5—
Lunario Sentimental and the Destruction of modernismo

No attack on the spirit and practice of modernismo made by succeeding generations of poets has been as complete as that of Lugones' in Lunario sentimental . For Lugones the poetic world of modernismo, no longer a secret code to be deciphered only by its initiates, had to be left behind, since its arcane symbols and transformations were now immediately apparent as visible signs of an established order. Having pushed this system to its limits in Los crepúculos del jardín, often to the point of overstepping its boundaries, Lugones recognized the futility of continuing in this vein and moved on to new territories, the mockery of archetypal patterns that he found in the poetry of Jules Laforgue. Despite the great strides forward into unaccustomed territory, there is a sense in the work of uneasy footing, a reluctance to relinquish every vestige of the older order. Despite Lunario sentimental 's allowance of broken and mingled hierarchies and long stretches of ambiguity, the guiding hand of the poet reasserts its presence in the form of parodic humor and cleverly fashioned rhyme.

Lunario Sentimental in Historical Perspective

No better evidence for the importance of Lugones' Lunario sentimental exists than the vehement commentary it provoked. Impossible to ignore, succeeding generations have either attacked it or incorporated many of its elements into their own work. Octavio Paz points out the volume's nature as a point of departure in the breakup of modernismo:

Después de Prosas profanas los caminos se cierran; hay que replegar las velas o saltar hacia lo desconocido. Rubén Darío escogió lo

primero y pobló las tierras descubiertas; Leopoldo Lugones se arriesgó a lo segundo. Cantos de vida y esperanza (1905) y Lunario sentimental (1909) son las dos obras capitales del segundo modernismo y de elias parten, directa o indirectamente, todas las experiencias y tentativas de la poesía moderna en lengua castellana.^[1]

(After Prosas profanas, the paths close; one must either trim the sails or leap into the unknown. Rubén Darío chose the first possibility and inhabited the discovered lands; Leopoldo Lugones risked following the second one. Cantos de vida y esperanza [1905] and Lunario sentimental [ 1909] are the two major works of the second modernismo, and from them come, directly or indirectly, all the experiences and attempts of modern poetry in the Spanish language.)

In Lunario sentimental the grand scheme of totalities and organic coherence crumbles. Objects, memories, multiple voices, and stock images intermingle without an organizing framework to bind them together. The eclectic mixture of names and places, the blend of past, present, and future in the Lunario sentimental has been forecast in the third cycle of Las montañas del oro . Like Huidobro's "collar de imágenes" ("necklace of images"), the images in parts of the Lunario sentimental will be strung together with seemingly little plotting of a total design. The Lunario sentimental represents the culmination and explosion of the impulse of modernismo . Its excesses do not sink under their own weight, as in "Los cisnes negros" of Los crepúsculos del jardín, but seem to rebel from within. Instead of clustering images even more tightly and intricately, as in Los crepúsculos del jardín, or balancing them along polar lines, as in Las montañas del oro, Lugones in the Lunario sentimental dismisses the laws of gravity and eliminates the tension of balancing widely ranging elements within obvious formal constraints. A type of parody or caricature is also present, but in an altered sense in comparison to Los crepúculos del jardín . Lugones modifies the outlines of models in an elusive way. Left with only fragments of an earlier order, the reader is left to join together new patterns from the images flung out. Yet one pattern or model does remain constant, that of rhyme. Consciously or unconsciously, it generates its own parody through extravagance. Accentuating an earlier trait, Lugones in Lunario sentimental emphasizes the use of

words for their sound value. It is not just the clash of meanings that suprises; the constancy of incongruous juxtaposition gradually becomes an accustomed experience for the reader, and the rhyme's drift becomes nonreferential to any pattern outside its own sonority.

The Lunario sentimental has been both praised as a high mark of originality in Spanish American poetry and derided as a misguided copy of the work and intentions of Laforgue. In straining the excesses and formal experimentation beyond modernismo 's aesthetic basic, that of the underlying harmony of spirit and universe, the Lunario sentimental released a flow of energy into poetry by means of its break with previous poetic norms. Given the prior evidence of Los crepúsculos del jardin, it is unlikely that Lugones planned to continue in the modernista vein. He was reluctant, however, to dismiss the claims this movement made for the power of poetry, as is shown in his prologue. In 1909, the same year as the issuing of the first manifesto of Futurism by Marinetti, Lugones published the poems of the Lunario sentimental . To them he attached a prologue that exalts innovation in poetry while scorning the public appetite he served. In this prologue he laboriously constructed yet another framework—this time one leaning on historical, not natural, precedents—as a justification for his continued exaltation of the poetic idiom. The "sagrada prenda de la lengua" ("the sacred treasure of language") is indeed an "espada de dos filos" (a "double-edged sword"). Lugones, in his devouring appetite for novelty in construction, proposes in his poetry a world view that he denies in his prologue, as well as in his continuation of some of poetry's formal constraints within the poems themselves.

To understand the importance of the Lunario sentimental requires not only a knowledge of the nature of the work itself, but also of the nature of the poetic conventions it assimilated and transformed. In the same manner, its critical reception and later influence are important for an understanding of subsequent poetry in Spanish America. Not only the text itself, but the perceptual and artistic patterns it embodies, had resonance for many years, the next discussion deals with these issues in the following manner: first, an examination of the work's prologue in relation to Lugones' previous writings; second, an overview

of the background and themes of the Lunario sentimental; third, an examination of its structure and techniques; and fourth, a review of the Lunario sentimental 's critical reception.

The Polemic Prologue

In the "Prólogo" to Lunario sentimental, Lugones address himself to two audiences, "la gente práctica" and "los literatos" ("the practical people" and "the literati"). To the first, he defends poetry as a pragmatic and functional good. Renewing language with new metaphors is a way of enriching society because "el idioma es un bien social" (OPC, 192) ("language is a social good"). Poetry is a luxury commodity: "Se llama lujo a la posesión comprada de las obras producidas pot las bellas artes" (OPC, 192) ("Luxury is defined as the ownership by purchase of works produced by the fine arts"). Functional by virtue of its civilizing nature, it can be bought and sold like any other manufactured product. If language itself is no longer privileged as metaphor, then its very elements—words—may be scattered without danger of disrupting a transcendental scheme of significance. If it is indeed merely malleable material, then its craftsmen are no longer prophets or videntes, and a "buen libro de versos" ("good book of verse") is no more than a "sala elegante" (an "elegant parlor") whose furnishings may be bought and sold as any other commodity. The Promethean martyrdom of the poet is no more than a day's labor or carnival performance, and the stolen fire is no more than a fireworks display (an idea powerfully developed in "Los fuegos artificiales"). In his address to the second audience, however, Lugones defends innovation in literature, especially the verso libre or free verse he espouses here, by showing its continuity with classical tradition. He defines poetry as music and compares its changing forms to the evolution of musical harmony. Unwilling to divest poetry of its superior nature, he scorns the triumph of the commonplace as "el envilecimiento del idioma" ("the debasement of language") (195). In comparison to those who do not understand the special nature of poetry's appeal, the poet' work will always be an elevated one: "Homero, Dante, Hugo, séran siempre más grandes que esa persona, sólo pot haber hecho versos" (OPC,

192) "Homer, Dante, Hugo will always be greater than that person, simply because they have written poetry").

Paradoxically, Lugones advocates artistic innovation as a liberation from outworn and degraded patterns of perception and expression, but insists on the continuity of its formal aspects, a paradox revealed within the poetry itself. In freeing his poetry from many constraints of the past—in themes, metrical patterns, and the types of construction of metaphor—Lugones' emphasis on innovation in metaphors and the importance of formal aspects in maintaining the musical nature of poetry does mark a departure from modernista tradition. Although the modernistas called for innovation in imagery and metrics, the images were usually selected from a commonly consented range. In Lunario sentimental Lugones widens the field of imagery to include topics of urban life and prosaic objects, in contrast to the archetypal images of beauty and timelessness. The subjects of poetry are removed from the realm of supernal existence and beauty to everyday life. For Lugones the use of any image is legitimate by virtue of its creative force in jolting the reader into new patterns of thinking, into making new analogies.

What is most striking in Lugones' statements in the "Prólogo" is their consistency with his earlier pronouncements on art. Although the poetic production in Lunario sentimental belies some of the points in the "Prólogo," Lugones insists on the civilizing, systematic nature of poetry and of art in general. Poets are the caretakers of language who guide its evolution and protect it from lapses into mediocrity. No longer claiming for the poet the role of genius or martyred hero, the poetic vocation for Lugones still occupies a rung on the human ladder several steps up from the masses. Although Lugones, unlike other modernistas, never truly participated in a cult of pure poetry, he was still unwilling to dismantle all of poetry's traditional rules and precepts, because doing so might change its stature as a noble influence. While bowing to a new audience and to a changed standard, he adopts a distanced attitude and an ironic posture before the nature of the change.

Toward the close of the prologue, Lugones specifically refers to the verse of the Lunario sentimental as an exteriorized creation resulting from interior conflicts, as if to deny all utilitarian so-

cial claims made earlier for the volume and its innovations. He expresses a purpose of intimate rancor: "¿Existía en el mundo empresa más pura y ardua que la de cantar a la luna pot venganza de la vida?" (OPC, 196) ("Did there exist a more arduous and pure enterprise in the world than that of singing to the moon as a revenge on life?"). The volume is not to be a mirror image of interior conflict, but a new creation, as different from interiority as light is from dark:

¿Habría podido hacerlo mejor, que manando de mí mismo la fuerza oscura de la lucha así exteriorizada en producto excelente, como la pena sombría y noble sale pot los ojos aclarada en cristal de llanto? (OPC, 196)

(Could I have done it better than drawing from myself the dark force of the struggle thus exteriorized in an excellent product, the way that somber and noble sadness springs from the eyes, cleared in a prism of tears?)

The terms "producto excelente" ("excellent product") and "cristal" ("prism") are important ill relating the prologue to the poems of the volume. The process of transforming dark, amorphous sensations to sparkling and hard-edged prisms suggests refraction. In Los crepúsculos del jardín the mirror image serves the purpose of self-duplication by the reflection of emotions in nature, yet in the Lunario sentimental the prismatic image creates a distancing effect. Its facets allow for a distancing of the self from the "fuerza oscura de la lucha" ("dark force of the struggle") and the "pena sombría y noble" ("somber and noble sadness"). The prism not only duplicates but also multiplies the self. With dramatization and multiple roles, the I can comment on the scenes presented and even participate without sacrificing distance. In Lunario sentimental the dramatic function—the use of many voices, the attention given to masks, multiple Pierrots, and dramatized scenes—provides techniques for the process of duplication and self-reflection. The term "producto excelente" also points up the technical nature of the works. As excellent fabrications, the poems point up the technical prowess of their creator. The accustomed automatized roles of stock images are made more clearly visible by displaying their new and unex-

pected possibilities in different contexts. Instead of being deadened, significant coded terms—"luna," "sol," "rosas," "amor," "poeta" ("moon," "sun," "roses," "love," "poet")—will be pulled out of their accustomed hierarchies and forced to mingle with others that give them different connotations.

Since once-familiar poetic signs are now freed from their previous constraints, the stated role of the poet must change also. In Las montañas del oro the figure of the poet was one of extremes. As chosen prophet leading the multitudes, or as Lucifer cast down into the dark underworlds of the spirit, his fate had universal meaning and importance. His role in Los crepúsculos del jardín was a diffused one, functioning as a recurring, organizing voice to draw together disparate elements of the scene presented. In Lunario sentimental, all these roles are present, but from another vantage point. The exaltation of the poet derives from his defensiveness and his awareness of the inherent falseness of all things observed. From this superior position he can afford the frankness, comedy, and exposure of the oncesacred by his distance from it. Removed from the mountain summit, no longer supplicant before the powerful loved one, the poet can mingle on all levels, protected by his secret knowledge. The use of multiple roles, like the use of multiple Pierrots, provides a wide variety of vantage points, as well as a defense.

In "A mis cretinos," the first poem of the volume, the poet takes on the role of entertaining clown. Along with "A Rubén Darío y otros cómplices," the second poem of the volume, "A mis cretinos" deals with the role of the poet. A direct address to the public by the poet, it is structured like the opening lines of a commedia dell'arte performance. He dedicates the "lírico proyecto" ("lyric project") to the moon, "Astronómica dama, / O íntima planchadora" (OPC, 197–198) ("astonomical lady, / Oh intimate laundress"). He mocks his tribute and his own role as well. It is significant that Baudelaire, in defining comedy, uses the Pierrot figure as his exemplar. Pierrot's traits are "insouciance and neutrality, and consequently the accomplishment of all the greedy, rapacious fantasies. . . . It was the vertigo of hyperbole." Pierrot's act of pantomine "is the purification of

comedy; it is its quintessence; it is the pure comic element, disengaged and concentrated."^[2] In different essays, the themes of artifice and laughter are mixed. The only protection against the trickery of the outside world is the construction of an alternative wall of artifice, an ironic duplication of sense: "Obviously, in an age full of dupery, an author installed himself in complete irony and proved that he was not a dupe."^[3] Baudelaire's exaltation of the dandy, a figure developed even more fully by later writers, is also seen as a response to surrounding decadence. "Dandyism is the last burst of heroism amid decadence."^[4] The nature of artifice and caricature is not sheer play; it is a defiant assertion of individuality in a world of appearances.

Sources and Themes of Lunario Sentimental

The poetic world in Lunario sentimental is formed from the accumulation of the most prized images of earlier verse. Just as Laforgue imposed a different treatment on the metalanguage of romantic and symbolist poetry in his work, Lugones breaks and disperses the metalanguage of modernista poetry in Lunario sentimental. Modernista contexts cannot accomodate the everyday paraphernalia found in the Lunario sentimental —bicycles, cold cream, tangos, or neuralgia; nor can they accommodate the middle class as they move about on the street.

Patterning his work on Laforgue's L'Imitation de Notre Dame la Lune and Derniers Vers, Lugones draws on a rich fund of' literary tradition in selecting his materials.^[5] He mixes ancient lunar mythology with the nineteenth-century treatment of the theme in the poetry of Laforgue, Verlaine, Théodore de Banville, Darío, and countless other writers. To the array of traditional literature concerning the moon he adds the figure of Pierrot, the tragic clown of the commedia dell'arte who is enamored of the moon. By using a figure from pantomime, Lugones brings the aspect of artifice into full attention. The recurring presence of Pierrot and his feminine counterpart Colombina, figures both farcical and tragic in many guises and settings, represents human passions and weaknesses in caricaturesque poses. Their embodiment as thematic constants of the eternal masculine and

feminine allows for distancing and farce. Other characters, more closely allied to conventional reality, share in their pathos and ridicule by absorbing their traits and by proximity.

Laforgue's poetry had great impact on later poets by his use of romantic themes and stylized metaphors for ironic effect.^[6] An admirer of the fanciful, the bizarre, and the extravagances of the theater, he countered both rationalism and idealism with an ironic pessimism. He used the patterns of popular songs and poetry, colloquial speech, and Christian ritual for parodic effect. Combining archetypal images and religious and scientific terminology with ballad measures and refrains, as well as with more traditional verse forms, his playful irreverent tone appealed to many as the essence of anarchism. He not only refused systematic theories but mocked their most treasured values—love, idealism, mythology, and the ideal of artistic superiority: "I would forget the mind that the centuries have made for me."^[7] Laforgue's work anticipates a surrealist or stream of consciousness technique by its dissolution of rational hierarchies, but more importantly, because it concentrates on the inherent illogic of many metaphors prized for their symbolic value. His eclectic choices from the images of nature, legend, poetry, and art enter in his verse without regard for their space or time logic.

Experimental in form, as well as in his themes, Laforgue was one of the first French poets to use free verse in his collection Derniers Vers . His playfulness extended to deflating not only his subjects but himself, "Moi-le Magnifique," who is like the buffoon of farce or the mournful Pierrot. One of the first poets in French to extensively use technical and scientific words in lyric verse, he coined new words, combining latinisms with the wordplay of children. When applied to the great topics of philosophy or religion, his neologisms, alliterative rhymes, and internal poetic commentary ironically mock his own poetic aims, as in "Complainte de Sage de Paris."^[8]

Laforgue's treatment of the moon theme mocks almost all traditional associations. The strength of the mockery is an indication of its pervasive influence as a symbol. Like the Pierrot character who is powerless against the misfortunes that befall

him and whose only defense is an air of nonchalance, so all of humanity is defenseless against the moon's forces. The moon contrasts with the beneficent powers of the sun by its sterility, passiveness, and ability only to reflect, not to create. Its aspects are ambivalent. Although cold and sterile, it regulates the cyclic changes of the earth and biological rhythms. Although it represents the passage from life to death, it also provides the passage to immortality and fosters introspection. Most importantly, the moon represents the feminine principle in opposition to the solar, masculine principle, with goddesses such as Isis, Ishtar, Artemis or Diana, and Hecate associated with the moon. The lunar zone of the personality is traditionally the area of night, the unconscious, and the animal instinct. In contrast, the sun represents the rational, active, and conscious realm linked with fire.

Laforgue's juxtaposition of morbidity and humor, urban life and pastoral scenes, preciosity and colloquialism, is a reflection not only of a personal sense of division but of a more generalized response of the poets of his era to the change of the times. His poetic experiments find parallels in those of Tristan Corbière, who extended ironic mockery to more overt black humor, and in the prose of Huysmans, who used urban imagery to create grotesque scenes. It is apparent that Laforgue's treatment of traditional poetic symbols derives from Baudelaire, whose view of urban life surrounding him fused with pessimism to create powerful images reflecting the grotesqueness of modern life.^[9] Laforgue's poetic rendering of human alienation and sense of trivilization influenced a whole generation of English and American poets through the work of T. S. Eliot, whose adaptations of Laforgue's verse formed the nucleus of the portrayal of modemity in "The Wasteland."

It is in this sense of tradition that Borges' remarks concerning the importance of Lunario sentimental in Spanish American verse may be understood:

Lugones publicó ese volumen el año 1909. Yo afirmo que la obra de los poetas de "Martín Fierro" y "Proa"—toda la obra anterior a la dispersión que nos dejó ensayar o ejecutar obra personal—está

prefigurada, absolutamente, en algunas páginas del Lunario . En "Los fuegos artificiales," en "Luna ciudadana," en "Un trozo de selenología" en las vertiginosas definiciones del "Himno a la luna" . . . Lugones exigía, en el prólogo, riqueza de metáforas y de rimas. Nosotros, doce y catorce años después, acumulamos con fervor las primeras y rechazamos ostentosamente las últimas. Fuimos los herederos tardíos de un solo perfil de Lugones.^[10]

(Lugones published that volume in 1909. I affirm that the work of the poets of Martin Fierro and Proa —all the works to the dispersion that allowed us to try out or execute our own work—is definitely foreshadowed in some pages of the Lunario . In "Los fuegos artificiales," in "Luna ciudadana," in "Un trozo de selenología," in the vertiginous definitions of "Himmo a la luna," . . . Lugones required, in the prologue, a richness of metaphors and rhymes. We, twelve and fourteen years later, passionately collected the former and ostentatiously rejected the latter. We were the heirs of only one side of Lugones.)

It is significant that Borges singles out the four poems of the collection which focus on urban life and on the indignities of everyday existence. These poems also eliminate, to the greatest extent, the process of discursive thought, substituting transitional phrases and qualifying remarks with snatches of colloquial language or abrupt shifts to another perspective.

It is not just the ubiquitous presence of the moon as symbol of the sterility of aspirations or of lost religions which ties Lugones' poetry to that of Laforgue. It is his seizing on the visceral nature of automized images and renewing them by their introduction into new contexts, totally disassociated from prior constraints, which distinguishes the relation of adaptation. This is the perceptual element that Lugones most clearly adapted from Laforgue, as well as the elements of urban imagery. Even though Lugones copied many verses, rhymes, and neologisms almost intact from the earlier writer, what emerges most clearly is the emphasis on the changed perspectives and lack of continuity in modern life. Lugones was extreme in his appropriation of this element. Even in the rhyme techniques, it is not usually the "petit bonheur de la rime" of Laforgue that dominates through sonority but the aggressive contrast of cacophony, as in "lucha"/"fiacucha," "dieciocho"/"bizcocho,"

"botella"/"doncella," "fotográfico"/"seráfico," and "pícara"/ "jícara" ("struggle"/"skinny," "eighteen"/"biscuit," "bottle"/ "maiden," "photographic"/"seraphic," and "rogue"/"bowl").

Lugones' aggressive insistence on cacophonous rhyme and abrupt and startling contrast is not a new element in his verse. It appears previously in sections of Las montañas del oro and in the sometimes not-so-subtle deflations of Los crepúsculos del jardín, generally used for caricaturesque effects. In the Lunario sentimental, however, this element is stressed as its own referent, and the self-reflexive nature of the poems is heightened by the strident calls for attention the rhyme schemes provoke.

Irony in Lunario Sentimental

The sarcastic, rougher tones of Lugones' work, an important element of the Lunario sentimental, contrast with the gentler strains of Laforgue. Paradoxically, the more aggressive tone appears in the poems that most clearly are adapted from Laforgue, with their confrontations of archetypal images and their prosaic counterparts. Yet where Lugones most clearly strikes on ironic tone, and thus touches a note of knowing loss, is the section "Lunas," which corresponds most clearly to his own modernista poetry. The presence of authorial intrusion, overt or covert, is diminished, and the unspoken or muted confrontation of the old and the new allows for ambiguity. The reader, not the directing poetic voice, must question the construction. This juncture of the old and the new, with its allowance for ambiguity (noted previously in the interior cycles of Las montañas del oro and in "El solterón," "Los doce gozos," and "Emoción aldeana" of Los crepúsculos del jardín ), is one of the striking elements of the Lunario sentimental . While the ultraístas, later adapting some of the same techniques, concentrated on metaphor development by joining disparate categories—the "solo perfil" ("single side") of which Borges speaks—poets such as Ramón López Velarde and Ricardo Molinari seized on the less apparent but more intense aspect of Lugones' verse, its ambiguity.

Startling contrast here in the Lunario sentimental still depends on recognition of symbolic structures, but evasion, the indefiniteness of nostalgia, and repressed longing create a dislocation

of perception, a knowledge of loss without its former outline. Only in this sense is Lugones a true ironist in the Lunario sentimental . The poet may point out and openly berate or celebrate the changes in a modern world and lament the loss of the goals of romanticism, but this is frank exposure or simple sarcasm. Irony involves not only a double vision, but a paralysis of the ability to set the two perspectives apart, to decode the message in its final form. Irony's intrinsic fall is not the plummet from summit to abyss, nor the opposition of noon to midnight, but the crepuscular, indefinite, split-second moment of the passage from night to day, when perceptions are uncertain. Once its message is decoded or apparent, irony becomes static, and its message leads to a single sign, not to double vision.^[11] When this occurs in the Lunario sentimental, as it often does, the poetic voice has resolved the question and dissolved the possibility of ironic surprise, as in many caricaturesque poems and in the "Teatro quimérico." In the fifteen poems comprising "Lunas," however, and in other poems such as "Los fuegos artificiales," "Pescador de sirenas," and "Divagación lunar" (all of which possess moments of caricature also), the ironic mode presents itself by the absence of overt balancing, message proclamation, or the framing authorial voice. These poems recall Lugones' earlier poetry and ideals by their reminiscences and formal manipulations, but their models are diffused by a metonymic displacement that leaves undefined the total scheme from which its fragments are drawn. In this fusion, not only signs of the physical universe are displaced and rearranged, but signs of a past poetry mingle on several planes. In this metonymical displacement and fusion the physical rather than the symbolic nature of its component parts is stressed (as in "Los fuegos artificiales") to the extent that the lexicon itself—seen as infinite array rather than as structured order—begins to seem part of malleable physicality, as the plasticity of the rhyme exhibits. Once begun, the process is like a chain reaction and continues to reverberate until the postulated self that views it cannot be conceived of as an absolute. Therefore in its inception and its effect, the force of irony is disconcerting and dislocating, like the process of metonymy carried to extremes, where no totalizing referent can be ascertained.

The way to stop irony is to understand it, expose it, to separate the true from the false. Humor or caricature may perform this function, as it often does in the Lunario sentimental . Both modes hasten the process of desengano,^[*] of setting up a distancing effect. According to Baudelaire, this impulse has its root in self-defense: "one will find at the bottom of the laughing man's thought a certain unconscious pride. That is the point of departure: I do not fall, I walk straight, my foot is firm and sure."^[12] Just as tile self-enclosure and projection of subjectivity onto the natural world in romantic and symbolist poetry once provided an elevation of the poet an artist, creator or vidente (seer ) now the buffoon or clown embodies the secret knowledge that is the poet's.

Poetic Construction in Lunario Sentimental

In its mixture of different levels Lunario sentimental is an uneven volume. It resembles a series of experiments, first tentative, then daring. Its very unevenness and unexpectedness at the time of its publication explain its mixed reception. It has been called by critics both a powerfully original work and a mere copy. These critics take their cues not only from their individual perspectives but from the volume itself. The poetic tension is created by a willful insistence on destroying archetypal categories of meaning, and a reluctance to leave their fragmented vestiges dispersed and unbound by the constraints of an earlier poetics. Although the scheme of polar oppositions is completely dismantled, its framework is hinted at through the constant strain of ambiguity in the Lunario sentimental . "Divagación lunar" shows, perhaps more clearly than any poem of the collection, the outlines of the dichotomy between the old and the new. It presents a constant dismantling of its own precepts and its stated intention—"Si tengo la fortuna / De que con tu alma mi dolor se integre, / Te diré entre melancólico y alegre / Las singulares cosas de la luna" (OPC, 240) ("If I have the good fortune / Of joining your soul with my pain,/I will tell you half sadly and half joyfully, /The unique things about the moon"). Its description of a lovers' encounter might well be the recounting of the passing of an

illusion, like "el ritmo de la dulce violencia" ("the rhythm of sweet violence"), its rhyming of "poema" ("poem") with "sistema" ("system") is not merely a verbal fit, for by undoing the themes of an earlier poetry its entire system is revealed, and its echoes resemble "el rizo anacrónico de un Iago" ("the anachronic ripple of a lake"). The light of the moon, at once "fraternal" but with an intimacy of "encanto femenino" ("feminine charm"), does not clarity but passes "indefiniendo asaz tristes arcanos" ("undefining rather sad mysteries").

The unexpected confrontation of mixed levels of speech along with an irregular metrical scheme, gives many of the Lunario sentimental 's poems a close link to popular speech or song instead of to conventional modernista poetic lyricism, for example, "cold cream," "sportswoman," "ridiculous," "bric-a-brac," "alkaline," "hunchback," "gelatine." The element of poetic diction that is not sacrificed is rhyme. Not only is it retained, but its presence is accentuated. Stereotyped rhymes are blatantly repeated, as if parodying the old combinations, for example "tulazul" "amor—dolor" ("love-pain"). Yet, more frequently, unexpected rhyme words are paired, a lyrical word sometimes rhymed with a scientific expression or neologism, with different areas of experience forcefully brought together ("fotográfico"/ "seráfico" ["photographic"/"seraphic"]). "El Pierrotillo" exemplifies the experimental nature of much of the rhyme. Its last quatrain involves a rhyme with a monosyllabic verse:

  Un puntapié
Le manda allá
    Y se
    Va . . .
    (OPC,  243)

  (A kick
Sends him off
And there he
Goes . . . )

The constancy of innovative rhyme shows the importance assigned to its function. Rhyme for Lugones is important because it preserves for poetry the quality of artifice, since strict rhythmic patterns are no longer binding.

In regard to rhythm and rhyme, Carlos Navarro has thoroughly examined the use of esdrújulos in the Lunario sentimental, and he finds there is an even higher count in the caricaturesque poems.^[13] By making the rhythm a more textured, difficult process, the use of esdrújulos increases the awareness of the specifically literary nature of the work, drawing attention away from the word as denotation of concrete objects or experience. On many levels—rhyme, theme, individual metaphor, and rhythm—the disparity between literary convention and Lugones' unexpected transformations of it call attention back to the "life of words." The space between reader expectation and its reversal is the place of irony or surprise.

A constant in the poetry of Lunario sentimental is the transposition of qualities from antithetical categories.^[14] The opposing categories of animal/human, divine/human, sun/moon, maker/destroyer, speech/silence, creator/reflector, nature/technology are intermingled in a process of multiple metonymies. Opposites are often united without causal explanation, and the outcome is not resolution but an ever-increasing awareness of dissimilarity. To emphasize even more forcefully the irreconcilable oppositions and lack of harmony, the essential fictional nature of unifying hierarchical categories is stressed. By revealing the mechanics of the process of illusion making, especially poetic illusions, the sense of manipulation and trickery is heightened, as in "Los fuegos artificiales." Incoherence emerges through metonymic displacement, and the simplest way of doing this is by attributing a physical nature to the nature of illusions, and then by parceling out and dividing the pieces among other categories. Natural processes, inversely, are accorded fictional qualities. In these manipulations, language itself is shown to be part of the body of things. The obvious manipulation of rhyme points up the guiding hand behind the disintegration of customary arrangements.

Physical Presence in Lunario Sentimental

The treatment of the sirens in "El pescador de sirenas" is like an epiphany of the fetishistic contemplation of the female in earlier verse:

Bogan muy cerca de la superficie
Blancas y fofas como enormes hongos,
O deformando en desconcertante molicie
Sus cuerpos como vagos odres oblongos.
                    (OPC,  227)

(They float near the surface
Soft and white like giant mushrooms,
Or deforming in disconcerting masses
Their bodies like vague, oblong wineskins.)

With the erotic vision now completely dismembered, corporeal parts float to the surface "Con fosfórica putrefacción de molusco" or "En lenta congelación de camelias" ("With phosphoric putrefaction of the mollusc" or "In the slow freezing of camelias"). The search for the perfect poetic form, the hunt for the sirens, parallels the parceling out of physical images in its destructive intent toward poetic form itself. Attempting and discarding methods of approaching the perfect method, the fisherman seeks the sirens' songs, yet, "como ha seguido el método de Ulises, / Nunca pudo oír el hechicero canto" / (since he has followed Ulysses' method, / He could never hear the bewitching song"). His ludicrous fate, on finally hearing the sirens' song, is to be thrown to the "agua sinfónica" ("symphonic water") without being able to record the perfect sound.

Like the description of an empty room in "La alcoba solitaria," in which the inventories of an interior suggest the presence of life by its absence, or the listing of fabrics in "El solterón," in which musty smells and threadbare conditions reflect the characteristics of the old suitor, the vitality of illusion as opposed to reality is shown in the listing of sterile forms in the Lunario sentimental .^[15]

"Himno a la luna" offers numerous examples of images deprived of their former symbolic value by association with degrading or colloquial words. Previously, in Las montañas del oro and in Los crepúsculos del jardín, the rose was associated with the desirable and often mysterious woman. In "Himno a la luna" they are: "las rosas ebrias de etileno / Como cortesanas modemas" (OPC, 205) ("the roses drunk with ethylene / Like modern courtesans"). The sun, symbol of the summit of human

aspiration in Las montañas del oro, is an automaton that hatches the dead moon: "Mientras redondea su ampo / En monótono viaje / El sol, como un faisán crisolampo, / La empolla con ardor siempre nuevo" (OPC, 207) ("Circling her dazzling whiteness / In monotonous voyage / the sun, as striking as a pheasant / Hatches her with a passion always new"). The moon, once the "ilustre anciana de las mitologías" ("illustrious lady of mythologies") is now only a skeleton, "ese luminoso huevo" ("that luminous egg") which "Milagrosamente blanca, / Satina morbideces de cold cream y de histeria / Carnes de espárrago queen linfática miseria, / La tenaza brutal de la tos arranca" (OPC, 27) ("Miraculously white, / glazes the softness of cold cream and of hysteria / Asparagus flesh that in tired misery, / the brutal tongs of a cough tear out"). Associated with the woman, the moon is presented with all its sinister qualities that are the inverse qualities of the prized feminine image in much modernista poetry—the femme fatale or gentle innocent. Her passion changes to cruel compulsion and her gentle innocence to ineffectual sterility:

Trompo queen el hilo de las elipses
Baila eternamente su baile de San Vito;
Hipnótica prisionera
Que concibe a los malignos hados
En su estéril insomnia de soltera;
                         (OPC,  209)

(Spinning top forever performing
Its Saint Vitus' dance within the lines of the elipsis;
Hypnotic prisoner
Who from within her sterile spinster's insomnia
Conceives evil fates;)

The moon's influence is the cause of suffering and excess. Her followers are the night's victims—"¡Pobre niía, víctima de la felona noche, . . . Mientras padece en su erótico crucifijo / Hasta las heces el amor humano" (OPC, 215) ("Poor little girl, victim of the felonious night, . . . Suffering the very dregs of human love / on her erotic crucifix"). For Lugones, the modern woman, divided into her composite parts, reflects the shattering of sentimental ideals into fragmented bits and pieces.

"Lunas":
Intrusion of the City and the Commonplace

"Himno a la luna" occupies a place of central importance in the collection. Its possibilities of forming new metaphors are further explored in most of the other poems, especially in the division "Lunas," fifteen poems that illustrate the possibilities of manipulating the moon theme. The first, "Un trozo de selenologia" ("A piece of selenology"), illustrates the series of associations that can arise from a single image or a picturesque analogy of speech. The clear moon is visible from the window "a tiro de escopeta" ("a gunshot away"). The mention of the gun sparks a digressive monologue:

No tenía rifle,
Ni nada que fuera más o menos propio
Para la caza; pero un mercachifle
Habíame vendido un telescopio.
Bella ocasión, sin duda alguna,
Para hacer un blanco en la luna.
                         (OPC,  271)

(I had no rifle.
Nor anything that would be more or less suitable
For the hunt; but a huckster
Had sold me a telescope.
Fine chance, without a doubt,
To hit the mark on the moon.)

Continually interrupting the description of the moon is the frequent intrusion of the inside room and its concerns. Mixing parenthetical statements—"La vida resulta desconcertadora / De esta manera" ("Life seems disconcerting / this way") with the panoramic view from the "perspectiva teatral de palco escénico" ("theatrical perspective of the stage box")—abstractions mix with minute descriptions and are materialized. Metaphor construction is in shorthand:

Así en similes sencillos,
Destacábase en pleno azul de cielo,
Tu cuerpo como un arroyuelo
Sólo contrariado por dos guijarillos.
                    (OPC,  274)

(So, in simple similes,
Your body stood out against the deep blue sky,
A brook
Ruffled only by two pebbles.)

The process of the poem is interrupted by pointing out that the functionality of a term is only its rhyme value: "Te vi a ti misma—¿por qué ventana? . . .—/ En tu bañadera de porcelana" (OPC, 273) ("I saw you, yourself—In which window?.. — / In your porcelain bathtub").

"El taller de la luna" accentuates the self-reflexiveness of its production. It alternates between serene, geometrical progression ("con vertical exacta," "Tiene por tema un ángulo de blanca noche" ["with exact verticality," "It has as its subject an angle of white night"]) interspersed with the disequilibrium and resistance of physical materials ("Trueca el percal de la palurda / En increíble tisú de dama fatua" ["It converts the yokel's percale / Into the incredible tulle of a fatuous lady"], "Un inconcluso fauno a quien no cupo /En el magro pernil el pie de cabra" [OPC, 275] ["An incomplete faun on whose lean haunches / The goat's foot did not fit"]). Its verses prefigure the changes to come within the poem. The work of the "luna artista" ("artist moon") will be interrupted by that of another poet whose "cráneo, negro de hastío, / Derrocha una poesía rara, / Como un cubo sombrío / Que se invierte en agua clara" (OPC, 276) ("skull, black from boredom / Pours out strange poetry / Like a somber barrel /That is inverted in clear water").

"Claro de luna" continues the process of materializing abstractions. The moonlit cityscape, with the moon as its "cima de calma" ("crest of calm") and "El casto silencio de su nieve" ("The chaste silence of its snow"), is interrupted by the croaking of the frog, whose asymmetrical description within the scene heightens its presence "como un isócrono cascanueces" ("like an isochronous nutcracker"), juxtaposed with a silent guitar. From the "eclógico programa / De soledad y bosque pintoresco" (the "eclogic program / of picturesque forests and solitude"), the prosaic movement below is transposed onto the impassive sky. Like the process of the poem itself, the "noche en pijama, . . . se dispersa y restaura" ("night in pyjamas, . . . is dispersed and

restored") with the comings and goings of the night, as the neighbor's punctual key in the lock marks out time.

Instead of the moon's regular circling of the earth in her orbit, in "Luna ciudadana" an unexciting "fulano" ("John Doe") crosses through the city in his "consuetudinario / Itinerario" ("habitual itinerary") by streetcar. The contrast between his daily routine and its more exciting transformation in a "versátil aerostación de ideas" ("versatile airstation of ideas") points up the bleakness of urban life. Reality gives him little to work with, but remnants of a distant poetry allow him to reconstruct something other than "la muda / Fatalidad de una vulgar tragedia, / Con sensata virtud de clase media" (OPC, 287) ("the mute / Fatality of a vulgar tragedy, / With sensible, middle-class virtue"). The physical presence of the young woman seated across from him in the tram "Con su intrepidez flacucha / De institutriz o de florista" ("With the skinny intrepidness / Of a governess or a flowergirl") serves him well as the nucleus of his mediocre dreams. The sum of her physical parts is only united by his imaginative additions—"Lindos ojos, boca fresca" ("Pretty eyes, fresh mouth") with "Un traje verde oscuro" ("A dark green dress"—down to the detail of her glove size. After she leaves the tram, "Fulano," who is "vagamente poeta" ("vaguely a poet"), reconstructs the scene in terms of a tragic lost love, to the rhythm of "Y monda que te monda / Los dientes" ("And pick, pick / your teeth,") and the sound of a street organ. The sounds and scenes are in accord with his meager reality and not his richer dreams.

"Luna campestre," like the other poems of"Lunas" has framing narrative elements, which, although disjointed, do not leave multiple and contradictory images totally unresolved. The most common frame is the presence of snatches of an earlier landscape poetry, with tales of lost loves and the moon's changes as constants. "Luna de los amores" eliminates to a great extent the lyricism that could provide the contrast to its suburban setting. It is largely consistent in taking all referents from the same context, that of the house and its objects. The house merges with its inhabitants, and outside elements enter the scene only on their own terms—"El plenilunio crepuscular destella, / En el desierto comedor, un lejano / Reflejo, que apenas insinúa su

huella" (OPC, 298) ("The full moon glimmers in the twilight / In the deserted dining room a distant / Reflection barely hints at its passage"). The moon is also a domesticated one, "abollada / Como el fondo de una cacerola / Enlozada" (OPC, 300) ("dented/ Like the bottom of a cooking pot"). The clock's tick repeats the exchange of categories, "Anota el silencio con tiempos immemoriales" (OPC, 299) ("Notes the silence with time immemorial"). The metonymical interchange in terms of the physical nature of the house reflects the "hastío de las cosas iguales" ("boredom of the same things") and the tameness of its measured life. The clock, with "espíritu luterano" ("Lutheran spirit") marks out the slow beat of the lives of its inhabitants. The young girl's dreams of love contrast with the prosaic movement of the kitchen—"La joven está pensando en la vida. / Por allá dentro, la criada bate un huevo" (OPC, 299) ("The young girl is thinking about life. / Back inside, the maid is beating an egg"). The lyricism of unrequited love is confined to the young girl's dreams and appearance:

Rodeando la rodilla con sus manos, unidas
Como dos palomas en un beso embebecidas,
Con actitud que consagra
Un ideal quizá algo fotográfico,
La joven tiende su cuello seráfico
En un noble arcaísmo de Tanagra.
                    (OPC,  300)

(Clasping her knee with her hands, .joined
Like two doves lost in a kiss,
With an attitude that confirms
An ideal perhaps somewhat photographic,
The young girl stretches her seraphic neck
In an noble archaism of Tanagra.)

Despite the frequently prosaic tone of the poems of "Lunas" and their unusual juxtapositions, they possess coherence by the continual reappearance of landscape description. It is as if the appearance of everyday humans were a jolting presence in the midst of cosmic forces. Yet the moon theme allows for the combination of a natural setting and disruptive agents. Unsettling events may or may not be malevolent in themselves; it is their

continuity with the setting which determines the degree of their disturbance. In the same way, the moon in all its phases absorbs and reflects human passions and cruelties.

Technology and "Los Fuegos Artificiales"

"Los fuegos artificiales," more than any other poem, best represents the explosive destruction of the iconography of previous poetry. The swarming mass of humanity, with its "alma de tribu que adora un fuego augusto" ("tribal spirit that worships a majestic fire") is rapt before the fireworks at a patriotic festival. The spectacle's "bazares de cosmos" ("cosmic bazaars") and its "astronómica feria" ("astronomic fair") constitute a technical caricature of past creations which will foreshadow a future model:

Y ¡con qué formidable caricatura,
Tu policroma incandescencia
  Destaca a la concurrencia
En un poema de humanidad futura!
               (OPC,  260)

(And with what formidable caricature
your polychrome incandescence
Displays the crowd
In a poem of future humanity!)

Formed from a mixture of "un poco de mixto, de noche y de mal gusto" ("a bit of fire, night and bad taste"), the spectacle is a fitting work of art for its audience, who are described in animalistic terms. The plaza that contains then "hormiguea / De multitud, como un cubo de ranas" ("swarms / With the crowd, like a bucket of frogs").

Free from any reminiscence of traditional poetry, "Los fuegos artificiales" accentuates the speed, movement, and color of a changed technique. Its title is a metaphor of itself. It celebrates a new technique that does not reproduce the dimensions and perspectives of nature. Yet there is ambivalence in the presentation of this celebration. The crowd reflects the other face of technical prowess. The appeals to instinct and elementary violence are reflected in the crowd watching the cannons,

bombs, and bright lights of the artificial explosions. Its "millionario tesoro de colores" ("rich treasure of colors") awakens "arrobos / De paganismo atávico, en cursivas alertas, / Es la pura majestad de los globos / Sobre la O vocativa de las bocas abiertas" (OPC, 255–556): ("Amazement / from atavistic paganism, in alert cursives, / Is the pure majesty of the balloons / Above the open mouths formed by the vocative O"). Its dizzying spin "hace babear los éxtasis del tonto; / Trocando absurdamente su destino / En el sautor regular de un molino" (OPC, 258): ("Makes the fool drool in ecstasy; / Absurdly exchanging his destiny / In the ordinary crosspiece of a mill").

Technology, praised in Los montañas del oro as a force equivalent to nature's own ("el gran caballo negro") must here contend with its results. The bourgeois family, grotesque in its presentation, is transfigured beneath the artificial lights. The exaggeration of physical traits once applied to erotic subjects is extended here to form a picture of macabre juxtaposition:

  A su lado el esposo, con dicha completa,
Se asa en tornasol, como una chuleta;
Y el bebé que fingía sietemesino chiche,
No es ya más que un macabro fetiche.
La nodriza, una flaca escocesa,
Va, enteramente isósceles, junto a la suegra obesa,
Que afronta su papel de salamandra
Con una gruesa
Inflación de escafandra,
Mientras en vaivén de zurda balandra
Goza sus fuegos la familia burguesa.
                              (OPC,  260)

(By her side the husband, totally content,
Roasts on both sides like a chop;
And the baby who acted out his scrawny cuteness,
Is nothing more than a macabre fetish.
The wet nurse, a skinny Scotswoman,
Stands, all isoceles angles, next to the obese mother-in-law,
Who faces up to her salamander role
With a swollen inflammation of her headgear.
While in the clumsy rocking of a sloop
The bourgeois family enjoys the fireworks.)

The narrative point of view also changes. Not just a spectator of the crowd, the narrator himself is caught up in its movement, changing the relationship of distanced observer—"Donde mi propia persona / En coloreado maleficio, / Adquiere algo de sota y de saltimbanqui / Yanqui . . . " (OPC, 261), ("Where my own self/ In colorful wickedness,  / Becomes something of a spade and of a Yankee /Jester  . . ."). Like the spectacle's audience, he himself becomes grotesque.

In the four romantic tales and the "Teatro quimérico," the process of inversion is much more explicit. Not just characteristics but entire roles are switched. Here exaggeration is carried to explicit satire. The theme in the four romantic tales is impossible love. In almost every way imaginable Lugones satirizes the traits of romantic lovers. In "Abuela Julieta" the aristocratic pretensions of romanticism are the object of attack. A forty-year unrequieted love is "una migaja de tragedia en la impasibilidad de los astros eternos" (OPC, 269) ("a crumb of tragedy in the impassibility of the eternal stars"). In "Inefable ausencia" the luxuriant description usually reserved for the heroine is lavished on Roberto:

El era mucho más bello. Una dulzura de niño pensativo inundaba su rostro; y como las vírgenes, tenía cuello de lirio. En la oscuridad azul de sus ojos se aterciopelaban melancolías. (OPC, 217)

(He was much more beautiful. The sweetness of a pensive child flooded his face; and like a virgin, his neck was like a lily. In the blue depth of his eyes melancholy turned to velvet.)

The lovers' situation, so trivialized by exaggerating their narcissism and delicacy, cannot be contained even within traditional literary patterns: "Y el silencio era tan grande afuera, que ambos retrocedieron en el balcón" (OPC, 218) ("So great was the silence outside, that they both stepped back into the balcony").

In Lunario sentimental Lugones not only mocks previous texts but, with a vengeance, attacks the ideals that inspired them. He confronts the aristocratic ideals of romanticism and symbolism, with their enclosed, self-reflexive worlds and the nostalgia of the sublime, and counters them with new standards. The old models must face their aggressive counterpart, the world of

modernity, with its technology, urban life, rational identities, and new mythologies. Cosmological forces, mythical figures, and archetypal lovers are ceaselessly paired with their unkind reflection. The canonized forms remain in the foreground, but their main purpose is to display the vitality of their conquerors.

Continuing in a vein begun in the "Tercer ciclo" of Las montañas del oro, Lugones juxtaposes ancient idols with the heroes of his own time, but with a different emphasis. There is no aim of redemption set forth, and he caricatures the heroic nature of the old and new idols. The figure of the poet again takes explicit shape, but not as a victorious promethean figure at the summit who surveys the world from the "Torre de oro." Now as the buffoonlike figure of Pierrot or "fulano," his only superiority is his distance, his character a succession of masks. The poet appears directly in view of his public, not the mythicized and glorious "Pueblo," but before the masses, "mis cretinos" ("my cretins"). In these poems Lugones departs from the aristocratic ideal that he and others—"Rubén Darío y otros cómplices" ("Rubén Darío and other accomplices")—had previously espoused. The poet will descend to the popular stage.

What is vital in the Lunario sentimental is the nature of artifice. A representative natural world loses ground as linguistic play moves to the forefront. Verse and prose are mixed to point up the automatized roles that traditional forms usually play. Lugones, in reaching toward a new fund of imagery and rhythms that he found in writers such as Laforgue, helped to change the nature of poetry in Spanish. At the time of its publication in 1909, the Lunario sentimental evoked both applause and derision, and its example served as a model for future poets, either as a standard to combat or as an invitation to experiment with new forms.