero uses the statue of Ariel as the symbol of the embodiment of modernista “spiritual” values, values of knowledge and progress that these youths should impart to the people of Amer- ica. Roberto G o n d e z Echevarria points out that Rod6’s description of the stat- ue of Ariel focuses on its didactic weight, and thus implicates the elitist message of Rod6’s text.I4

A year later, the novel Idofos rotos, by the Venezuelan author Manuel Diaz Rodriguez, offered a response to Kod6’s imperious missive. Idolos rotos is the story of a sculptor, Albert0 Soria, whose “Arielist” philosophy and that of his reform- minded compatriots is challenged by a lower-class revolution in Caracas that overthrows the current dictator and unleashes destruction that doesn’t spare Soria’s studio. In a scene similar to that of the attack of the Lima public on mon- uments, the soldiers of the revolution mutilate two of Soria’s statues. Anibal Gonzlilez points our that the clash between rhe elitist “Arielist” mentality of the artists and the demands of the populace in early-twentieth-century Spanish America is played out in this violence.15

This excursus into nineteenth-century historical documents and literary fic- tions on public monuments shows how the nationalist ideologies that a statue is supposed to represent become more and more complicated by the end of the cen- tury. Marti’s poem capitalizes on the ambiguity of a nineteenth-century statue’s meaning. Notably, poem 45 of the Krsos senriffos is on statues of heroes from the Independence period. J. A. Herndndez-Chiroldes convincingly argues that the generic group of statues that appear in Marti’s dream concern heroes from earli- er Independence batrles in Cuba and elsewhere in Spanish America (272-73). The poem laments the loss of a heroic past and that the dreams of the heroes have failed in the present, or more precisely, in the stalemate on Cuba.

Marti’s poetic address of public statuary of heroes from Independence involves an interaction with “silent” marble. In the most general sense, the poem focuses on how monuments are a kind of freezing of ideals in time. Marti succeeds in “waking up” his group of statues, but only to be turned on by them in anger, as if their peace were disturbed. In other words, recalling Majluf’s anecdote about the trash thrown on the Lima statues, a statue’s ideal meaning seems destined to be locked in battle with itspublic reception. North‘s book centers on what he calls an “ambiguity” inherent in statuary (37), explaining that the public monument is trying to be both ideal and real, both ethereal and communal.16 North points out that this very ambiguity in public statuary is the perfect foil for modern poets, who may turn a poem on statuary into an occasion for reflecting on the relationship between artistic ideals and political goals in their own work (37).

For Jose Marti, a man passionately committed to poetry and politics, the encounter with a public monument in “Suefio con heroes” is a vehicle for por- traying his drive to reconcile lyric impulses and civic roles. Writing of the Error fibres, Roberto Gonzilez Echevarria calls Marti’s poetics a language of “acci6n concreta, que no estd mis all& del poema, sino que es parte de su propia consti- t ~ c i 6 n . ” ’ ~ Enrico Mario Santi proposes that Marti’s first collection, Ismaeliflo

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(1882). is grounded in the “radical equivalencia entre vida y literatura.”’’ I have already noted how various critics have called attention to the political context surrounding the publication of the Versos sencillos. The poet‘s encounter with a public monument in “Suetio con hCroes” concretely acts out the synchronicity between poetry and action that subtends the poet‘s last collection published before his death on the battlefield at Dos Nos.

The Versos sencillos were written by Marti in the Catskills in 1890, during a hiatus he had taken from politics. Margot Arce de Vdsquez points out that after the 1889-90 Conferencia Internacional Americana in Washington, D.C., Marti had been disappointed by United States machinations toward establishing a Pan- American Union with its seat in Washington (57). As Marti suggests in the pro- logue to the collection, he was also despondent over the fate of Cuba in general (Obras compLetas, 4~462) .

In spite of Marti’s supposed retreat from politics, the Versos rencilfos, which are distinguished for their sincerity and poignancy, form a resolutely political state- ment. T h e poems are all composed of octosyllabic verse, which themselves are almost exclusively organized in variations on the popular form of the medieval Spanish rhymed copkz. T h e c o p h present a framework of an autochthonous His- panic language and culture that Marti saw as a binding political force for all Spanish Americans, and that he spoke about frequently in his political writings. As JosC Arrom points out, the communal cast of these verses was conceived as Marti’s antidote to political fragmentation and disillusionment after the Interna- tional Conference.I9

Like the verse forms, the themes of the Versos sencillos are meant to provoke in the reader recognition of Hispanic cultural commonalities. They are often scenes of a recognizable Hispanic culture, sometimes charming yet often disquieting: the dance of a Flamenco ballerina in number 10, the statues of Independence heroes in number 40, the sad fate of a young girl of a rural pueblo, “La niha de Guatemala,” in poem number 10, the murder of a Cuban slave in number 30. Eugenio Florit points out that these poems are several of many in the collection that concern a personal memory of the poet. One of Marti’s techniques at enhancing the impact o f such scenes on the reader, Florit writes, is through a dis- tinctively visual effect: “No importa la fecha, sea Csta prcixima o remota. Lo importante es acumular recuerdos y horas intensas. Que el poeta sabri sacarlos a 1‘1 luz del poema cuando sea preciso, cuando lo necesite. En Marti ese recuerdo es siempre de ‘ala y raii: lo que vivi6 enraizado en las tierras de su existencia n6mada de desterrado y lo que vio con 10s ojos del espiritu” (“Versos” 328). As Florit suggests, Marti’s visual focus in the Versos sencillos might best be termed visionary. Recalling Kathryn Stevens’s remarks on Mad’s faith in the analogical potentials of art, the highly visual scenes of Hispanic life in the Versos sencillos can be seen to provoke the reader’s perception not only of commonalities of culture and history but also of underlying universal human themes, like sensual beauty, the need for heroes, unrequited love, and moral outrage.

The visionary aspect of the Versos sencillos is realized perhaps most concretely

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in Marri’s ecphrastic poetry in the collection, or those verses rhat concern the viewing or creation of visual works of art. T h e visitor in the “sal6n de 10s pin- [ores” in poem 21, who sees the “hermosa mujer / Que me rob6 el corazdn,” or the “pobre pintor” in poem 24 “que mira el agua a1 pintar- / El agua ronca del mar,-- / con un entrafiable anior” are surrogates for Marti the visionary, pierc- ing through visible realicy ro hidden spiritual truths that Spanish Americans can strive to uncover in themselves.

In the ecphrastic poem on heroic statuary from Spanish-American Indepen- dence, or “Suefio con heroes,” rhe focus is on the poet’s implication in this vision. The poem is clearly meant to stand out, for it is nedr the end of the collection and it is the only poem of blank verse among the many cophs. The absence of rhyme is crucial to Marti’s ecphrasis of the statues and the singularity of the poem in the collection. The blank verse allows the poet to create ruptures in the syntax of the verse line, both through synracticnf inversions and enjambment. These frxtures in the verse line are at the service of a singular rupture in the reader’s expectations: the coming to life of the statues, the stepping down from their pedestals.’”

Why does Marti want these statues to come alive? Mosr obviously the statues represent political and military figures from the past, whose ideals Marti would like to “revive” in the chill present. Yet we should note that in accordance with North‘s observation about starueb, Marti’s marble heroes are distinctive not only for their public significance bur also their ethereal meaning. First of all the “claus- tro” of the setring recalls a religious building dedicated to solitude and medita- tion. T h e ”silencio divino” and the “reposo” of the marble sculptures add a tone of privacy and contemplation to the scene. Hernindez-Chiroldes points out that the “claustro” resembles a monumenr consecrated to freedom that Marti, writing in the newspaper La Nacidn in 1887, called a “catedra!,” whose open doors would draw in the public to venerate its warm bronze statuary (273).” Yet unlike the unenclosed sertirig of the “catedral” and its accessible, inviting figures of heroism, the “hiroes de mirmol” of the “claustro” in this poem are dormant, mysterious, and removed from life.”

Norrh points out that for the Irish poet W. B. Yeats, who conceived of a civic life formed through the private and not the collective dedication of individuals, the remoteness of a marble s txue was the essence of its public symbolism (52-55). O n the contrary for Marti, who was passionately devored to collective ideals, the “divine silence” of the marble statues in his dream are an obstacle, because it makes them publicly inaccessible, or too removed from everyday life. Just as he has focused the forms m d themes of the VerossenCi(l0s in a popular set- ting, Marti would like to bring the statues down from their pedestals and have them enter real life. As we will see in the poem, this fantasy directly affects the poet himself.

Just as Marti begins to describe the action of the dream, he employs the device of enjambment, which creates an accelerating rhythm in the poem. At first, as Marti winds among the statues, the rhythm is slow (“paseo / entre las filas; las manos / D e piedra les beso:”), but it abruptly picks up pace as the statues awak-

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en (“abren / Los ojos de piedra: tiemblan / Las barbas de piedra: Iloran: / Vibra la espada en la vaina!”). From verse to verse, as Hernindez-Chiroldes and Arce de Vdsquez point out, the enjambment now begins to create a struggle between resisting forces (273-274; 64) . Note that the image of the hard, solid stone of the statues is intensified through anaphora as Marti describes the statues’ body parts: “Los ojos de piedra,” “Los labios de piedra,” “Las barbas de piedra,” “La espada de piedra.” As the stubborn image of the stone is exaggerated, it strains against the movement of the verbs, whose placement at the end of each line gives them more force (Hernindez-Chiroldes 274). Although the poet‘s effort will succeed in conquering the stone, we are meant to see in this first sequence that it will take a powerful, even violent, effort to do so.

In fact, once the heroes are “awakened” from their stone sleep, their overcom- ing of stasis is at once both cathartic and violent. The heroes weep, and then shake their swords (“iVibra la espada en la vaina!”). As Herndndez-Chiroldes sug- gests, the heroes seem to be showing their disappointment at the lack of fulfill- ment of their ideals in the contemporary era (275). Yet I am interested here in the violence that seems paralleled in the poet‘s awakening of the statues and in the heroes’ reaction to their “liberation.” It is a violence that threatens the onlooker-our poet-for the hubris of his dream. Marti has called the statues to action to help him resurrect their principles in his era of failed ideals, as his monologue in the following sequence implies. But as the insinuation of threat suggests, the statues themselves may not be too happy about being disturbed. Marti’s disturbance of the statues’ private repose has thus unleashed a counter- force, an unsettling of his own lyric vision.

The statues’ awakening is then followed by the poet’s own lament. Marti winds among the statues, now weeping as well (“lloroso”), now embracing them and telling them of the disgrace of their “hijos,” the current generation of Spanish Americans who have failed to live up to their ideals. Roberto Ibdiiez has called this speech the poet‘s “blasfemia” (“Imigenes del mundo y del trasmundo,” 378). Yet we need to remember that in this poem, Marti’s words are unsettling, not abstract sacred images but entities that are concretely inviolate-marble statues. Marti’s push to urge the heroes out of sleep. or out of the past, means trans- forming their repose or their “silencio divino.” As they come to life, the statues are no longer ideal images but mortal men, unguarded and misunderstood-just as they surely were in their own day. Marti’s “blasphemy” is thus the sin of anachronism: The heroes are angry because they no longer have a place on the pedestal of history and have been exposed in their ~ulnerabili ty.~~

For Marti the poet, this is equivalent to risking anachronism in his own art, or being misheard or isolated in his poetic crusade to blend spiritual life and con- temporary politics. The exposure of the marble heroes to their mortality makes the poet’s vision in the Krsos sencillos also assailable. Nowhere is this liability clearer than at the end of the poem, where the awakened statues physically han- dle the poet himself. “Echame en tierra de un bote / El heroe que abrazo: me ase / Del cuello: barre la tierra / Con mi cabeza: levanta / El brazo, iEl brazo le luce

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I Lo mismo que un sol!: resuena / La piedra: [. . .I.” Surprisingly, in the midst of the violence done to the poet, these verses seem to have an energeric tone, as Hernindez-Chiroldes suggests (276) . It is as if the poet were reconciled to the fact that the merging of the ideal world of poetry with the real one of politics must entail a kind of crisis.

By the poem’s end this crisis can be seen to be a threat to the poet‘s own mor- tality. Indeed, when we note thar the enjambment groups the body parts of the poet (“Del cuello,” “Con mi cabcza”) with those of the statues (“El brazo,” “Las manos blancas”), the poet‘s implied loss of vitality in the statues’ violence would seem to be fueling the ‘‘lives’’ o f t h e marble heroes. Kenneth Gross writes that Roman Jakobson’s semiotic study of Pushkin’s poems on statuary turns on the idea rhat a srarue, unlike a painting or a sculprure of an inanimate object, is a per- fect sign for the human body (1 26-27). According to Jakobson, in a fantasy of a statue’s animation the statue ‘‘merges into real space,” collapsing the distances between signifier and signified, or statue and human body (“The Statue in Pushkin’s Mythology” 353). Correspondingly, as Gross points out, for Jakobson a statue’s coming co life necessarily implies irs corollary, or the immobility or death of the animate being that is observing the scene (Gross 127; Jakobson 355-56). Gross argues that the collapsing of distances between stacue and human body can be interpreted allegorically:

The fantasy of animation sets in motion and exposes the internal dynamics of the artistic sign, as Jakobson makes clear: but it can, in part for that very reason, help us explore the complex and asymmetrical relations beween what we might think of as private and public signs, between inrerioriry and exterioriry, our perception and knowledge of ourselves and our perception and knowledge of others; it can map the complex interactions between present and past, between nature and arc, loss and gain, death and life, existence within and beyond the human world. Needless to say, if the idea of a living statue projects the closing of such gaps, it can also expose the subterfuges such a closing must employ, how partial, grotesque, or catastrophic, how full of unexpected reversals the mere idea of thar closing can be. (130)

Marti’s fantasy of the dormant statues coming down from their pedestals allego- rizes the poet’s poetic vision, acting out his desire to close the gap between the lyric fancies of art and the contingencies of the public. At the same time, the esca- lating violence of the poem-the “breaking” of the statues, their anger, and their assault on Marti-points to what Jakobson identifies as the consequence of a statue’s animation, or the poet’s own paralysis or death. The statues’ action of “casting” the poet onto the ground even carries the suggestion thar Marci is con- verted into a statue in the poem.24 In accordance with Gross’s theory, the upshot of Marri’s dream in “Suefio con heroes” is catastrophic, a poet‘s worst nightmare. Marti’s fantasy of animating the marble heroes trades o n making Marti himself “inert” or “remote” like a statue, and thus unable co be heard. The poem’s con- clusion shows that Marti understood that the calling of statues or poetry to real life involved risking chat his message would fall on deaf ears.

Yet as his exhilarated tone at the statues’ violence suggests, Marti found this

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risk worthwhile for both a hero and a poet. Although Marti knew he might be isolated or misunderstood in his own era, he also perceived that his work had the potential for enduring and truly monumental status. In an essay Dario wrote on the Ems sencillos for La Nacidn in 1887, he confirms this reading, noting that the monument to Marti in Havana recalled for him the verses of “Sueiio con htroes,” which “parecerian escritos por un hombre de m;irmol,-por aquel que sabia o presentla su relativa inm~rtalidad.”’~

Statues attract a range of attitudes in late-nineteenth-century Spanish Ameri- ca: elite visions and popular rage, idealistic projections and political disillusion- ment, secret fantasies and public adoration. For the modernista poet, these dif- fering attitudes toward the statue can become the source of a powerful dialectic between lyric idealism and public responsibility in his or her own poetry. Jose M a d s particular engagement with a public monument turns on the animation of silent marble, which allegorizes the poet‘s emphasis on making poetic and pub- lic ideals accessible to the common person. The conclusion of his dream-poem, or the statues’ conversion into mortal men, insinuates Marti’s sense of the risk of coupling idealism and real life. Jose Asunci6n Silva in “La estatua de Bolivar” (1895) engages the public monument in a different yet no less fascinating way, imagining hiinself being called to a prophetic role by the voice of Bolivar’s stat- ue in the plaza de Bogotai. Marti and Silva’s poems show the public monument to be a powerful figure for the modernista poet‘s struggles to define his or her role in the transformation of culture in Spanish America at the turn of the nineteenth century.

George Mason University

This article, which is part of a book on ecphrasis in Spanish American poetry, was com- pleted with the generous support of a 1998 National Endowment for the Humanities summer research grant and a 1998-99 fellowship from [he Fenwick Library at George Mason Universiry. I also wish to thank Isahel Morris, my research assistant, for her invalu- able help.

1. See Angel Augier, “Marti, poera, y su influencia innovadora en la poesia de Am& ca,” of Vida ypensamiento de Murri, vol. 2 (Havana: Municipio de la Hahana, 1942) 306; Gabriela Mistral, “Los Vprsos rcnrillos de Jose Marti,” in Antologia critica de JorP Marti, ed. Manuel Pedro Gonzilez (Mexico: Editorial Cultura, 1960) 255 (first published in Rwisra Bimestru Mensual1938); and Eugenio Florit, “Versos,” in Antologia critica, 325 (repr. from “JosC Marti: Vida y obra: Versos,” Revista Hifpdnica Moderna 18 [ 1952): 20-71).

2. See Andrds Iduarte, Marti, errritor(M6xico: Joaquin Mortiz, 1945) 107, and Rober- to Ihdtiez, “Inidgenes del mundo y del trasmundo en 10s “Versos sencillos,” in Awtologia critira, 368-69.

3. The Verros sencillos were published, as Augier points out, several months before Marti was to take on “la ruta definiriva de la lihertad de su pueblo” (306). Margot Arce de Vdsquez calls “Sueiio con heroes” a “proyecci6n de las preocupaciones de Marti en aquel rnomento” (“ ‘Sueho con heroes de mdrmol’ de JosC Marti,” 57).

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4. For approaches to Marti’s art criticism see Felix Lizaso, “Marti, critic0 de arte,” in Vidaypensamiento de Marti, vol. 1 (Havana: Municipio de la Habana, 1942) 275-95, and Kathryn L. Stevens, “Literature and the Plastic Arts in the Modernist Aesthetic,” 60-76. For treatment of Marti’s synesthetic experiments see Ivin Schulman’s Ghnesis del mod- ernismo. Marri, Ndjera, Silva, C a d (Mexico: El Colegio de Mexico, 1966) 21-65; Sim- bolo y color en h 06ra de Jori Marti (Madrid: Editorial Gredos, S.A., 1970); and Daniel Serra-Badilk’s “Marti y la luz,” Circulo 14 (1985): 7-12.

5. Stevens writes on this topic in detail in her dissertation. A useful general study on interartistic rhcory in ninereenth-century poetry is David Scott’s Pictoriafist Poetics, which reevaluates the supposed superior rolc of music as the “sister art” to poetry in the roman- tic period and uncovers profound interdependencies between visual art and poetry in French verse.

6. Cathy Jrade, “Modernist Poetry,” The Cambridge History of Latin American Litera- ture, ed. Roberto Gonzilez Echevarria and Enrique Pupo-Walker, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996) 16.

7. Stein writes, “Ruskin, Rossetri, and Pater locare in the fine arts radical alternatives for the lives of their contemporaries-alternatives not merely in supplying new objecrs of conremplation but also in evoking the prospect of a new world, which might be entered from or superimposed upon the world of Victorian England” (32-33).

8. Stevens writes, “For Marti, all forms of aesthetic experience and creative activity par- ticipate i n a relationship of analogy, providing a means of both integrating experience and communicating it to others” (59).

9. JosC Marri, “Francisco Durnaine,” Revista Universal (Mexico) 16 July 1876, repr. in vol. 3 of Obras rompletas, 653.

10. W. J. T. Mitchell, “Ekphrasis and the Other,” South Atlantic Quarrprly 91 (1992): 71617 .

1 1. Marcella Trambaoili, “La estatua y el ensueho: Dos claves para la poesia de Delnii- ra Agustini,” Revista Hisplinica Moderna 40 (1997): 62.

12. Oscar Montero, “Translating Decadence: Julian del Casal’s Reading of Huysmans and Moreau,” Revista de Estudios Hispanicos 25 (1 992): 370.

13. Marti, “La estatua de Bolivar. I’or el venezolano Cova,” La AmCrica (New York) June 1883, repr. in vol. 3 of Obras rompletas, 33.

14. Roberto Gonzilez Echevarria, The Voice ofthe Masters: Writing and Authoriry in Modern Latin American Literature (Austin: U of Texas P, 1985) 26-27.

15. Anibal Gonza’lcz, “Modernisr Prose,” The Cambridge History of Latin American Lit- erature, ed. Roberto Gondlez Echevarria and Enrique Pupo-Walker, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996) 106. See also his extended study of fdolos rotos in La novela mod- ernista hispanoamericana (Madrid: Porrua, 1987) 11 5-45.

16. North writes, “For all its public reference, its redolence of Greece and democracy, the nionument is also a powerful image of secrecy,” 29.

17. Roberto Gondez Echevarria, “Marti y su ‘Amor de ciudad grande’: Notas hacia la poktica de Versos libres,” Isla a su vuelo firgitiva: Ensayos criticos sobre literatura his- panoamericana (Madrid: Porrlia, 1983) 39.

18. Enrico Mario Santi, “Ismaelillo, Marti, y el modernismo,” Hevista fberoamericana 52 ( I 986): 839.

19. JosC Arrom, “Raiz popular de 10s ‘Versos sencillos’ de Jose Marti,” in Antofogia criti- ca, 412.

20. David Scott’s remarks on the French poets’ restructuring of syntax as equivalent to a “shifr in perspective in viewing the world” have been helpful to me here (Pictorialist Poet- ics 3 2 ) .

21. “El nionumento a la prensa,” La Naci6n (Buenos Aires) 1887, repr. in vol. 2 of Obras rompletas, 759.

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22. North‘s contrast of Ruskin’s metaphor of the public carhedral with Yeats’s mau- soleum (57-58) has been helpful to me here.

23. I have been helped here by North‘s study of Robert Lowell’s ecphrastic poetry on gravestones and memorials, which focuses on the poet’s preoccupation with the disso- nance berween ideal images and human failures (235-43). See also North‘s remarks on Yeats’s anachronism (55).

24.1 am grateful to Michael Kidd for pointing this out to me. 25. Rubtn Dado, “Jose Marti, Poeta,” La Nacidn April-June 1913, repr. in Antologin

critica, 287.

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Antofogia rritica de Josi Marti. Ed. Manuel Pedro Gonzdlez. Mexico: Editorial Cultura,

Arce de Visquez, Margot. “‘Sueiio con htroes de mirmol’ de Jose Marti.” Ertudios Mar-

Floric, Eugenio. “Versos,” Antologih rriticd (repr. from “Jose Marcl: Vida y obra: Versos,”

Gross, Kenneth. The Dream of the Moving Statue. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1992. Cit. Roman

Hernindez-Chiroldes, J. A. “Los htroes de mirmol.” Lor versos sencillos de Josi Marti.

Ibihez, Roberto. “Imigenes del mundo y del rrasmundo en 10s ‘Versos sencillos,” in

Jakobson, Roman. “The Sratue in Puskin’s Mythology.” Language in Literature. Ed.

Majluf, Natalia. Escultura y espacio publico. Lima, 1850-1879. Lima: IEP, 1994. Marti, Jost. brsos sencillos. Obras rompletas. Ed. Jorge Quintana. Vol. 2. Caracas: n.p.,

North, Michael. The Final Sculpture: Public Monuments and Modem Poets. Ithaca: Cornell

Scott, David. Pictorialist Poetics: P o e q and the Visual Arts in Nineteenth-Century France.

Stein, Richard. The Ritual oflnterpretation: The Fine Arrs as Literature in Ruskin, Rossetti,

Stevens, Kathryn L. “Literature and the Plastic Arts in the Modernist Aesthetic.” Ph.D.

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Revista Hispdnica Moderna 18 [ 19521: 20-71).

Jakobson, “The Stature in Puskin’s Mythology.” 352-53.

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Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1987.

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and h e r . Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1975.

diss. U ofTexas at Austin, 1976.

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