Vicente Aleixandre's Stream of Lyric Consciousness by Daniel Murphy (review)

Abstract

MLR, 98.1, 2003 225 tilious nature of its footnotes. Consequently, one of its stated objectives?to present an academic edition of two relatively unedited manuscripts?has been achieved in a manner which from the point of view of the specialist is conspicuously satisfactory. Universidad de Santiago de Compostela Juan Casas Rigall VicenteAleixandre's Stream ofLyric Consciousness. By Daniel Murphy. Lewisburg and London: Bucknell University Press for the Associated University Presses. 2001. 263 pp. $43.50. ISBN 0-8387-5464-3. Daniel Murphy's study of the poetry of Vicente Aleixandre reminds us of the elegant pleasures afforded by the close textual analysis of poetry. H. L. Boudreau is correct in his assertion in the preface to this book that Murphy's work 'might possibly be seen as the second great breakthrough into our understanding' ofAleixandre's poetry (p. 16), after Carlos Bousono's seminal La poesia de VicenteAleixandre: imagen, estilo y mundo poetico, 2nd edn (Madrid: Gredos, 1968). Murphy's originality lies in his examination of a previously understudied element of Aleixandre's poetry (using an approach which draws, in lively fashion, on recent theory): the intertextual dimen? sion. Intertextuality, for Murphy, is a perspective that examines works of art in the light of their cultural components, or intertexts. In this study of Aleixandre's La destruccion o el amor, the intertexts explored by Murphy include 'lyric' ancestors, as well as surrealism and the influential role of Freud. In Chapter 1, 'An Intertextual Tack', Murphy sketches previous approaches to Aleixandre's work (the formalist and the aesthetic) and, using intertextual theory, attempts to draw these together in the psychoanalytical. Murphy's intertextuality draws on Alastair Fowler, Harold Bloom, and Michael Riffaterre as well as Richard Dawkins's genetic 'memes' to put forward a theory of writing in which loans, debt, and imitation, whether consciously or unconsciously expressed, are germane to all writing. This theory will stand as a framework to his discussion of the genealogical intertexts present in Aleixandre's La destruccion o el amor. In Chapter 2, under the emblem of 'Poetry's Discursive Logic', Murphy sets out two models, the narrative and the generic, which provide the format for a series of illuminating intertextual reconfigurations. Thus Pedro Salinas's 'Fe mia' operates within the bounds of the liturgical models such as the Nicene Creed, while Antonio Machado's 'Las moscas' owes a debt to the narrative voice of the lyrical ode. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 examine Aleixandre's poetic texts in the light of this model of discursive structure (with particular reference to mood, voice, and genre). Particular attention is devoted to the appreciation of La destruccion o el amor as a book of poetry engaged in the task of simulating the working of the subconscious mind, a sort of lyric account of the id and superego: 'Aleixandre poetically maps this arcanum and the human in which it is contained as a panerotic world, a strictlyhuman world upon which he imposes a discursive and figurative order' (p. 147). In Chapters 6 and 7 Murphy explores Aleixandre's poetic genealogy in greater depth, analysing literary debts to Garcia Lorca and Salvador Dali (and placing Aleixandre firmlywithin the Generation of 27 poets), and, in particular, to the work of Golden Age poets. If it is true that, in reading Aleixandre, our task is to avoid taking his 'world' too literally?'in this event, one remains befuddled in the face of the Aleixandrean text' (p. 147) and its revolutionary poetic logic?still, Murphy's reading of individual poems in this study goes a long way to shedding light on what he terms Aleixandre's 'penumbral ungrammaticalities' (p. 147). Through a discussion of intertexts (both literary and theoretical) Murphy aims to show us the ways in which the familiar or 226 Reviews the accessible can be used to elucidate the opaque. In this he is successful, drawing us into Aleixandre's stunning poetic universe. University of Hull Sarah Wright Hacia unapoetica de la mirada: Mario Vargas Llosa,Juan Marse, Elena Garro,Juan Goytisolo. By Maria SilvinaPersino. BuenosAires:Corregidor. 1999. 189 pp. ISBN 950-05-1244-0. Over the past ten to fifteenyears humanities departments in the Anglo-American academic world...