Santiago de Chile
June 10, 1979
Cortejo y Epinicio (Cortege
and Epinicion)
David Rosenmann-Taub
by Hernán del Solar
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We have received almost simultaneously two books by this Chilean
poet; the publisher is esteoeste of Buenos Aires. He was born among
us in 1927 and although he is often out of the country, one has
clear sense of his value in the poetry of Chile: there are many
who admire him and would like to see him participate in literary
gatherings, which our author sagely avoids. However, he has obtained
major prizes, is sought after, and, with loyalty to himself, he
cheerfully displays his absence. What really seems to interest him
is his work. His writing is considered hermetic, but we remember
an old poem of his which makes his poetry easier to approach: |
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I sing like
the sun,
and the sun does not sing. I
dream like God
and God does not dream.
I, like
the earth, die
and the earth does not die, but sings!
[Cuaderno
de Poesía: Poem IV, "The Torrent"] |
The two books which have recently come
into our hands are El Cielo en la Fuente (The
Sky in the Fountain) and Cortejo y Epinicio (second
edition). Two works that are out of the ordinary. What is the
essential difference? Poets generally stand before the world and,
in one way or another, exhibit things or beings, explaining and
highlighting them. Here, the poet creates his own world, and since
he is speaking to us, he shows us his consciousness, that private,
sometimes incommunicable place. Thus it seems to us that, in order
to enter his poetry, we must, in principle, abandon all reasoning,
the leading thread of logic, and walk through the newly created
work with a permanent sense of astonishment.
And
don't think, in view of such words, that we find ourselves in the
presence of a recherché hermeticism, as commonly happens
with many poets from here and elsewhere. In El Cielo en
la Fuente and Cortejo y Epinicio the naturalness
of the mystery puts us among plausible, real, inexplicable things
and beings which simply are. The imaginary, here, is the real.
We feel it, we touch it, we hold it, because the words are neither
more nor less than pure poetry. There is his strength, his grace.
It seems that the poet speaks to us from very far away, from beyond
the living, from the knowledge of a discoverer of his own exile.
Yet
there is a transfigured reality that surrounds us in almost all
the poems; if we prick our ears, if we listen with an attentive
heart, and the murmur of poetry comes clearly to us in the midst
of the images, many of them everyday, which allow us to live in
the dream of reality. We take an example from Cortege and Epinicion.
Let us draw near to a beautiful and comprehensible reality: |
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It's a broken-down,
blind moonlight,
that thrusts forward gloomy stamens, it's
a moonlight on the dining room wall, and it advances,
in claws of innocence, dragging its wings.
Vessel of immensity, all gray lightness,
with gray indolence you wither and your flight,
grumbling,
bounces.
The trays shrink from your twisted wickers:
the shade
chews you:
a convent-like
chirping
runs through the chairs, the cruet clinks
hoarsely
on the sideboard,
the napkins shout, the corners melt.
It's a strident mourning, it's an eternal lament
of spoons, tablecloths, plates, saltshakers, glasses:
it's a broken-down, blind moonlight,
that thrusts forward gloomy stamens, it's
a moonlight on the dining-room wall, and it advances,
in claws of innocence, dragging its wings.
[Cortege
and Epinicion: Poem X, "The Cat Catches a Butterfly"]
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The
epimone (repetition of lines, and at times of words) gives strength,
enigmatic vigor to a poetry that plays with mystery, making it real,
placing it before our eyes so that we live it. In this same book
we find another example of the invigoration of a transfigured reality
that plunges us into an inner world, musically whispered so that
the heart receives it: |
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After,
after the wind between two peaks,
and the brother scorpion that rears up,
and the red tides over the day.
Voracious volcano: halo without empire.
The vulture will die: lax punishment.
After, after the hymn between two vipers.
After the night that we do not know
and outstretched in the never a sole body
silent as light. After the wind.
[Cortege
and Epinicion: Poem I,"Prelude"] |
As
we have noted, David Rosenmann-Taub is not an easy poet; he has
an innerness that is immediately reflected in the mirror of the
words. His, we repeat, is a permanent, changing creation, which
is not to be skimmed or to be regarded as something obvious: it
must be contemplated in order to reveal itself to us. We need to
delve into his poetry and explore its mystery with our soul. It
is not to be explained, because then it withdraws, closes up, becomes
obscure. It has an intense, profound, originality than cannot be
attained with the wrecking arrow of logic. Not for nothing was it
spoken of by Francis de Miomandre (Prix Goncourt 1908, awarded for
his novel Written on Water): "Its author possesses an absolutely
exceptional quality and tone, and I see no one, even in France,
who dares approach poetic expression with such heartrending violence." Sometimes
the violence smiles and he says everything in a couple of lines. |
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In "Icarus" we
read: Backs,
besiege me!
[Cortejo
y Epinicio: Poem LIX]
Or:
My bald
lady, my quiet lady!
What ermine in gusts
stole your cockroach
braids?
[Cortejo
y Epinicio: Poem XLII]
And black humor:
I have just died: for the earth
I am a newborn.
[Cortejo
y Epinicio: Poem XVII, "Genetrix"] |
His imagination is often delirious. He makes and unmakes worlds.
He raises dreams and tears them down so that they spring up anew.
God, life, and death cross his poetry secretly, and the poet knows
that for his wounded heart there is no other balm than the poetic
word: |
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... He forgets
death
and life which flog each other in an empty corner.
And God leaves without seeing them, but He feels a shiver.
[Cortejo
y Epinicio: Poem XXVII] |
A
voice, his, without equal in our poetic circle, sings from within
so that an echo resounds in a man or a woman with a soul reaching
towards the dream, the delirium, the living reality that passes
through his words.
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