The year following Lorca's death, Vicente Aleixandre published a moving tribute to his friend and fellow poet in which he noted a certain limited affinity between Goethe's and Lorca's genius.' Mindful of that affinity to which Aleixandre made allusion, this writer will try in the pages that follow to explicate Lorca's Romance de la luna by comparing it, to the extent that comparison seems instructive, with Goethe's Erlkinig, a ballad of similar theme.2 The German poem will be discussed first, since it is the earlier work, but the Spanish poem will be analyzed in greater detail, because it is the less easily understood. Little need be said of the form of the Erlk-nig, since the beauties of Goethe's composition are readily perceptible. The poem is made up of eight four-lined stanzas. Each line contains four stresses, and both the first and second and the third and fourth lines rhyme. The skillful use of language in the work is noteworthy. The alliteration in Gar schdne spiele spiel' ich mit dir! is characteristic of Goethe's artistry; the successive sibilants suggest admirably the Erlk6nig's whisperings. Another happy technical accomplishment in the poem is the introduction of elements of the first stanza in the last stanza; such a reminder that the father is still carrying the child in his arms gives structural form to the whole touching account of a tragedy that takes place in the course of a swift night ride. The factual basis of the Erlk-nig is extremely clear except for one matter: The poet never says whether the child is ill. Readers generally assume that the child's visions are attributable to delirium, but Goethe's silence on that subject is the source of a certain poetic ambiguity that gives the poem an air of mystery. In the analysis of the Erlk-nig that lies ahead, as in the later analysis of the Romance de la luna, comment will, as a matter of efficiency, be combined with a summary of the contents of the poem, but it is to be hoped that those who read these lines will have copies of both poems beside them, for any attempt to summarize true poetry is inevitably an act of violence. In the Erlk-nig a father is riding through a windy night tenderly carrying his child in his arms. The child soon hides his face in fear and states that he has seen the Erlk6nig, a goblin king inviting him to share a rich and marvelous life, but the father says that the spectre is only a bit of fog. The child next sees the Erlk*nig's daughters, who are ready to lull, dance, and sing him to sleep, but the father tells him that they are merely a clump of gray willows. Then the Erlkinig tells the child that he loves him and that if he refuses to come with him willingly, he will promptly spirit him away; immediately afterward the child cries out that the Erlkinig has seized him and done him harm. The frightened father rides swiftly on with his groaning child, but when he reaches his destination, the child is dead. In contrast with the rich beauty of the language used to describe the child's visions, the poem ends with a stark statement of the catastrophe in monosyllables: Das Kind war tot.
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Apr 1, 1978
Barbara Stoler Miller + 2
Open Access