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Abstract
This article focuses on ‘Recuerdos de sueño, fiebre y duermivela’ from 1931, the second-longest poem in Machado's Poesías completas. Partially based on an earlier (1914) prose text ‘Fragmento de pesadilla / La España en un futuro próximo’, this 207-line poem has received relatively little critical attention, perhaps because of its experimental, eclectic and quasi- Surrealist nature. Subsequent to a synopsis of critics’ views on the text, this article describes the setting in which the original prose passage figures in Los complementarios, and by then analysing the poem itself, goes on to argue that this poem epitomizes and demonstrates the true meaning of the well-known Machadian definition of verse as ‘Canto y cuento’, one wherein lyrical and narrative tendencies co-exist in a creative harmony.
Notes
1 The source for quotations from Machado's works is Antonio Machado: poesía y prosa, ed. Oreste Macrì with the collaboration of Gaetano Chiappini, Clásicos Castellanos, nueva serie 11–14, 4 vols (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1989). The works are contained solely in volumes II, III and IV. The pagination is continuous from one volume to the next. Page-references will be given in this form: (1234).
2 Revista de Occidente, 34 (1931), 121–32. The poem was subsequently included in Poesías completas (1899–1930), 3rd ed. (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1933). In this and all subsequent editions of Poesías completas, the full title of the poem is: Abel Martín / Los complementarios / Cancionero apócrifo / Recuerdos de sueño, fiebre y duermivela.
3 Bernard Sesé, Antonio Machado (1875–1939), 2 vols (Madrid: Gredos, 1980), II, 544.
4 Essentially there are only three fully dedicated studies of this poem: Luis Rosales, ‘Muerte y resurrección de Antonio Machado’, Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, 11–12 (1949), 435–79; E. F. Stanton, ‘Machado and Dante: Recuerdos de sueño, fiebre y duermivela’, MLN, 93:2 (1978), 328–34; Nancy Newton, ‘Heresy and Contextuality: The Example of Antonio Machado’, Symposium, 36:3 (1982), 237–56.
5 Leopoldo de Luis, Antonio Machado, ejemplo y lección (Madrid: SGEL, 1975), 145.
6 Stanton, ‘Machado and Dante’, 329.
7 Rosales, ‘Muerte y resurrección’, 435.
8 See Antonio Sánchez Barbudo, Los poemas de Antonio Machado (Barcelona: Lumen, 1981 [1st ed. 1967]), 442–47; although he also states, on p. 443, that ‘para mí no tiene este poema la importancia que le atribuye Luis Rosales’.
9 José María Valverde, Antonio Machado (Madrid: Siglo XXI Editores, 1978 [1st ed. 1975]), 258.
10 For example: Luis Rosales argues that Machado adopted ‘la estética de los novísimos poetas’ (‘Muerte y resurrección’, 436); while Leopoldo de Luis sees the influence of at least 4 poets—Lorca, Alberti, Gerardo Diego and Góngora (Antonio Machado, ejemplo y lección, 156).
11 Nancy Newton: ‘Machado both acknowledges the importance of the surrealist movement and parodies the limitations of poetry deriving from and remaining subservient to the subconscious—by writing a conscious, deliberate poem which makes clear his familiarity with the language and conventions of surrealism’ (Newton, ‘Heresy and Contextuality’, 251).
12 Typically, though, Machado/Mairena was not entirely free from contradiction on this matter:
Sólo en sus momentos perezosos puede un poeta dedicarse a interpretar los sueños y a rebuscar en ellos elementos que utilizar en sus poemas. La oniroscopia no ha producido hasta la fecha nada importante. Los poemas de nuestra vigilia, aun los menos logrados, son más originales y más bellos y, a las veces, más disparatados que los de nuestros sueños. Os lo dice quien pasó muchos años de su vida pensando lo contrario. Pero de sabios es mudar de consejo.Hay que tener los ojos muy abiertos para ver las cosas como son; aun más abiertos para verlas otras de lo que son; más abiertos todavía para verlas mejores de lo que son. Yo os aconsejo la misión vigilante, porque vuestra misión es ver e imaginar despiertos, y que no pidáis al sueño sino reposo. (1962)
13 By 1925—well before the publication of ‘RSFD’ in 1931—the Revista de Occidente had published Breton's Surrealist Manifesto and Louis Aragon had lectured in Madrid's Residencia de Estudiantes.
14 Newton, ‘Heresy and Contextuality’, 242–43.
15 On Machado and Freemasonry, see: Joaquín Casalduero, ‘Machado, poeta institucionista y masón’, La Torre, 45–46 (1964), 99–110; Philip G. Johnston, Antonio Machado and The Royal Art: Fact and Fiction, NUI Maynooth Papers in Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies 8 (Maynooth: National Univ. of Ireland, 2003); Christian Rubio, La influencia de la masonería en Antonio Machado (Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2005).
16 XLVII ‘El cadalso’ (461); CXIV ‘La tierra de Alvargonzález’ (517–41); CVIII ‘Un criminal’ (507–08); ‘El crimen fue en Granada: A Federico García Lorca’ (828–29).
17 Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. James Strachey, ed. Angela Richards, The Pelican Freud Library, 15 vols (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1978), IV, 374. Incidentally, dreams about falling (see Part IX) are viewed as signifying anxiety. There may even be an element of comical giddiness in all this (Oreste Macrì in Antonio Machado: poesía y prosa, ed. Macrì, II, 977).
18 Machado did, of course, write two journey-to-the-soul poems in Soledades. Galerías. Otros poemas: LXIII ‘Y era el demonio …’ (474); LXIV ‘Desde el umbral de un sueño …’ (474). In the first of these, his companion was ‘el ángel / más hermoso’.
19 Rosales, ‘Muerte y resurrección’, 477.
20 ‘And the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrha brimstone and fire […] out of heaven’ (Genesis 19:24).