Lyric Reading: Woman and Juan Ramón Jiménez

Abstract

J uan Ramon Jimenez (1881-1958) frequently identifies woman, mujer, with his work, As object of erotic or spiritual desire, image of beauty, symbol of love, and form of the Ideal, is as central to his poetic discourse as Obra, his life-aspoetry, and muerte, his preoccupation with death. Suelo confundir la mujer desnuda con la muerte, the poet writes in 1923 (Pdginas 91). La poesia first practiced in Diario de un poeta recien casado (1916) and Eternidades (1917), is grounded metaphorically in the nude female figure: Poesia / desnuda, mia para siempre! (SAP 411). Woman figured in his life as well, for the poet's love affairs were reflected in his poetry,1 and he especially valued the opinions of one woman in particular, Zenobia Camprubi Aymar, who became his wife and lifelong companion (Palau de Nemes, Vida 524-29; Sanchez-Romeralo, Introduccion xix-xx). Thus women do not merely provide objects for representation, but their opinions as readers-their voiceswere also taken seriously by the poet. It is in this context of woman as reader that I explore woman as object in Jimenez's poetry in an attempt to hear her voice along with the poet's. Zenobia's reading of her husband's poetry will provide the intertext, a separate text related to and informing the first, against which we can read the response of a female reader to the Obra. We can identify at least three aspects of a lyric reader: the image of the reader in the text (the textual clues which describe the author's imagined audience);2 the reader's activity in the reading process itself; and finally the encounter of an actual reader or group of readers with the text. Reader-response theorists describe the reader moving through the Nor would I be a PoetIt's finer own the EarEnamored-impotent-contentThe License to revere, A privilege so awful What would the Dower be, Had I the Art to stun myself With Bolts of Melody!