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Abstract
Luis Cernuda's poetic work has usually been divided into two main periods: the non-political poetry written prior to 1930, and the more heavily politicized poetry that was critical of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship thereafter. However, drawing on the work of Fredric Jameson, this article attempts to provide a ‘political’ reading of Luis Cernuda's landmark work of Un río, un amor (1929). Jameson argues that all literature is political, in the sense that its deep structural working are shaped by ideology, even if not apparent at the first reading. I will examine this claim, with specific reference to two of the poems from Un río, un amor. Tracing the influences on Cernuda's poetry, this article will uncover the aesthetic layers of the poems in question, to unmask them as ideological constructs. Building of Derek Harris' research, this article recognizes the heavy influence of Paul Eluard on Cernuda, and assesses what is going on ideologically.
Notes
1 Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative As a Socially Symbolic Act (London/New York: Routledge, 1983), 4–5.
2 Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 1.
3 Rafael Martínez Nadal, Españoles en la Gran Bretaña: Luis Cernuda, el hombre y sus temas (Madrid: Libros Hiperion, 1983), 79.
4 Martínez Nadal, Españoles en la Gran Bretaña, 110.
5 Audrey Lumsden-Kouvel, ‘Awaiting the Dawn: Luis Cernuda in Glasgow’, BHS, LXXVI:2 (1999), 249–52; Hugh Matthews, ‘ “Ni Glasgow ni Escocia me resultaban agradables”: Luis Cernuda As University Teacher’, BHS, LXXVI:2 (1999), 253–57; I. L. McClelland, ‘Cernuda's Local Source of Inspiration for His Poem “Los espinos” ’, BHS, LXXVI:2 (1999), 259–61.
6 Lumsden-Kouvel, ‘Awaiting the Dawn’, 249.
7 Matthews, ‘ “Ni Glasgow ni Escocia me resultaban agradables” ’, 254.
8 Matthews, ‘ “Ni Glasgow ni Escocia me resultaban agradables” ’, 256.
9 McClelland, ‘Cernuda's Local Source of Inspiration’, 259.
10 Martínez Nadal, Españoles en la Gran Bretaña, 67.
11 Martínez Nadal, Españoles en la Gran Bretaña, 74.
12 Martínez Nadal, Españoles en la Gran Bretaña, 90.
13 Martínez Nadal, Españoles en la Gran Bretaña, 108.
14 Martínez Nadal, Españoles en la Gran Bretaña, 116. See Luis Cernuda, ‘Juan Ramón Jiménez’, BSS, XIX:76 (1942), 163–78.
15 Martínez Nadal, Españoles en la Gran Bretaña, 96.
16 Elena Castro, La subversión del espacio poético en el surrealismo español (Madrid: Visor Libros, 2007), 75.
17 Antonio Rodríguez Almodóvar, ‘Luis Cernuda, nihilismo y verdad’, in 100 años de Luis Cernuda. Actas del Simposio Internacional celebrado en mayo de 2002 en la Residencia de Estudiantes de Madrid y en el Paraninfo de la Universidad de Sevilla, ed. Nuria Martínez de Castilla & James Vallender (Madrid: Publicaciones de la Residencia de Estudiantes, [2005]), 417–39 (p. 420).
18 El exilio en la poesía de Luis Cernuda, intro. por Douglas Barnette, ed. Julia Uceda, Julio Pérez de Gamarra & Fernando Bores (Ferrol: Sociedad de Cultura Valle-Inclán, 1984), 16.
19 Alexander Coleman, Other Voices: A Study of the Late Poetry of Luis Cernuda (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1969), 15.
20 Coleman, Other Voices, 30.
21 Philip W. Silver, ‘Hacia un Luis Cernuda romántico-alegórico’, in 100 años de Luis Cernuda, ed. Martínez de Castilla & Vallender, 481–92 (p. 482).
22 Derek Harris, Luis Cernuda: A Study of the Poetry (London: Tamesis, 1973), 2.
23 Emilio Barón Palma, Luis Cernuda: vida y obra (Sevilla: Biblioteca de la Cultura Andaluza, 1990), 66–67.
24 Cited in Harris, Luis Cernuda: A Study of the Poetry, 3.
25 Richard K. Curry, En torno a la poesía de Luis Cernuda (Madrid: Pliegos, 1985), 33.
26 Derek Harris, ‘Squared Horizons: The Hybridisation of the Avant-Garde in Spain’, in The Spanish Avant-Garde, ed. Derek Harris (Manchester: Manchester U. P., 1995), 1–26 (p. 1).
27 Philip Silver, Luis Cernuda: el poeta en su leyenda (Madrid: Castalia, 1995), 32.
28 Derek Harris, ‘Cernuda's “Ready-Mades”: Surrealism, Plagiarism, Romanticism’, in The Word and the Mirror, ed. Salvador Jiménez-Fajardo (Cranbury/London/Ontario: Associated Univ. Presses, 1989), 58–79 (p. 58).
29 Harris, ‘Cernuda's “Ready-Mades” ’, 59.
30 Paul Eluard, Capitale de la douleur: suivi de L'Amour la poésie, préface de André Pieyre de Mandiargues (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), 20–22.
31 Luis Cernuda, Un río, un Amor; Los placeres prohibidos, ed., con intro, de Derek Harris (Madrid: Cátedra, 1999), 49.
32 Cernuda, Un río, un Amor, ed. Harris, 49.
33 Cernuda, Un río, un Amor, ed. Harris, 49.
34 Harris, Luis Cernuda: A Study of the Poetry, 2.
35 Christopher Soufas Jr, ‘Supplementing Reality: The Masturbatory Poetics of Cernuda's Early Poetry’, in The Word and the Mirror, ed. Jiménez-Fajardo, 97–113 (p. 104).
36 ‘Suite’, in Eluard, Capitale de la douleur, préface de Pieyre de Mandiargues, 20.
37 Brian Morris alludes to structural similarities between the surrealist poetry of Eluard and that of Cernuda, although he does not engage in an intertextual analysis of both poets' works as such. Drawing on Harold Bloom's ideas on poetic influence which involves a kind of ‘misreading’ of previous poetic traditions, Morris argues: ‘Such words and phrases as “misreading”, “misinterpretation”, “self-saving caricature”, “distortion”, “perverse revisionism” appear to be an indictment of a process that Bloom regards as vital to modern poetry. The process is an essential part of the surrealists’ profound concern with language, which is evident in poems such as Eluard's “The Word” (from Capital of Pain, 1926), in which the word is the speaker; Aragon's “Poetry” (from Poetry's Destinies, 1925–1926), in which language mocks itself; and Peret's “The Language of Saints” (from The Great Game, 1928). These poems are matched in Spain by Aleixandre's “My voice” (from Swords like Lips) and Cernuda's “Misfortune” (from A River, A Love), in which the protagonist, identified only as “he”, is represented as a parrot uttering words ineffectually’ (C. Brian Morris, ‘The Oblique Language of Luis Cernuda’, in The Spanish Avant-Garde, ed. Harris, 190–203 [p. 191]).
38 Cernuda, Un río, un Amor, ed. Harris, 49.
39 Eluard, Capitale de la douleur, préface de Pieyre de Mandiargues, 204–06.
40 Harris, ‘Cernuda's “Ready-Mades” ’, 70.
41 Harris, ‘Cernuda's “Ready-Mades” ’, 74.
42 Terence McMullan, The Crystal and the Snake: Aspects of French Influence on Guillén, Lorca and Cernuda (Anstruther: La Sirena, 2002), 168.
43 McMullan, The Crystal and the Snake, 182.
44 McMullan, The Crystal and the Snake, 203.
45 McMullan, The Crystal and the Snake, 206.
46 Similar to McMullan, in my own work on the narrative fiction of Ramón Gómez de la Serna I have repeatedly emphasized how his experimental and surrealist novels have nothing to envy with regard to the French equivalents. See, for example, John McCulloch, ‘ “Je vous souhaite d’être follement aimée”: The Concept of “amour fou” in Ramón Gómez de la Serna's ¡Rebeca! and El hombre perdido’, Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, 16:1 (2010), 35–50.
47 Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 44.
48 Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 47.
49 Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 64.
* Disclosure Statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.