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.