"Martin Fierro" as Orphic Poetry

Abstract

AT the very moment when the payador Martin Fierro claims to be an unlettered troubador, he affirms his position in the tradition of divinely inspired poetry that can be traced at least as far back as the Delphic oracles and the poems on which the Orphic rites were based: Yo no soy cantor letrao, mas si me pongo cantar no tengo cuando acabar y me envejezco cantando; las coplas me van brotando como agua de manantial.1 (11. 49-54) That is, the words come to Fierro from underground and surge through him, just as the voice of the gods was heard in the well at Delphos. The poet's source, like that of the spring, is underground, and we shall see that it is of descent to the underworld that he, like Orpheus, has experienced that he must sing. By singing of his harrowing of Hell, the narrator fulfills divine function and will thus gain Paradise: El cantar mi gloria labra, y poniendome cantar, cantando me han de encontrar aunque la tierra se abra. (11. 39-42) As we shall see, the earth has, in poetic fact, opened for Fierro. In this connection, it is significant that some of the features that differentiate Orphism from Homeric religion are, in the words of Sir William Smith, a sense of sin and the need for personal atonement; [and] the idea of the suffering and death of good-man.