3—
Lugones as Modernista Poet

The Earliest Poetry and Las Montañas Del Oro

Lugones' earliest published poetry (poems not collected in separate volumes) reflects many of the same contradictory impulses that appear in the early journalism. Although the structuring metaphor of organic form, the role of evolution, and the notion of "Genius" and sacred role of the poet—artist are abundantly present, their expression is increasingly disrupted by violent images often accompanied by the theme of eroticism or the upheaval of the carnival. Jarring notes of modernity strain the classical series of dualities. Alternating grandiloquent allegorical statement with intimate introspection, these poems are like a rough outline of what is to come later in the carefully selected volumes. In one of his earliest published poems, "Los mundos" ("The Worlds") (1893), the poet—prophet, with marks of an almost adolescent zeal, stands at the summit of an ordered universe and thunders out to the multitudes, a pose that anticipates a recurring element of Las montañas del oro . At the same time Lugones is experimenting in other poems with patterns much like those of Los crepúsculos del jardín and Lunario sentimental, in which the Romantic frame of reference is shattered or absent, and the ordering, defining poetic persona disappears from the scene.

If the early poetry merely suggests these variations, Las montañas del oro (1898) celebrates the clash of poetic impulses. The recurrent allegorical framework struggles to enclose the often incongruous juxtapositions. If some sections were not bound together by the volume as a whole, their hybrid appearance would seem to be a parody of the fanciful and often bizarre mixtures modernismo created with its inherited and new symbols.

Poetry of accumulation, Las montañas del oro possesses as well the mark of originality. Uniform in its collection of excesses, it is daring in its expansion of boundaries. Although the origins of many of the individual themes and poetic devices are recognizably borrowed ones, the curious and sometimes monstrous mixture Lugones creates breaks earlier constraints. Las montañas del oro 's particular traits—its overt exaggeration, monumental excesses, overloading, willful twistings of form and content, and elements of grotesque humor—will be intensified in different functions in later collections.

The poem "Los mundos," first published in Pensamiento Libre in 1893, is important because it prefigures the first and last cycles of Las montañas del oro and sets forth in rudimentary fashion the early framework of Lugones' allegorical system. Although often ponderous in its progression and redundant in its vocabulary, it is worthy of analysis for its presentation of the light—darkness dichotomy, the roles of Genius and Poet, and the idealized "Pueblo," topics already seen in the early journalism. Derivative though this poem may be, it shows a highly developed control of imagery systems. It is, in short, a highly unified description of exterior structures of fecundity and flowering, with cosmological elements linked to a grid of assigned meanings.^[1] These elements, though trite even by the standards of that age, are never consciously used for ironic or parodic effects. The presentations give panoramic, unified perspectives. However, the poem's redundance and excesses do indeed produce distorted visions. The energy of excess, constrained here, will be extended and used for different effects in Las montañas del oro . There the shifting of perspectives and resulting distortion will be incorporated into a thematic plan.

Although the poet's stance on the mountain summit will be repeated in the first and third cycles of Las montañas del oro, the role of Hugo's visionary prophet will be reduced in later works. The dissonance and fragmentation briefly glimpsed in the rhyme schemes and natural imagery of some of the early poems will begin to enter on its own terms, especially in the first and third cycles of Las montañas del oro . There, metonymical displacement of the natural iconography gives a macabre, fetishistic tone to the interior cycles. The elemental forces of nature, first pre-

sented in association with a noble organizing voice, are tinged with sinister qualities, as is seen in the treatment of the wind. History's advances, the poet's role, religion, and nature itself enter in disturbing contexts by the introduction of eroticism.

The Reception of Las Montañas Del Oro

Lugones' first published volume of poetry, Las montañas del oro, was received with fervent acclaim by contemporaries such as Amado Nervo, Rubén Darío, and José Juan Tablada. Later readers express more conflicting views. For Octavio Paz, Las montañas del oro represents one of modernismo 's most important characteristics, "la conciencia del ser dividido y la aspiración hacia la unidad"^[2] ("the consciousness of a divided being and the aspiration of unity"). He sees the volume as the completion and fulfillment of the true spirit of romanticism previously absent in most Spanish American poetry. Another contemporary critic, Noé Jitrik, has judged Lugones' poetry of modernismo in a different light: it is "huguiano y desmesurado . . . sin lleger al simbolismo ni a ninguna otra derivación más autónoma del romanticismo. Su modernismo es la versión para jóvenes"^[3] ("Hugoesque and excessive . . . far from reaching Symbolism or any more autonomous derivation of Romanticism. His modernismo is the version for the young"). Jitrik finds that Lugones' search for meaning in the past led him to "la ortodoxia romántica más sólida e incuestionable, la variación dentro de la regla, la legalidad sumisa y concordante"^[4] ("the most solid and unquestionable romantic orthodoxy, the variation within the norm, a submissive and concordant legality"). He finds, furthermore, that Lugones' unquestioning adherence to already acclaimed models and reluctance to give words a life of their own make it only poetry of accumulation, "acumulación de temas, ciertemente, pero también de los éxitos obtenidos con ellos"^[5] ("accumulation of themes, surely, but also of the successes obtained by them"). Jitrik's observations are somewhat typical of more modern views of Las montañas del oro . Part of the present study, however, will examine this supposed orthodoxy and suggest a different type of reading of these accumulated themes, successes, and excesses.

The opinions of two of Lugones' contemporaries, Amado

Nervo and Rubén Darío, show more clearly the special position this volume represented when it was first published. Their comments are similar; while praising the force and dynamism of the poetry, they also note the multiple influences and the disparity of tone produced by the avalanche of mixed forms. Nervo states:

¿No flota, por ventura, sobre el haz de citas . . . , sobre el deseo mismo infantil de hacer saber que se sabe, sobre el imitado artificio . . . , la inspiración más activa y consciente, el estilo más personal, el sabor lírico más intenso, el espíritu más lúcido e imperioso del Nuevo Continente Latino?^[6]

(Does there not float, by chance, over the surface of quotes . . . over the same childish desire to show how much he knows, over the imitative artifice . . . the most active and conscious inspiration, the most personal style, the most intense lyrical flavor, the most lucid and imperious spirit of the New Latin Continent?)

Nervo finds the richness of accumulation to be the greatest trait of the poet of the "New Continent." What Nervo praises, however, is as much the role of the poet expressed in Las montañas del oro as the poetry itself. The volume is structured loosely around the progression of the poetic journey, falling from the summit to the dark, interior depths, rising again to the sunlit peaks. The journey exalts the role of the poet and calls attention to those who have previously followed the path, the poet's models—Homer, Dante, Whitman, and Hugo. The comments of Lugones' contemporaries praise not only the work itself but the poetic process it described, reflecting the importance they assigned to their poetic role.

Rubén Darío views the Lugones of Las montañas del oro from a later perspective (1913): "Ya en la tarea de ideas revélase la inagotable mina verbal, la facultad enciclopédica, el dominio absoluto del instrumento y la preponderancia del don principal y distintivo: la fuerza"^[7] ("Within the framework of ideas one finds the inexhaustible verbal mine, the encyclopedic authority, the absolute power over the instrument and the preponderance of that principal and distinctive gift: force"). These are the traits most often attributed to Lugones' work, but Darío adds a

new perspective in viewing the derivative nature of Las montañas del oro . He compares the process of assimilation to a "rápido choque de miradas" (a "swift clashing of glances").

Hay allí, sobre todo, un infuso conocimiento de cosas inmemoriales que se ha transmitido a través de innumerables generaciones, y que hace vagamente reconocerse, apenas, con algún rarísmo contemporáneo, en un rápido choque de miradas, o en la similitud de interpretación de un gesto, de un signo, de una palabra.^[8]

(There is, above all, an infused knowledge of immemorial ideas that has been handed down through countless generations, which is vaguely recognized, by some strange contemporary, in a swift clashing of glances or in the similar interpretation of a gesture, a sign, or a word.)

Darío sees Lugones' work as clearly derivative, but it is the process of selection that impresses him. Of his work Dario declares, "háceme pensar en las adolescencias proféticas, en una pérdida y un encuentro, no en el templo de los doctores, sino en el bosque entre los leones" ("[it] makes me think of prophetic adolescences, about loss and recovery, though not in the temple of the sages, but in the forest among the lions"). In the statements of both Nervo and Darío there is a hesitancy to use the label "original," yet both stress the impact and novelty of the volume.

Structure of a Bizarre Journey

In Las montañas del oro one can see the beginning of Lugones' curious joining of technological prowess to erotic imagery, forecasting his adaptations of Laforgue's stress on the urban, scientific element and its relationship to the dissolution of traditional social and poetic patterns. Though the first two ciclos of the volume have their share of "rosas ultrajadas" ("defiled roses"), and "amor blasfematorio" ("blasphemous love"), the anthropomorphized landscapes take on a more jolting profile in the third ciclo, or cycle, where they are juxtaposed to Lugones' incongruous list of scientific and historical events. Although this volume is usually considered romantic in tone, its variations

suggest some unusual twists. The "potro del viento" ("colt of the wind") earlier associated with the searching poetic persona, becomes the crashing locomotive, the "Gran caballo nego al cual no se ve sudar"^[9] (the "Great black stallion whose sweat is not seen"). In this third ciclo Lugones sets this new beast next to more familiar constructions, mixing the organic and the technological with poetry's favored symbolic groupings:

Y mira cómo se llena de amor el metal, tocándole el alma por medio del rayo; y cómo se ordena la armonía de los átomos; y cómo en la carne de los seres se modela la futura estatua que ha de set el coronamiento de los Reinos: la triple estatua de talones de piedra, cintura de árbol y cabeza elocuente; y cómo en el sereno mar de sangre de las matrices está de la maternidad la flor callada, en el sueño de su corola de nueve pétalos; y cómo los carros sonantes corren pot la paralela de hierro, en pos del corcel de hierro, cuya alma es un trueno de hierro, y cuyos bronquios de hierro tosen el huracán, y cuyo corazón de hierro va tempestado de brasas.(OPC, 99)

(And see how the metal swells with love, its soul touched by lightning; and how the harmony of atoms is ordered; and how in the flesh of beings the future statue, to be the crown of the Kingdoms, is modeled: the triple statue with heels of stone, treelike waist and eloquent head; and how in the serene sea of the blood of the wombs lies the silent flower of maternity in its dreamy corolla of nine petals; and how the noisy cars speed along the iron parallel, in pursuit of the iron stallion, whose soul is of thunderous iron and whose iron bronchia cough up the hurricane, and whose iron heart goes forth stormed by hot coals.)

Even the quickening rhythm here signals an increasing fascination with the fabricated objects of an increasingly technological world.

modernismo 's extremes of beauty had to call forth their underside, the grinding gears that keep the machine going. Organic form, so highly praised in part of Lugones' early work, finds its corruption in these new hybrid forms, but most significant is the changing vision of the female figure. Taking his case to extremes, he singles out the figure of the Virgin to exemplify the horrors of fleshly decay:

Entonces, ¡oh armonía de los santos cielos!, parece como si sobre una herida vieja se derramara un ungüento de perlas finas; como si cada pecho estuviera lleno de música . . .

Y una voz se levanta diciendo: he aquí la Virgen que ha roto su prisión de seis mil años, para ofrendar a la Vida el jardín codiciado de su seno; he aquí sus cabellos, he aquí su carne que el horror de la esterilidad marchita, y que en la gloria de la germinación florecen, como divinos adornos, del trance luminoso . . . (OPC, 102)

(And then, Oh harmony of the sacred heavens!, it appears that a potion of fine pearls has been poured over an old wound; as if each breast were filled with music. . . .

Then, a voice rises speaking: behold the Virgin who has broken her prison of six thousand years, to offer to Life the coveted garden of her breast; behold her hair, behold her flesh withered by the horror of barrenness, and in the glory of germination they flourish, resembling divine adornments, of the luminous trance . . .)

The visceral nature of the passage leaps to the forefront, despite the slight taming effect of the accustomed setting. Even more startling is the reappearance of the "Rosa resplandeciente" (the "Blazing rose") to close the cycle of Las montañas del oro as the crowning image of the "Torre de Oro" (the "Golden Tower"). The triumvirate includes "el AMOR, la ESPERANZA, . . . y más alta, más alta, sobre todas las oraciones, sobre todas las liras, vestida con el fulgor de todos los soles, saludada por el fervor de todas las alabanzas, como un corazón de oro fundiéndose en llamas, más alta, más alta, la Rosa resplandeciente: la FE, en un formidable despedazamiento de astros" (OPC, 103), ("LOVE, FAITH, . . . and higher, higher, above all the prayers, above all the lyres, dressed with the splendor of all the suns, hailed by the fervor of all praise, like a heart of gold melting in the flames, higher, the Blazing Rose: FAITH in a splendid eruption of stars"). Like many other strange groupings in Lugones' poetry and prose, this grouping seems to thwart the allegorical summing-up that Lugones often resorts to. The bizarre mixture at the close of the volume, added to other extreme pairings, calls into question the journey of the "alma golondrina" (the "swallow's spirit") who seeks to ascend to the heights of the "cima pura" (the "pure crest").

Las montañas del oro 's structure reinforces its thematic polarities. It constantly presents thematic opposites and then explores the unknown territory lying between them. The book's format, with divisions clearly marked by titles and its obvious assemblage as a unified work, struggles to maintain the coherent conceptual framework. It is composed of a lengthy introduction and three cycles. The three cycles, which differ thematically, are separated from one another by two "Reposorios" ("Responses") that return to the journey theme of the introduction. Loosely connecting all the sections is the journey of the poet, whose presence, although sometimes dispersed and displaced, gives the volume its coherence and direction.

Las montañas del oro has been interpreted as Lugones' attempt to recreate Dante's journey through the struggles of mankind; yet, without the aid of the introduction, epigraphs, and sections of the last cycle, this interpretation seems unlikely. The circuitous passage is perhaps more the record of Lugones' experimentation with new metrical forms and patterns of imagery than with an epic message. Certain patterns of imagery are developed extensively with different techniques, apparently for their own sake. The extent of their elaboration becomes the focus of the work, and not their value as bearers of intention. The mention of "pasos dantescos" ("Dantesque steps") in the introduction gives way to other forms of exploration. In the book's three cycles, the journey is not through the introduction's ordered realm of panoramic description but is a fragmented passage through the realm of the senses ("Primer ciclo"), through anthropomorphized landscapes ("Segundo ciclo"), and to the ascent and return to the panoramic view from the tower ("Tercer ciclo"). The final passage of the cycle marks a return to the ideal concepts of Amor, Esperanza, and Fe presented in the introduction, a discovery finally viewed from the summit of the "Torre de Oro."

The fall into darkness and the depths from the summit of light and faith, followed by the upward return to light, is a projection of an interior journey. In the interior cycles the organizing, rational poetic consciousness presented in the introduction is metonymically displaced onto surrounding nature or undergoes an inversion process when the rational, intellectual forces confront sensuality or eroticism. The opposition and divi-

siveness of the conflict of conscious and unconscious desires is projected outward onto nature, animal and human—especially female—forms. The idea of infinite expansion or progression through outward forms has its parallel in the expanding forms of consciousness, a concept forming the basis of much romantic poetry.^[10] The two modes of examination of humanity—one outwardly and socially directed, the other inward-turning—form the base of the poetry of Lugones' favored models. The poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, and Victor Hugo is reflected in the different forms of Las montañas del oro and in its abrupt jumps from one direction of conscience to another.

Introduction to Las Montañas Del Oro

The introduction to Las montañas del oro presents a poetic journey that strays from its contrasts of sublimity and degradation to give a tour of modernismo 's monuments built for social awareness and redemption. In Lugones' scheme of universality, the "Nuevo Mundo" ("New World") is not only an allegorical realm but a very present, endangered Spanish American frontier. The shift of focus, here ponderous and clearly drawn, from the personal spiritual journey to the exhortative mission of the prophet shows the same mixture of solipsistic viewpoint and messianic vision seen earlier in the prose journalism. The attack on positivism, the call to the People (el Pueblo), and the warning against the Herculean "Tío Sam" ("Uncle Sam"), repeat modernismo 's emphasis on the mixture of aesthetic and social battles.

The last section of the introduction provides the rationale for the beginning of the poetic journey and also establishes the thematic link to the first two cycles. In the midst of a cataclysm of darkness, faced with "esas formidables alarmas del abismo" ("those formidable alarms from the abyss") in the apocalyptic night that sets the poles of the earth against each other, the narrative voice establishes the path of ascension:

La Cruz austral radiaba desde la enorme esfera
Con sus cuatro flamígeros clavos, cual si quisiera
En sus terribles brazos crucificar al Polo.

                         . . . yo estaba solo

Entre mi pensamiento y la eternidad. Iba
Cruzando con dantescos pasos la noche . . .
                              (OPC,  60)

(The Southern Cross radiated from the enormous sphere
with its four flaming spikes, as if it desired
to crucify the Pole in its terrible arms

                         . . . I was alone
between my thoughts and eternity. I was
crossing with Dantesque steps the night . . .)

Although this passage suggests the possibility of descent and impending danger, the movement into the first cycle is so abrupt that the previously established unifying perspectives are totally dissolved. Despite the introduction's last passage, which mentions "bestias luminosas" ("luminous beasts"), "heridas / En el flanco" ("wounded in their sides"), and unbridled movement, the eroticism of the first cycle moves to the forefront so suddenly that its very appearance seems to dissolve the rational consciousness that ostensibly directs it. The first cycle's epigraph, "HIC SUNT LEONES (Anotación geográfica de un antiguo mapamundi)" ("HIC SUNT LEONES [Geographical notations on an ancient map of the world]"), carries a connotation of danger and bestiality, which will be developed almost completely in terms of sexuality, darkness, and punishment. The epigraph also announces the intention of removal to distant places and epochs, as if it were a journey into some savage land long ignored.

Earthly physicality in the introduction serves a purpose different from that of the first two cycles. There its presence is integrated into a symbolic system and its claims for attention are denied in favor of an ideal scheme. The suggestiveness of fragments of an earthly order is circumscribed within the enclosure of the polarized scheme. In the first two cycles, however, the repercussions of fragments of a more sensual natural order will begin to overtake the ideal scheme and dislocate the balancing system. The quest for poetic knowledge eventually must encounter its "cavernas" ("caverns"), and its "abismo" ("abyss")—a reversion to primitivism—as the inevitable counterpart of the

unrestrained elevation.^[11] Many symbols in the first two ciclos are drawn from the same network of classical and biblical motifs often used for erotic suggestion. The constant mingling of "castigo" ("punishment") with "lujuria" ("lust") shows a dangerous pleasure in transgression.^[12]

"Primer Ciclo":
The Erotic Landscape

The system of imagery in the first cycle allows for greater freedom of associations and suggestion than the structures of the introduction. It is, however, monotonously continuous, and explicit similes thunder out analogies. At times the terms that compose and announce the analogies are startling in their association. For example, in "Metempsicosis" the unification of animal traits and natural landscapes presents striking contrasts: "Una luna ruinosa se perdía—con su amarilla cara de esqueleto—en distancias de ensueño y de problema;—y había un mar, pero era un mar eterno,—dormido en un silencio sofocante—como un fantástico animal enfermo.—Sobre el filo más alto de la roca,—ladrando al hosco mar, estaba un perro" (OPC, 72), ("An evil moon was losing itself—with its yellow skeleton face—in distances of dream and problem ;—and there was a sea, but it was an eternal sea,—asleep in a suffocating silence—like a sick, fantastic animal. Upon the highest rocky ridge,—barking at the dark sea, was a dog"). The association of animal traits with the poetic persona is a constant in the first two cycles, and it gives a nebulous framework to the savagery and victimization that accompany the theme of sexuality.

The subjects of the first cycle are descriptions of mental states or of objects—"Oda a la desnudez," "A histeria," "Los celos del sacerdote," "La rima de los ayes," "Nebulosa Thule," "La vendimia de sangre," "Rosas del Calvario," "Metempsicosis," and "Antífonas." Eroticism, heavily laden with sadistic or macabre overtones, constitutes the major thematic material. The universal, impersonal religious imagery used in the introduction is here distorted to produce a satanic scheme of darkness, with the redemptive elements of light and ascension largely absent.

In a work where everything reverses the earlier stated

pattern—a spiritual underworld which is "la infinita latitud de mi alma—con silenciosas noches de seis meses" (OPC, 66) ("The infinite latitude of my soul—with its silent nights of six months")—even the mountain peaks represent a reversal of the earlier order. The mountain is a crypt, and the attention is directed to its interior, the fall from the peak to the caverns: "—Que allí ruge una mar de ondas acerbas—que enturbian los asfaltos y las naftas;—y que en ella las almas desembocan—los tristes sedimentos de sus llagas" (OPC, 67), ("There roars a sea of scathing waves—that obscure the asphalts and naphthas;—into it the souls empty—the wretched sediments of their sores").

The figure of the woman and the presence of eroticism abruptly enter this cycle. The break in the patterns of imagery and changes in the typographical format which accompany the theme of eroticism point out its transgressive, disruptive nature. Antitheses are no longer clearly outlined and conducive to soothing mediation. Even the all-inclusive vision of the central poetic figure breaks down, for the evasion of explicit erotic description leads to dissymmetry of expression. Here the female images are the favored ones of the decadents: the pale, spectral beauty and the cruel and distant femme fatale with androgynous characteristics.^[13] Lugones mixes several types in his cast, from Poe's romantic heroine to the cadaverous image of necrophiliac passions in decadent fiction. The choice of the night as a temporal setting, with its countering effect to the rational forces of light, reinforces the transgressive nature of the theme. ^[14]

Traditional symbols relating to the female—those of Christian iconography as well as simple physical description—contribute to the unification of all the elements, for example, flores, rosas, seno, luna, azucena, manzanas, del Edén (flowers, roses, breast, moon, lily, apples, of Eden). Far from being an idealized conception of woman, however, these terms are used for degradation. The women are the "mujeres de mis noches" ("women of my nights"), and the feminine imagery is charged with degeneration: "Las llagas de las flores" ("the wounds of my flowers"), "rosas ultrajadas" ("defiled roses"), "las pálidas nupcias de la fiebre—florecen como crímenes" ("the pale wed-

ding of the fever—flourishes like crimes"), "la media luna, como blanca uña—apuñaleando un seno" ("the half moon like a white fingernail—stabbing a breast"), "tus uñas, dagas de oro" ("your fingernails, golden daggers"). The idea of possession is that of profanation: "Quiero que ciña una corona de oro—tu coraznó . . .y que brille tu frente de Sibila—en gloria cirial de los altares,—como una hostia de sagrada harina:—y que triunfes, desnuda como una hostia, en la pascua ideal de mis delicias" (OPC, 62) ("I want a golden crown to encircle—your heart . . . and I want your Sybilline brow to shine—in the glory of the altar candles,—like a host of sacred flour:—and I want you to triumph, naked like a host, in the ideal Easter ceremony of my pleasures").

Liturgical terms linked to eroticism are a constant in much of modernista poetry, as in Darío's Prosas profanas and much of Herrera y Reissig's verse. The iconography of medieval Christianity and mysticism provided an ideal source for mixture with the sensual images of Byzantine and Greek mythology. Yet Lugones is often more sexually explicit and violent than either Darío or Herrera y Ressig, as in "A Histeria": "—la selva dolorosa cuyos gajos—echaban sangre al golpe de las hachas,—como los miembros de un molusco extraño . . .—Y era tu abrazo como nudo de horca,—y eran glaciales témpanos tus labios,—y eran agrios alambres mis tendones,—y eran zarpas retráctiles mis manos,—y era el enorme potro un viento negro—furioso en su carrera de mil años" (OPC, 63) ("—the aching jungle whose limbs—spurted blood at the blow of the axe,—like the limbs of a strange mollusc . . .—And so your embrace was like the knot of a noose,—and like glacial floes were your lips,—and bitter wires were my tendons,—and so the enormous stallion was a black wind—furious in its thousand-year race"). The link between sexuality, victimization, and the woman is especially explicit in "Los celos del sacerdote" in the "deseado crucifijo de las bodas": "—y la gracia triunfal de tu cintura,—como una ánfora llena de magnolias,—y el hermético lirio de tu sexo,—lirio lleno de sangre y de congojas" (OPC, 65) ("desired crucifix of the weddings":—"and the triumphant grace of' your waist,—like an amphora filled with magnolias,—and the impenetrable iris of your sex,—iris full of blood and anguish"). These combinations

of suggestion and explicitness, especially here in the first cycle with its repetition and exclamations, sometimes strain the poetic associations to the point of creating a perhaps unwitting and grotesque parody on Lugones' part.

Profanation, linked with the macabre, is present in almost all the poems of the first cycle. The imagery patterns, established in the introduction (heridas, abismos, cavernas, larvas de los vicios [wounds, abysses, caverns, larvae of vices]) depart from the ideological frame of reference provided by the introduction. The human link is made explicit: "en la hipnótica selva de mi alma" ("in the hypnotic jungle of my soul") ("Rosas del Calvario" [OPC, 69]). The messianic prophet is transformed into his opposite: "Ése es mi corazón, el Maldiciente,—el que canta a los cielos tenebrosos—donde lloran en fuego las estrellas. . . . Ése es mi corazón hinchado de odios,—como un estuche de terribles joyas—ávidas de punzar tu cuerpo de oro" (OPC, 69) ("That is my heart, the slanderer,—who praises the dark skies—where blazing stars shed tears. . . . That is my heart swollen by many hatreds,—like a box of terrible jewels—anxious to stab your golden neck"). The sadomasochistic element is one of the most powerful sources of thematic material, for the frequent repetition of"castigo," "herida," "llagas" ("punishment," "wound," "sores") constantly parallels scenes of sensuality: "Y cuando hundido en la imponente noche—como el escombro de una altiva estatua,—naufrague mi cerebro en el ensueño,—yo exaltaré el cariño de tus garras,—como aprieta el cilicio a sus riñones—el lujurioso asceta en sus batallas" (OPC, 70) ("And when in the imposing night—like the ruins of a proud statue,—my brain awash in fantasy,—I shall praise the affection of your embrace,—just as the lecherous ascetic in his battles pulls tight the hairshirt around his kidneys").

In the nocturnal settings only one side of the cosmos outlined in the introduction is developed, the realm of darkness combined with shrouded as well as explicit eroticism. Erotic imagination adopts negative connotations by its description in terms of delirium, darkness unredeemed except for the reflected, spectral light of the moon seen in the pallor of the female amid skeletal ruins, and the repetition of wounding. The thunder of

proclamation gives way to the voices of the nocturnal forest, carried by the wind and the poet's lyre.

The animal most closely associated with the wind and the night is the stallion or colt, linked to the masculine poetic voice. Its association with sexuality is made explicit by its link to "yeguas" ("mares") while the mystery of the feminine is involved with the night's invasiveness and the wounding power of nocturnal eyes. The moon's reflection is cold and deathlike, as in "Rosas del Calvario," and its connotation is always negative within this section; it is deathly pale and merely reflective in "Metempsicosis": "Una luna ruinosa se perdía—con su amarilla cara de esqueleto—en distancias de ensueño y de problema" (OPC, 72) ("An evil moon was losing itself—with its yellow skeleton face—in distances of dream and problem"). Its very mention accompanies an unusual pairing of terms, "de ensueño y de problema" ("of dream and of problem"), which prefigures the use of the moon theme within a constant scheme of dislocation and fragmentation, as in the Lunario sentimental .

Repetition of the same nuclear elements often carried to extremes is one of the most important stylistic devices in the first cycle. Apparently borrowing from Poe, and even more clearly from José Asunción Silva's Nocturnos, rhythmic repetition at times produces the desired incantatory effect, but also creates a numbing sensation by pounding out the same element in a repetitive syntactical arrangement, as in "Oda a la desnudez":

—Mira la desnudez de las estrellas;—la noble desnudez de las bravías—panteras del Nepal, la carne pura—de los recién nacidos; tu divina—desnudez que da luz como una lámpara—de ópalo y cuyas vírgenes primicias—disputaré al gusano que te busca,—para morderte con su helada encía—el panal perfumado de tu lengua,—tu boca, con frescuras de piscina. (OPC, 62)

—Look at the nakedness of the stars;—the noble nakedness of the savage panthers of Nepal, the pure flesh—of the newborn; your divine nakedness which shines like a lamp—of opal and whose virgin first fruits—I shall dispute with the worm that seeks,—to bite with its frozen gums,—the perfumed honeycomb of your tongue,—your mouth with the freshness of a pool.)

The same technique of repetition can produce a seemingly conscious parody of itself, as in "Rosas del Calvario." In extending the description of deathly pallor and frigidity, the reduction of elements to a parenthetical expression is as deflating an operation as a footnote in a poem: "Mi novia yerta viene:—es un callado lirio—que nació en la bondad de los sepulcros—(Flor, Virgen, Alma, Espuma, Nieve, Símbolo),—¡lo frágil!" (OPC, 71) ("My beloved, so rigid, comes;—she is a silenced iris—born in the kindness of the sepulcre—(Flower, Virgin, Soul, Foam, Snow, Symbol) O so fragile!"). Rather than extending the comparison, this shortcut ends with the word "símbolo" ("symbol") followed by the summary "¡lo frágil!" ("so fragile!"). In the same poem, the words "símbolo" or "simbólico" are repeated three times, drawing attention to the artificial nature of the scene created. The heaping up of nouns in one stretch, compressing the extended previous description, serves the same purpose.

"Segundo Ciclo":
Violence and Nature

Extraordinary landscapes form the background of the second cycle, whose dominant characteristics are the hostile, embattled forces that surge through nature's forms—trees, mountains, sea, coal, cattle, clouds, and wind. The first cycle's presentation of eroticism in terms of physical wounding (for example, "llagas," "heridas" ["sores," "wounds"]) is here transformed into a more generalized anthropomorphic landscape, the cycles of nature itself. It is as if individual passions were mirrored by scenes from nature (a reflecting technique made much more explicit in Los crepúsculos del jardín ). In the second cycle of Las montañas del oro the passionate quality of natural forces is physically agonizing and destructive, as in "Las montañas": "¡Oh, cuán fríos son los besos de las nieves,—de las nieves que ensangrienta la agonía de las tardes, . . ."(OPC, 82) ("Oh, how cold are the kisses of the snows,—of the snows that are bloodstained by the agony of the afternoons! . . . "). Similarly, in "Los árboles" clouds are dissolved into martyrdom: "como yeguas desgreñadas que se agolpan . . .—como pira de amazonas degolladas—que confunden las heridas desnudeces

de sus cuerpos" (OPC, 80) ("like rumpled mares who crowd together . . .—like a pyre of slaughtered Amazons—confusing the naked wounds of their bodies").

Repetition is even more pronounced in the second cycle than in the first. Descriptive passages are extended at great length by the use of the conjunction y (and), while apostrophe and exclamation, present in the first cycle, are almost totally absent. The absence of the first-person voice, combined with an extremely lengthy sentence structure, creates a distancing, impersonal effect. In this cycle, which describes the elemental forces of nature, the distancing effect contributes to the enormity and grandeur of the scenes described. Although the specific human element is absent, the thematic elements are anthropomorphized—el desierto, los árboles, las montañas, el mar, el carbón, las vacas, las nubes, el viento (the desert, trees, mountains, sea, coal, cattle, clouds, wind). These natural scenes are described in terms of the dichotomy of the sexes, with veiled mythological references and the language of esoteric religions.

In the nocturnal world of pulsating movement and sound, the elements are victimized by devouring, unspecified primal forces. Without the aid of an explicit thematic link, the martyrdom of "El hijo del hombre" is repeated in the forms of nature. Even light can appear in "Los árboles" as a disruptive image: "—se esfuma la Vía Láctea cual la sutura de un cráneo—negro" (OPC, 8) ("—the Milky Way disappears as if it were the suture in a black cranium"). Nowhere is the erotic aspect of nature's processes more pronounced that in "La Mar." The sea is "la hembra jadeante" ("the panting female") whose "grandes pechos—de sirena echa a la orilla,—y los muerden los peñascos,—y las ásperas arenas los lastiman" (OPC, 84) (great siren breasts,—she throws to the shore,—and the rocks bite them,—and the rough sands bruise them"). The sea's eternal flux, "sus pulsos acordes como octavas gigantescas" ("its flux in harmony like gigantic octaves") occurs on another level, the cyclic passage of the sun into night, yet another martyrdom, where the sun is also battered about and is like "una gran rosa deshojada" ("a great deflowered rose"). The sea as it approaches the coast resembles the enveloping approach of the night; both are procreative, and at the same time threatening:

—y el confuso advenimiento de las vidas—riega su matriz de flores,—y de fósforos rielantes la ilumina,—y el misterio de los gérmenes en los plácidos silencios—de las aguas, tiene nupcias de amatista. (OPC, 84)

—and the confusing arrival of lives,—drenches her womb with flowers,—and with shimmering matchlights illuminates her,—and the mystery of germs in the placid silences—of the waters, celebrates amethyst nuptials.)

The sea throws itself against the rock, "—destrozándose . . . en las hondas convulsiones del insomnio de su gran cuerpo de víctima" (OPC, 84) ("—destroying itself . . . in the deep convulsions of insomnia of its great victim's body").

A mention of ecstasy is always associated with violence. The fate of all nature is to devour and be devoured. Therefore everything is described in terms of physical martyrdom. Even silence takes on corporal form in "Las vacas." Dream is also like a physical presence: "Flota el sueño de los bosques—impregnado de la gran extenuación de las aromas—en el seno de la noche como un feto agonizante" (OPC, 86) ("The dream of the forests floats—impregnated with the great weakening of the aromas—in the heart of the night like an agonizing fetus"). Cattle do not appear framed in the usual placid picture of a pastoral setting. Their sound arrives first, "como el lívido sollozo de una viudez herida—que lancea el largo flanco de la sombra" (OPC, 86) ("like the pale wimper of wounded widowhood—that spears the long side of the shadow").

In the second reposorio, "Laudatoria a Narcisco," the poetic voice again emerges as a unified presence. Even though the combative yo of the introduction and first reposorio is directed toward a public and carries a social message, the two interior cycles dissolve this unifying voice in a solipsistic projection onto a multitude of earthly and unearthly presences. In "Laudatoria a Narcisco" the return of the unifed voice is not accompanied by the same concerns. Leaving behind the messianic stance of the prophet in the wilderness, this yo (I) is directed to itself alone. No more fitting image of self-contemplation could be found than that of Narcissus. Exterior reality fades from view as the soul contemplates itself, losing itself in the rites of commu-

nion with solitude, no longer striving to gain an outside audience nor to push it to action. The passage of time is no longer perceived and the rite of mirroring is endlessly repeated.

The act of self-enclosure, whose ultimate aim is self-knowledge, must not look toward exterior forms for its expression. Therefore the images of this rite are taken from liturgical or magical forms, whose purpose is to draw the unifying conscience together again. Removing associations of punishment and wounding from sexual pleasure, the rite is a sensual one, "en el completo / Deleite de la consunción" ("in the complete / Pleasure of consummation"). In the address to Narcissus, natural elements are no longer devouring but are bound together in an animating, vital structure: "Y la virtud del fuego que animó tu estructura / Carnal, hecha de sangre, de lirio y de amargura" (OPC, 91) ("And the virtue of the fire that gave life to your carnal / Structure made of blood, of iris and of bitterness"). With the combination "de sangre, de lirio y de amargura" ("of blood, of iris and of bitterness"), one begins to see the condensing or foreshortening process that will occupy a major role in many of the poems of Los crepúsculos del jardín . The very image of the soul's duality, as it is reflected in the water, will be expanded in the second volume to an almost constant process of reflection, self-enclosure, and introspection. The narcissistic focus subsumes all things viewed under its self-reflexive nature.

The second reposorio 's final salute to Verlaine, although fitting within the context of this poem, hardly announces what is to come in the third cycle. As if pressing on in his "titanic epic," Lugones pays homage to another poetic model and seeks yet another revelation of the perfect model of the poetic spirit. The "suaves clavicordios" ("soft clavichords") of the second reposorio are scarcely fitting for the proclamations to modernity that will be made in the final cycle: "El himno de las torres" praises "la gloria de las buenas artes de hierro y la de piedra" ("the glory of the good arts of iron and stone") and leaves behind the fluidity and measure of the rites of Narcissus. Making a complete about-face, the poetic voice once again thunders out to the multitudes, and the poetic soul, now the "golondrina ideal . . . desde su torre sigue mirando" (OPC, 95) ("the ideal swallow . . .

continues to keep watch from her tower"). The previous passage through the cosmos, the interior darkness, and contemplation has led to this—a bird's eye view of human evolution and future progress. Absurd in its grandiosity and conception and rapid jumps, the logic of the poetic journey is yet undeniable. In Nervo's terms, "el mismo deseo infantil de hacer saber que se sabe" ("the same childish desire to show how much he knows") reaches its highest point in the third cycle. Ending the whirlwind tour of the universe with a flourish, the last cycle resembles a catalogue of the events of humanity, a compressed history lesson. Saúl Yurkiévich has pointed out the resemblances between this cycle and the poetic practices of juxtaposition by Huidobro and the modernistas .^[15] Notable also is the forecasting of elements to come in Los crepúsculos del jardín and especially in Lunario sentimental . Despite its partial justification in terms of the journey of ascent and descent, the eclecticism and exaggeration bring forth a self-deflating movement. The long lists of names and places produce a loss of perspective under the weight of their sheer abundance.

The last cycle does, however, thematically bring together the previous elements of the volume. It establishes a retrospective continuity between the "Introducción," and the two intermediate cycles. Surveying all of the physical world from the "Torre de Oro," the voyager poet again finds opportunity for the ascent to the heights and can survey the day's cyclical passage from day to night and then to a new dawn.

"Tercer Ciclo":
Mysticism and Technology

Just as the "Introducción" begins with "una gran columna de silencio y de ideas en/marcha. / El canto grave que entonan las mareas / Respondiendo a los ritmos de los mundos lejanos. . . . " ("a great column of silence and ideas / march forth. / The deep song harmonized by the tides. / Responding to the rhythms of faraway lands . . . "), so the third cycle is initiated with a mention of song and sound. Topics of modemity and of the conflict of science and nature again enter, and from the elevated perspective the aims of faith and reason are to be resolved. Mythic

aspects of antiquity mingle with the discoveries of the present, while the treasures of antiquity are contiguous with the rhythmic cycle of nature, just as modemity discovers a new nature. New realms of discovery will create new pathways of understanding. Lugones gives a new twist to the organic metaphor:

Y hay no obstante otros hombres, sabios, que hacen libros, como quien siembra una selva, para tener maderos con que arbolar naves futuras: Darwin y Claudio Bernard, Crookes y el profesor Roentgen, Pasteur, Edison, Ernesto [sic] Hello y Nietzsche, Karl Marx y Fabre d'Olivet y Eliphas Lévi, Champollion, Augusto Comte, Maury, Vogt y Ralph Waldo Emerson. (OPC, 99)

(And there are nevertheless, other men, sages, who write books like someone who plants a jungle, in order to produce wood to outfit future ships: Darwin and Claude Bernard, [etc.] . . . )

Paying tribute to his century, this eclectic list praises the unification of science and vision:

Y mira cómo se llena de amor el metal, tocándole el alma por medio del rayo; y cómo se ordena la armonía de los átomos; y cómo en la carne de los seres se modela la futura estatua que ha de set el coronamiento de los Reinos: la triple estatua de talones de piedra, cintura de árbol y cabeza elocuente. (OPC, 99)

(And see how the metal swells with love, its soul touched by lightning; and how the harmony of atoms is ordered; and how in the flesh of beings the future statue, to be the crown of the Kingdoms, is modeled: the triple statue with heels of stone, treelike waist and eloquent head.)

The same descriptive opulence earlier applied to the elements of nature is present, though less frequent. The newly explored continents are set forth in terminology similar to that of the first cycle's erotic descriptions. The new lands are:

tierras negras donde el Sol se acuesta entre palmeras; donde hay serpientes que parecen joyas venenosas y flores más bien pintadas que los tigres; y bisontes, y elefantes, y jirafas, y pájaros del Paraíso, y luciérnagas, y resinas, y esencias, y bálsamos, y corales, y perlas—

éstas en conchas de valvas rosadas, como hostias intactas entre labios que comulgan—, y dulces nueces, y polvo de oro. (OPC, 97)

(black lands where the Sun sets among palm trees; where there are snakes that resemble venomous jewels and flowers more vividly colored than tigers: and bisons, and elephants, and giraffes, and birds of Paradise, and fireflies, and resin, and essences, and balsams, and corals, and pearls—these in shells with rosy valves, like hosts, intact, between lips receiving communion—, and sweet nuts and powdered gold.)

In the penultimate section, the passage of night into day is resolved by the descent of God to the "Torre de Oro." The appearance of celestial beings explains and gives coherence to the succession of earlier states. Even the appearance of the Virgin is described in terms earlier used for erotic description. In conjunction with the first cycle, this last section is obviously meant to tie together the previous erotic passage with the rising of the soul from night to day: "Porque ya es la Pascua sobre tu noche de seis mil años" (OPC, 102) ("Because it is finally Easter over your night of six thousand years").

The final section concludes the cycle with an ascension and the appearance of the virtues: el Amor, la Esperanza, and la Fe . The poetic voyager, authenticated through the passage of the poetic journey, has now returned to the position of heights and self-knowledge forecast in the introduction. While in the introduction the conflict between faith and doubt is seen in stark terms of rigid dichotomies, with faith represented as ascetic purity rising out of darkness ("La cima es el esfuerzo visible del abismo / Que lucha en las tinieblas por salir de sí mismo" [OPC, 57] ["The peak is the visible effort of the abyss / That battles in the darkness to overcome itself"]), in the final passage of the third cycle its nature changes. It is opulent, fiery, and acclaimed, "como un corazón de oro fundiéndose en llamas, más alta, más alta, la Rosa resplandeciente: la Fe, en un formidable despedazamiento de astros" (OPC, 103) ("like a golden heart being melted in flames, higher, higher, the blazing Rose: Faith, in an astounding eruption of stars"). The sensual imagery once confined to darkness and sexuality is elevated and greeted with acclaim. In conjunction with the description of the Virgin, the

"Rosa resplandeciente" takes on mystical and sensual associations. Like the rest of the third cycle, here many traits once codified into dichotomies are now combined in multivalent symbols, unstable as they may be.

One of the most significant elements of the third cycle is its praise of progress and technology. The names of contemporaries from all professions are given along with those of musicians, spiritual leaders, and explorers from the past. The eclectic mix foreshadows the juxtaposition of ancient and modern mythology that will be used in Lunario sentimental . Elements from the second cycle, which there describe psychic states, are here used to name technical realities. The railroad, prime symbol of technology and expansion, is described in animated form:

¡gran caballo, negro, negro, negro, gran caballo comedor de fuego, gran caballo en temblor de enormes músculos lanzado, con una nube en las narices, a los jadeantes trotes del millar de leguas: gran caballo negro, gran caballo negro, gran caballo negro al cual no se ve sudar! (OPC, 99)

(Great black, black, black horse, great fire-eating horse, great horse thrown forth in a trembling of enormous muscles, with a cloud in its nostrils, to the panting, thousand-league trots: great black horse, great black horse, great black horse that never sweats!)

These symbolic groupings are mixed to the point of incongruity, and if these last passages of the third cycle were not contained within the structure of the volume as a whole, their hybrid appearance would seem to be a parody of the fanciful and often bizarre mixtures modernismo created with its inherited symbols.

Conclusion

In no other selections from Lugones' early work does his avid desire to be in the forefront of artistic endeavors show more clearly than in Las montañas del oro . Still under the spell of modernismo 's rush into territories to conquer and assimilate, Lugones attempts to scale the heights in record time. The furious rush of assimilation leaves little time for careful arrangement and measured gradation from one style to the next. Experimenting with

practices that would become more apparent in later poets (such as the ultraístas and Huidobro), Lugones' first major work reflects his age's anxiety to move into the mainstream.

The poetic journey, through the leaps among the poet's models—Homer, Dante, Hugo, Poe, Whitman, Verlaine, and countless unnamed ones—does indeed constitute an allegory, an unsteady and paradoxical one. Although Lugones' original scheme of dichotomies is rearranged and fractured to such an extent that only fragments can be seen toward the end (despite the last-ditch effort in the third cycle at summing up his purpose), the remnants of his model texts crop up along the way to orient his followers. If not an allegory with universal meaning, the particular outlines of this rite of passage do have special relevance for the poetry in the modernista context. Darío's earlier mentioned comment, comparing Lugones' process of assimilation to "un rápido choque de miradas" ("a swift clashing of glances"), points out the rapid, jolting, and all-encompassing nature of the volume. Not only does he strive to include all the great figures of poetry, Lugones also wants to include thinkers, inventors, mystics, and magicians of the past and present in his opus . Since the original framework cannot accommodate all this within its scheme of polarities, a final flourish of lists climaxes his survey from the towering stance of encyclopedic knowledge and vision. Attempting to surpass modernismo 's foremost poet, Rubén Darío, who searched for a path to incorporate "toda la lira" ("all of the lyric tradition"), Lugones attacks other realms—science and technology—in his effort to expand his poetic empire.

modernismo 's and Lugones' excesses, so flagrant in Las montañas del oro, will undergo a condensation and taming in later collections. Having traveled the poetic circuit of his day, Lugones will no longer be so flamboyant in his proposals. The massive ensemble will undergo a refining process, and as the inventory focuses in on reduced expanses, so the poetic subject will be reduced in perspective and presence. Nevertheless, although scale is being reduced, the particular traits of Las montañas del oro —its overt exaggerations, monumental excesses and overloadings, willful twistings of form and content, and elements of grotesque humor—will continue and be intensified in different functions in Los crepúsculos deljardín and Lunario sentimental .