David Rosenmann-Taub stands out like
a surprising eminence. In the fifties, in our country, his name
aroused public expectation. In those days, culture was culture.
There was, let's say, an excellent literary culture. In the street,
simple people spoke with original metaphors. The code of the common
language, however, was not interrupted. On the contrary, it flowed
like spring. Ah, those years! Well, around that time the first
book by David Rosenmann-Taub appeared: Cortejo y Epinicio (Cortege
and Epinicion). A
beautiful edition. A strange title. About "cortege"
we know everything or almost everything. In essence: "people
who form the retinue at a ceremony." But about "epinicion"?
Nothing. Almost nothing. One had to resort to the dictionary: "song
of victory; triumphal hymn."
So
that we had in front of us something more than the triumphal ceremony
of a new poet; we were witnessing a kind of changing of the guard
in the traditionally Spain-oriented,
modernist, Ruben-Darian regime of our poetry.
Rosenmann-Taub,
for all that, did not allow himself to get easily wrapped up in
the early flattery of fame, being a sensitive temperament to a high
degree, refined by inner non-conformity, a mordant critic of the
world around him, and a master of anti-stupidity.
Solitude,
in the end, constitutes the cortege of the elect. In what coin is
paid the epinicion of solitude?
It
is not easy, here, among us, to write what follows without paying
a heavy price for the public's lack of comprehension: |
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Nausea. The
firefly
– basalt, perfection –
laughs with its brand-new wingspan:
steely. (The broom
suborns me.) I kneel. Laziness
that does not beg for useless meanings.
[Cortege
and Epinicion, second edition: Poem XLI] |
| |
But, also, in compensation, the same pen also writes:
I have just died: for the earth
I am a newborn.
[Cortege
and Epinicion, second edition: Poem XVII, "Genetrix"]
|
Solitude is followed by silence. Silence, by suffering, the sieve
of life. Further on, the trips, the distance, the withdrawal from
the roots.
Sad,
fickle, inhospitable earth is quick to scorn.
Like
Spinoza among his optical devices, David Rosenmann-Taub dwells in
some unnamed place among his poetical devices: words.
Two
books masterfully published rescue him as the preserve of a few
select readers: Los Despojos del Sol (The Spoils of the
Sun) and El Cielo en la Fuente (The Sky in the Fountain).
In
his essay, On Difficulty, George Steiner notes: "The
poet, frequently, is a neologist, a goldsmith who recombines words:
what soft instrument did Mandelstam have in mind when he invoked
the music of the tormenvox? Writers are passionate resurrectors
of buried or ghostly words..."
In
El Cielo en la Fuente are these combinations of
words: |
| |
The rose toward
the rose: the ardors
undulate and succumb.
Like mine before me, Jesusa
in another heart.
Won't she
seek rest?
On a page of sand and fear
she reads her name. Bundles the dominions.
There will be walls, but not very high.
[The
Sky in the Fountain: Poem XVII]
|
David Rosenmann-Taub knows why he says what he says. He is a goldsmith,
a neologist, a recombiner of words.
In
poor villages, there is still the belief that the goldsmith is an
alchemist. And that the devil is behind alchemists. The villagers
fear them, as having lost the thread of logical discourse. They
do not realize what they are losing: the world's other form of reason. |
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