Preferred Citation: Kirkpatrick, Gwen. The Dissonant Legacy of Modernismo: Lugones, Herrera y Reissig, and the Voices of Modern Spanish American Poetry. Berkeley:  University of California Press,  c1989 1989. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft8g5008qb/


 
5—Lunario Sentimental and the Destruction of modernismo

"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)


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(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


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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


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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


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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.


5—Lunario Sentimental and the Destruction of modernismo
 

Preferred Citation: Kirkpatrick, Gwen. The Dissonant Legacy of Modernismo: Lugones, Herrera y Reissig, and the Voices of Modern Spanish American Poetry. Berkeley:  University of California Press,  c1989 1989. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft8g5008qb/