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ABSTRACT
Section IV, “Poemas del Lago Eden Mills,” of Federico García Lorca's Poeta en Nueva York contains just two poems: “Poema doble del Lago Eden” and “Cielo vivo.” This article offers a close reading of the second poem, which is often neglected in commentaries on the collection. The speaker contemplates his mortality, contrasting the mutability of the natural world with a kind of ideal—though ultimately unattainable—afterlife of which the contours are informed by the original plenitude associated with the Garden of Eden and the womb. Thematically, then, “Cielo vivo” can be seen as complementing “Poema doble”: It looks to the future, while in the other poem, the speaker is principally concerned with his existential dilemmas as they affect him in the present.
Notes
1. Or possibly August 21, 1929: see Maurer and Anderson 43n1. He traveled by train and then was picked up by car from a nearby station, seemingly either Montpelier Junction or Waterbury. On his departure, he was again dropped off by car at Burlington Station.
2. Cummings stated that “Ruina” was “written at Eden Lake” (123), but Ángel del Río remembered it being composed during the Catskills days (xvii); again, this poem is one of the relatively few poems for which we have no autograph original (which are often dated). Most or all of the texts included in section VI of Poeta en Nueva York, “Introducción a la muerte (Poemas de la soledad en Vermont),” were actually written later than the brief time spent in Vermont.
3. Maurer and Anderson 46–47, 51–52, 231–32; García Lorca, Songs, plates between 20 and 21.
4. Curiously, Cummings did not describe witnessing the Northern Lights in “August in Eden,” though he did provide a notably purple description of a spectacular thunderstorm (142–43).
5. All references to “Cielo vivo” are by line number in García Lorca, Poeta en Nueva York 217–18 (henceforth abbreviated as PNY).
6. Cf. “la piedra inserte / ni conoce la sombra, ni la evita” (“El poeta pide a su amor que le escriba,” Sonetos 17).
7. Compare this sentiment with that expressed in poem VIII from Bécquer's Rimas, where the speaker yearns to defeat gravity and, freed from his human form, “flotar con la niebla dorada / en átomos leves / cual ella deshecho” (110).
8. In the first version of this line, Lorca wrote, instead of “arenas,” “frutas secas” (Manuscritos neoyorquinos 122). This option does not seem quite as negative as “arenas,” nor does it serve to bolster this alternative reading.
9. Cummings recounted the discovery of a “Garden of Eden” in the village and referred to “these semi-cultivated flowers which […] have become such hardy perennial blossomers” (163–64).
10. Compare the line from “Vuelta de paseo”: “el árbol de muñones que no canta” (PNY 165), which similarly deploys a technique of radical ellipsis: The tree that has been pollarded has only the stumps of its branches left, so there is nowhere for birds to perch and then be able to sing.
11. The phrase “dientes de azúcar” could be read as a simple metaphor, of whiteness, but if present at all, it is a very secondary meaning.
12. Evidently, this detail caught Lorca's attention: In “Poema doble del Lago Eden,” he refers to “las vacas que tienen patitas de paje” (PNY 216).
13. Lorca often uses silvery metals as descriptors for the moon. See Domínguez Gil 334; as he pointed out, it is impossible to determine which is subject and which object. Cf. Cummings: “The moon is only an hour high over the dark points of the steepled spruces. […] As the water laps the smooth stones of the shore the movement makes six small reflected moons do a symphonic dance” (149).
14. Compare, too, “Norma y paraíso de los negros” with another vision of the night sky: “azul donde el desnudo del viento va quebrando / los camellos sonámbulos de las nubes vacías” (PNY 177), and “Oda a Walt Whitman”: “y el cielo desembocaba por los puentes y los tejados / manadas de bisontes empujadas por el viento” (PNY 266).
15. Neither is crossed out: García Lorca, Manuscritos neoyorquinos 124.
16. “The lake has been lulled to a pure mirror-like placidity”; “The lake was rough-shod this afternoon and the gusts of wind swept in on us”; “I sit alone on the bow of my beached boat and look out over the great piece of glossy black satin” (Cummings 128, 149). “Lorca spent a good part of the day at Eden scribbling away on an overturned boat” (Schwartz 50).
17. The specific values that García-Posada assigned to these three images could easily be challenged: For him, “lechos vacíos” betokened “una existencia sin amor,” while “brisas” combined with “barcos” symbolized “una vida en que los hombres son brisas fugaces y mueren sin pena ni gloria” (Lorca: interpretación de ‘Poeta en Nueva York’ 269). Still, in “Oda a Walt Whitman,” Lorca writes “mañana los amores serán rocas y el Tiempo / una brisa que viene dormida por las ramas” (PNY 269), and Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías closes with “una brisa triste por los olivos” (308).
18. Nandorfy pointed out that in the phrase “por la dura eternidad fija,” “por” can be read both spatially and temporally (96).
19. Cf. Predmore 31, 42. As in line 10, here too he found that “‘Love without dawn’ is surely dark love” (70)—that is, homosexual and hence non-procreative love. Be that as it may, the kind of love suggested by “¡Amor visible!” would likely transcend such categories.
20. Craige went further and saw here a mystical, ecstatic moment actually experienced rather than vividly anticipated (19–20). Nandorfy was—rightly—much more cautious: “the final outcome cannot be interpreted as the successful termination of a linear process but as a utopian desire” (96).
21. Domínguez Gil pursued this connection further (334–35).
22. For more on this topic, see García-Posada, “La vida de los muertos.”
23. On “Poema doble,” see Anderson 412–25.
24. Lines from a stanza later discarded by Lorca; see Marinello 222.
25. Throughout his book, this is one of the principal topics explored by Domínguez Gil; see especially 107–10.
26. Notice here the twin references to Edenic apples and reconnection with early childhood.
27. A notion that seems to pick up certain ideas from Unamuno's Del sentimiento trágico de la vida.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Andrew A. Anderson
Andrew A. Anderson is Professor of Spanish at the University of Virginia. His work on García Lorca includes critical studies of the author's poetry and drama as well as editions of his poetry and correspondence. He has also published on the “Generation of ’27,” Spanish theatre of the 1920s and 1930s, Ernesto Giménez Caballero, the Spanish historical avant-garde, and Spanish narrative from Galdós to Cercas.