Poetry In Spain Research Articles

From the Christians of Al-Andalus to the mosarabs Jarchas – the oldest examples of lyric poetry in Spain

From the Christians of Al-Andalus to the mosarabs Jarchas – the oldest examples of lyric poetry in Spain

Felipe Valencia. The Melancholy Void: Lyric and Masculinity in the Age of Góngora

Felipe Valencia. <i>The Melancholy Void: Lyric and Masculinity in the Age of Góngora</i>

Dominion Built of Praise: Panegyric and Legitimacy among Jews in the Medieval Mediterranean by Jonathan Decter

Reviewed by: Dominion Built of Praise: Panegyric and Legitimacy among Jews in the Medieval Mediterranean by Jonathan Decter Michael Rand Jonathan Decter. Dominion Built of Praise: Panegyric and Legitimacy among Jews in the Medieval Mediterranean. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. 387 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009419001016 Jonathan Decter's book on panegyric focuses on that part of the medieval Hebrew literary tradition that represents a special Jewish subtype within the larger framework of medieval Arabo-Islamic poetry and adab. It joins a number of other works that deal with Jewish poetry and literature more generally against the background of the Arabic context—chief among these, perhaps, Ross Brann's Compunctious Poet (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991). Together, these books provide nuanced insights into the workings of Hebrew poetics from the Spanish Golden Age and into later developments in Iberia, Provence, the eastern Mediterranean (especially Egypt), and Iraq. Decter and Brann are both students of Raymond Scheindlin, himself a Hebraist and Arabist, and I do not think that it would be an exaggeration to say that their work is evidence of a robust American tradition of philologically rooted literary research in Golden Age Hebrew poetry that is profoundly informed by a full command of the Arabic matrix from which it sprang. Decter provides a systematic and methodologically well-grounded overview of his topic: performance contexts of Jewish panegyric (chapter 1); panegyric as gift (chapter 2); panegyric tropes (humility, generosity, eloquence, etc.; chapter 3); regionalism as reflected in panegyric (i.e., Spain versus the eastern Mediterranean; chapter 4—for this topic see also the recently published U. Kfir, A Matter of Geography [Leiden: Brill, 2018]); ethical considerations in the composition and consumption of panegyric (chapter 5); hyperbole and sacral imagery in panegyric (chapters 6–7); the evolution of the panegyric tradition in the Christian Mediterranean (chapter 8); and panegyric by Jewish poets for non-Jewish recipients, including some Arabic examples and one in Castilian, as well as a Hebrew poem showing troubadour influence (chapter 9). Throughout, Decter's discussions are based on copious examples—in English translation—drawn both from the relevant poetic corpora as well as from medieval discussions of [End Page 200] literary criticism (reaching back, as relevant, to Aristotle). The result is an integrated treatment of a topic that constitutes a major (though not a particularly exciting—at least not to modern tastes, as Decter stresses in several places) component of the Golden Age Hebrew poetic tradition. As Decter passes freely and seamlessly between Hebrew panegyric and the world of Arabic poetics whence it sprang, he succeeds in establishing that the former is in large part a confessionally and linguistically specialized extension of the latter. Another, equally fundamental, notion that runs like a red thread through the book is the idea that Jewish panegyric is a Mediterranean phenomenon, that is, it is not a literary mode restricted to the formal Hebrew qas.ida poetry of Spain, but also takes in the eastern offshoots of the Golden Age poetic tradition, and in fact pervades medieval Jewish social exchanges in the Mediterranean littoral as mediated through other literary genres, in particular the epistolary. Thus, he succeeds in drawing a clear connection via the panegyric mode between material that is traditionally treated as poetic-literary on the one hand, and as documentary on the other. The notion of an interface between these two categories is, of course, not radically new, but what is new here is its incorporation as the principle guiding a holistic treatment of an important aspect of medieval Hebrew literary and social culture. Against the background of the embeddedness of Jewish panegyric in a dominant Arabo-Islamic matrix, Decter's concluding chapter on instances of boundary-crossing—Jewish panegyric for gentile recipients—is particularly intriguing. By highlighting the incorporation of Jewish-Hebrew references to referents existing within the prevailing Islamic (or Christian) milieu, it simultaneously underscores the degree to which the Hebrew tradition had in fact become an organic semiotic unity—that is, praise for non-Jews could be the occasion for introducing new elements referring to the external culture. This may be compared with Arabo-Muslim panegyric addressed to a Jewish recipient. The two examples...

Fairies, Lovers, and Glass Palaces: French Influences on Thirteenth-Century Hebrew Poetry in Spain—the Case of Ya'akov ben El'azar's Ninth Maḥberet

This article provides an intertextual reading of Love of Sahar and Kima, the ninth mahberet of Y'akov ben Elazar's Sefer ha-meshalim. This tale highlights the contrast between physical and spiritual love, feudal and religious constraints, and courtly ideas and a parody of those ideas. The paper expands upon the current knowledge of the thematic, structural, and ideological parallels between Y'akov ben Elazar's work and the literature of medieval France, and presents a number of prominent and specific examples that indicate the influence of the Matiere de Bretagne on this mahberet. Simultaneously, the paper identifies Ya'kov ben Ela'zar as an original European writer who made use of existing literary models, but who was independent in his muse and inspiration. The originality of this paper lies in the fact that for the first time in scholarly research, it is proven that there are vestiges of the fairy tale in Sefer ha-meshalim, and that this mahberet can be read as a rationalized fairy tale like those in French literature.

Translation norms in the light of practical research in literary translation

The study of translation norms is presently developed within the framework that relates translation to social, power and ideological aspects. Linked to both Linguistics and Sociolinguistics, norms are understood as the formulation of the values shared by a community in a certain situation. Thus they are psychological and social entities that have a social control function. From this point of view, translation norms are recurrent rules of behaviour that govern, identify and individualize the social order of the cultural system where translation takes place. The translation behaviour is then considered a communicative and a social practice. In this article, a brief review of the current state of the art of the theoretical reflection on translation norms is offered, followed by a practical study of the Spanish translations of John Keats&rsquo;s odes and sonnets included in isolated editions published in Spain in the 20th century. Normative translator behaviours find a definition, which allows a classification of translations according to the natural evolution of the socio-cultural context where translations are produced and received. Conclusions can be extrapolated to the study of the most common practices followed nowadays in the translation of poetry in Spain.

Once, in the streets of a Spanish town: On Rogelio López Cuenca and his Calle Cavafis

Abstract Ever since it first appeared in the Catalan and Castilian sections of the Spanish literary field, the poetry of C. P. Cavafy has been significantly bound up with the visual arts. The very first Spanish edition (Barcelona, 1962) of his poetry in book form, translated brilliantly into Catalan by Carles Riba, included a number of illustrations, by the recently deceased artist Josep Maria Subirachs, which attracted considerable critical attention. Even though it undoubtedly belongs to the tradition fostered by these editions, the work of artist Rogelio López Cuenca entitled Calle Cavafis (1998) represents a rather different poetics and a different political discourse. Fifteen years before the outbreak of the controversy regarding the use of Cavafy’s image and verses on Athenian means of public transport, passengers on urban buses in Malaga (Spain) saw a series of gigantic posters stuck on bus stop shelters every day for two weeks during the autumn of 1998. Combining letters, colours and illustrations, these posters reproduced poems or fragments of poems by Cavafy in Catalan or Castilian and, occasionally, even in the original Greek. Also, during the same period of time, thousands of postcards which also reproduced Cavafy’s verses were distributed and displayed in different bars and pubs all over Malaga city centre. A total number of sixteen poems found their way to these posters and postcards visually and aesthetically – and we might even say politically – (re)elaborated by Rogelio López Cuenca. Starting from this selection of poems and translations, the article proposed here aims to place Rogelio López Cuenca’s artistic intervention in the reception (different readings and uses) of Cavafy’s poetry in Spain and Latin America, and at the same time to inquire into the aesthetic and political presuppositions that inform it.

Jasmine and Lagarto: Pearse Hutchinson’s Poetry of Spain

Many Irish poets have engaged with a wider European landscape, poetic, linguistic, historical, metaphorical: we think of people like Denis Devlin, Michael Hartnett, Eva Bourke, Gabriel Rosenstock, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Michael Smith, to name a few. But outstanding in this context is the work of Pearse Hutchinson, now in his 84th year and continuing

Edgar A. Poe's Poetry in Spain in the 19 th Century: An Issue for Connoisseurs

Edgar A. Poe's Poetry in Spain in the 19 th Century: An Issue for Connoisseurs

Edgar A. Poe's Poetry in Spain in the 19 th Century: An Issue for Connoisseurs

Edgar A. Poe's Poetry in Spain in the 19 th Century: An Issue for Connoisseurs

A Conversation with Francesc Parcerisas

A Conversation with Francesc Parcerisas Lawrence Venuti Since the 1960s, Francesc Parcerisas has published fourteenbooks of poetry,which have won numerous awards, including the Premi Ciutat de Barcelona. His articles on con temporaryCatalan poetry have appeared in such periodicals as Avui, El Pais, and La Vanguardia. Between 1998 and 2005 he served as director of the Institute forCatalan Letters, overseeing the promotion of Catalan literature inCatalonia and abroad. He has long taught in theFacultat de Tra ducci? id'Interpretacio at theUniversit?t Aut?no ma de Barcelona, where he is currently dean. Lawrence Venuti: Your early poetry has been described as "experimental." How do you under stand that term? Francesc Parcerisas: I began writing in themid 1960s, influenced by existentialism and by what was then called "social" poetry in Spain, a social realism. The intellectual climate had links with the Beat Generation and the youth counterculture. For us, the first generation born aftertheSpanish Civil War, itwas an assertion of freedom.My poems were inspired by the Catalan Salvador Espriu and theGalician Celso Emilio Ferreirobut also by Pavese, Neruda, Hikmet. In the 1970s I felta need to connect those interests with an avant-garde lit eraryexperience. I remembervery clearly thebook Renga by Octavio Paz, Jacques Roubaud, Edoar do Sanguineti, and Charles Tomlinson, which I bought inMexico in the summer of 1972. There I found some of thewriting I had been trying to achieve. The resultwas my book Latituds dels cavalls (1974; Horse latitudes). Interestingly, this experimentalism was not rooted in the contem porary French polemic about textuality,at once post-Mallarmean and academic, but rather in the youth culture of the sixties (thepeace movement, Orientalism, music, sex, drugs). I had traveled with my generation fromtheBeatles to theDoors. LV:What did experimentalism mean foryou in formal terms? FP: In Catalonia, our connection with the avant- -^pw^ garde was strongly associated with visual art (Miro, Dali) and the very popular Joan Salvat Papasseit, a lyric poet committed to calligrams and painting (heworked forawhile in an art gallery) but also to anarchism (he ran a littlemagazine called?probably afterGorky?The Enemy of the People). Therewas a hint of surrealism thatreflect ed themost widely read French poets (Breton, Eluard). The experiments I recallwere not so radical. Ginsberg's "Wichita Vortex Sutra" or Burroughs's cut-and-paste technique probably had some influ ence on early books of mine, like Discurs sobre lesmateries terrestres(1972; Discourse on earthly matters). But the road todislocation was too easy and finallya cul-de-sac. Since Iwas coming from political protest, this sortof experimentalism pre vented the reader from reaching any real under standing ofwhat Iwanted to say. LV:During the 1970s, then,your poetry changed to become more reflective and autobiographical, more centered in personal, day-to-day experience. FP: The return to a recognizable realitymeant a return to lyricexpressiveness. In a book likeDues 52 i World Literature Today 3 suites (1976;Two suites), I stillsought a patchwork of images, drawn from Maria Manent's transla tions fromChinese, the J Ching,Mexican texts.But the emphasis falls on emotion?love, loneliness, solitude. In L'edat d'or (1983; The golden age) I discovered the use of the third person as a means of establishing a seemingly objective distance between the poem and the reader, a literary device I took fromCavafy. Through itIwas able to frame a very personal set of images, situations, and emo tionswith which the reader could immediately identify.Ibelieve thiswas thegreat success of the book, which became a sort of poetical landmark during the 1980s. LV:Were you also responding to current trends when these formal and thematic changes were happening inyour poetry? FP:My own trajectory was unusual because I lived in Bristol for three years (1969-72) and traveled toNew York and California. But it is still true to say that, in general, our sources of information were limited. English wasn't much read, let alone English-language poetry. Many influences came ^Bf^H via French translationsand magazines. I firstread Ic^l Borges inFrench because the Argentinean editions HS^^H hadn't yet reached Spain! France and Italywere ^E^H thegreat providers of cultural references:cinema, ^K^l song, literature, intellectual debate. For my...

The Poetics of War: Disjunction and Violence in Carmen Conde's Mientras los hombres mueren

CARMEN Conde garnered the distinction of being the first female member of the Spanish Royal Academy, elected in 1978; however her literary corpus has garnered relatively limited literary acclaim. With her collection Ansia de gracia (1945), Damaso Alonso asserts that Conde coloco en primera fila en nuestra poesia actual (365). According to John Wilcox, Conde serves as a model to every other woman who has written poetry in Spain during the second half of the twentieth century (138) due in part to her ability to speak to the reader in a socially and culturally relevant manner that challenges traditional images of society, gender roles within it, and the direction of her country in the times to come. Of this collection, Zenaida Gutierrez-Vega remarks that it offers the poet's respuesta angustiada y a veces violenta ante el espectaculo de la tierra manchada por la sangre y la muerte (81). As the subject of this study, the examination of the notions of space, time and gender as they relate to the concept of wartime conflict in the collection titled Mientras los hombres mueren, reveal how Conde's poetics of war appropriate the propagation of war through imagery of internecine strife affecting the victims as well as their loved ones. Published in 1953 and written some 15 years earlier, during the precise moments that men were dying during the Spanish Civil War (19361939), the collection captures the feminine voice that urges the finality of war in order to protect the lives of her fellow citizens: men, women and children alike. Each group occupies a unique space depending upon the role assigned to it by the poetic voice. While Conde primarily sustains the traditional role of men as propagators of war, she also places the burden of responsibility on them for the continuance of conflict and at the same time holds them accountable for recognizing the horrors they have inflicted. Women, on the other hand, hear the exhortation to enter a new space, forging way to find their own contribution toward ending the conflict, and children become symbolic victims of violence who represent the country's future. Beginning with the preface, Conde recognizes the inclusionary impact of war on its victims and states that the poems in the last section dedicated to the children me fueron arrancados de la entrana con mas profunda desesperacion todavia (186). Conde's sorrowful contemplation of human suffering (Debicki 69) results in a novel attempt to taxonomize war's atrocities and to respond to them. According to Christian Manso, her words confront the tragedy (142), and in doing so ask the reader to do the same. Male figures become extensions of the instruments of war who emaciate the landscape previously filled with living beings that formed part of a human dynamic in relationship to their roles as fathers, brothers and children. No longer faceless victims, the poet recognizes that these bodies belong to an identity of which they were deprived. According to Lynda Jentsch, [h]er dismembered corpses are not elements in a surrealist chaotic enumeration, but the torn bodies of beloved sons and daughters (26-7). With cada dia tengo un hermano menos sobre la tierra, que se suma a los que dentro de raices yacen con frentes vaciadas de ojos (191), the disjunctive relationship among living brother, dead brother and those who have previously lost their lives attests to the timeliness of horrors facing numerous victims and their families. The resulting image of the foreheads without eyes decodifies the impact of war by relating it to a shift in the visual field and redressing distortion as a byproduct of violence. Men portrayed either as victimized or victimizers now decorate the landscape riddled with bodies. In the case of the latter, the indirect results of the deaths they cause splay outward to reach all human domains. As casualties of war, the victims meld with the survivors in las muchedumbres se dislocaron de llanto sobre la atezada carne de guerra (193), punctuated by the victims, their bodies stripped of light and spilling forth their bones (193). …

A Sonnet from Carthage: Garcilaso de la Vega and the New Poetry of Sixteenth-Century Europe (review)

HELGERSON, RICHARD. from Carthage: Garcilaso de la Vega and the New Poetry of Sixteenth-Century Europe. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2007. xvii + 120 pages.In this slim but remarkable volume, Richard Helgerson, one of the most distinguished critics of early modern literature and culture writing today, explores the Italianate poetry of the Renaissance and early modern period through the lens provided by one of Garcilaso's less-studied sonnets, A Bo scan desde la Goleta. He also provides a bilingual anthology of the series of poems that Garcilaso wrote during the year and a half surrounding the military campaign in Tunis that provided the occasion for the Sonnet from Carthage. Helgerson does not argue that this poem was particularly influential, that it somehow helped shape the work of later poets working elsewhere. Rather, he argues that this sonnet uniquely encapsulates what he calls the of the new poetry: self-conscious poetic aspiration, self-immolation, place, and (xvi). The argument explores these five engagements in Garcilaso's sonnet, but also in the new poetry as a whole, as it was practiced in Italy, France, and England as well as in Spain.These engagements are not all of a kind. The engagement with imperial ambition, for example, has less to do with the dominant thematics of the new poetry than with its centrality to projects of cultural legitimization. Specifically, it refers to the task of producing a translatio studii from Latin to the vernacular meant to support a translatio imperii, the emergence of a nation-state or empire. Self-conscious poetic aspiration refers to the engagement of the new poets with the cultivation of genres and meters imported from Italian and classical models. Self-immolation has to do with the thematics of unrequited love so characteristic of the new poetry, and its emphasis on a tortured, introspective speaking subject. Place refers to the interest of the new poetry in the local, while friendship sums up the importance of male ho mo social bonds to the literary revolution carried out by the likes of Garcilaso and his friend Boscan.It should be apparent that these five engagements conflict among themselves, not to mention exhibit internal tensions each on its own. In fact, Helgerson argues, the tensions among and within these engagements are precisely what generate the new poetry's energy and enduring interest. Each of the chapters explores one of these engagements, taking as its point of departure one of the stanzas of Garcilaso's sonnet, or, in the case of the last chapter, the title customarily given to the poem. The argument then ranges away from Garcilaso's text and across various historical and biographical contexts, as well as a wealth of literary and historical intertexts, only to return home to Garcilaso in the closing paragraphs. Epic poetry, the iconography of triumphal processions, military history, biography, not to mention European lyric, classical and Renaissance epic, all make notable appearances along the way. The argument is geared to an audience of comparativists, so Hispanists will encounter some very familiar ideas, while others will be able to follow along even if they have not read Garcilaso.All the chapters are engaging, but some stand out from the rest. The one on the importance of homosocial bonds to the cultivation of the new poetry is particularly provocative. Helgerson captures the undeniable intensity of Garcilaso's affection for Boscan, particularly as it comes across in his Epistle to and in the Sonnet from Carthage itself. He does not hesitate, for example, to remind us that Garcilaso casts himself as the Dido of the Sonnet from Carthage, and that Boscan is therefore the Aeneas. I found myself wondering, however, whether Helgerson should not have gone even farther than he does, exploring not only the homosocial bonds that enable this poetry in Spain and elsewhere, but also the homoerotic implications of Garcilaso's language. …

Personalized and Depersonalized Discourses: Irony and Self-Consciousness in Bécquer's Rimas

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer's Rimas have long been read as a prelude to the later twentieth-century texts of Juan Ramón Jiménez and Jorge Guillén. This established reading of the Rimas emphasizes the romantic idealism of Bécquer's poetry and identifies Bécquer as a proto-symbolist poet whose work anticipates "pure" poetry in Spain. An alternate view of the Rimas, one that recognizes the ironic impulses of this poetry, reminds us that Bécquer's poetry and poetics are, rather than single-minded, grounded in paradox and concerned with one of art's central problems, that is to say, with representing what the limitless imagination produces within the limits of language.

How I Strayed into Asian Poetry

When I began to write poetry in 1948, I felt an affinity with the poetry of Spain, China, and India. I had studied Hebrew and knew Spanish and French. Then in 1949, near the end of Greece's civil war, I went to live and work a few years in Athens. There Greek joined the list, at first modern, then ancient. In 1952 I wasted a year at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London as a full-time student in Bengali. During that season I saw Sir Arthur Waley almost every day, standing about and talking to colleagues and students, dressed formally except for his bicycle clips, which he never removed from his striped trousers. His translations of the classical Chinese poets had first drawn me into the imagery and overheard poetry of China. Waley, who set his friend Ezra Pound on the path to Cathay, introduced Chinese and Japanese poetry to generations of English readers in his books. But I was timid and never dared speak to the wonderful man who had been the hermit of the British Museum's Oriental Sub-Department of Prints and Drawings and who was later remembered in the title of a book of tributes as "Madly Singing in the Mountains." I lost the chance of my life to enter Chinese poetry with the poet-scholar whose sensibility for China's poets and philosophers gave us a civilization. I chose wrong between India and China.

The Cantor-Poets: Review Essay

In the awareness, by the educated Jewish public, of the piyyut, i.e., Jewish hymnography, I it is especially the classic, much celebrated Golden Age of Hebrew poetry in Spain, in the 11th to 13th centuries, that catches the eye. When that Golden Age eventually started to unfold, it did so with such poets-e.g., Samuel the Nagid (Vizier), or that proud youngster resenting him, the giant Ibn Gabirol-who were endowed with a taste and aesthetic conceptions quite unsimilar to what used to be mainstream during the previous several generations of authors in Spain itself, or the traditionally related Maghreb, or everywhere else for that matter. Poetry of both the old and new traditions included secular compositions as well as hymns: poems as religious themes. Hebrew hymns are termed piyyutim, and paytanim (hymnists) is how authors ofpiyyutim are referred to. Yet, in the context of the Golden Age, by polemic against the paytanim, it is the critique of the poetry of old that is meant (unless you are dealing with a philosopher like Maimonides, who later on was to dislike the hymnists regardless of style, because of the theologically to him questionable assertions that their art inspired them to include in their verse). Anyway, the Golden Age of Hebrew poetry in Spain

Blanca Andreu: Recovering the Lost Language

This article situates Blanca Andreu in the panorama of recent poetry in Spain and focuses on her concern with language as related to meaning and reality. Her first two volumes, De una nifa deprovincias que se vino a vivir en un Chagall and Bdculo de Babel, employ dreamlike imagery, fragmented syntax, and highly challenging use of language, while Elphistone, her third collection, is a sort of epic poem of more translucent and natural language patterns. Whether Andreu is defending language as inherently possessed of meaning, or lamenting language's incapacity to convey meaning, all of her work is unified by a desire for truth and spiri- tual illumination.

Culturalism and the "New" Poetry. A Poem by Pedro Gimferrer: "Cascabeles" from Arde el mar (1966)

The study deals with the group of Spanish poets commonly called the novisimos or promocion de 1970, using as a base a poem by Pedro Gimferrer published in 1966. It studies the aesthetic break-through achieved by this generation, highlighting the concept of culturalism that critics used to define it twenty years ago. It examines the equivocal uses to which this concept can be put, and describes its correct meaning in the light of the aesthetic to which it refers. It then studies the mechanisms implicit in the writing of this non-confessional lyric poetry, centering it on two complementary procedures: the use of a historical persona that serves as an analogue (personaje historico analogico), and that of another work of art that functions as an objectifying device (obra de arte ajena objetivadora). It considers these in the light of two perspectives: the overcoming of neo-romantic rhetoric, and the participation of the reader. This article is available in Studies in 20th Century Literature: http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol16/iss1/6 Culturalism and New Poetry. A Poem by Pedro Gimferrer: `Cascabeles' from Arde el mar (1966) Guillermo Cutler() Universidad de Alicante Translated by Frederick H. Fornoff Arde el mar (The Sea is Burning), published in 1966, is the book that inaugurates the radical change which, with respect to the immediate tradition of postwar Spanish poetry, was realized by the socalled novisimos or poets of the generation of 1970. Cascabeles (Bells) is a perfectly representative example of that rupture, of the new concept of the poetic text that it occasions, and of the first moment in the evolution of the poets to whom I refer. The change that is brought about in the second half of the decade of the sixties has the effect of disorienting readers as well as critics of poetry in Spain, because it is marked by an absolute lack of response to the expectations of both. Those expectations, as in every moment of literary history, are determined by an implicit assumption of continuity of the tendencies admitted as forming part of the prevailing literary universe or as having formed part of it in the recent past, and as having achieved, in both cases, majority acceptance. The horizon of expectations of the Spanish reader of poetry in the seventh decade of this century consisted in essence of two fundamental elements: 1) the direct use of the confessional and confidential I, which derives from the concept of language as a non-problematical means of communication for the transmission of ethical messages pertaining to the human condition, messages that allude without mediation to a necessarily shared referential space (occasionally involving ideological, religious or moral obstacles) between author and reader; and 2) a product of the same concept of language, the establishment of the text as a vehicle for the transmission of critical messages relative to the social and political environment. In this second case, the dogma of the social function of the text, which theoretically embraces the dogma of its reception by the majority,

Recent Poetry and the Essential Word

Postmodern poetry resists classification in tight compartments. After last artificially-named group of novisimos in 60s, evolution of poetry in Spain has followed different and at times divergent paths. The novisimos had reacted against social poetry, denouncing its lack of attention to artistry, almost prosaic quality, subservience to theme, and produced elaborate creations with an emphasis on form and exquisite and more hermetic word and subject. Obeying law of corsi e ricorsi, there was a certain return in 80s to simpler expression which, however, does not pretend to be that of man on street reflecting historical circumstance, but rather a search for essences, for eternal values. Each poet—M.V. Atencia, Jesus Munarriz, and Luis Sunen can serve as examples of essential inclination—traces his own way and creates a personal poetics. Faith in word is their common denominator. This turn to simplicity can also be observed in last works of such poets as Carvajal, Gimferrer and Siles, who admit, however, greater ambiguity of word and intention. This article is available in Studies in 20th Century Literature: http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol16/iss1/9 Recent Spanish Poetry and Essential Word Birute Ciplijauskaite University of Wisconsin-Madison Translated by Peter Browne Lo apretado vale en verso y en prosa mas que lo suelto, el rayo mas que la nube. The compressed is worth more in verse and in prose than unbound, ray more than cloud. J. R. J. Jean Francois Lyotard attempts to establish a division between two terms that have been alluded to by critics frequently and with remarkable differences during last few years, modern and postmodern. As examples he chooses two nearly contemporary authors. Proust would embody modern, since [he] calls forth unpresentable by means of language unaltered in its syntax and vocabulary, while Joyce allows unpresentable to become perceptible in his writing itself, in signifier (341). In postmodern, emphasis is on process, on constant change and absence of determinate form. The text is understood as an event, while stress is placed on its fluctuating quality. In accordance with negation of existence of a single reality or of a single text as maintained by deconstructionists or those poets belonging to L-AN-G-U-A-G-E group in North America, John Cage affirms that the world, real is not an object. It is a process (Perloff 196). Such a view leads to skepticism and encourages linguistic structures that highlight ludic aspect of creative task. Some of these procedures would coincide on surface level with what Julia Barella observes in work of novisimos who, according to her, substituted reflection for experimentation and free play, and order

Hebrew Poetry of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (review)

Hebrew Studies 33 (1992) 150 Reviews provides the best safeguard against subjective speculation. With adequate safeguards, tradition-history can take a place of prominence in certain parts of psalmic studies. I do have questions about three aspects of his book. First of all, I doubt whether Traditionsgeschichte is a subdiscipline of tradition-history. The terms are roughly equivalent. Secondly, I would question whether one should term psalms of praise (96, 105, 106) attributed to Asaph in 1 Chronicles 16 as deutero-Asaphite psalms. More accurately, the psalms typified the worship leadership of the Asaphic Levites during the time of the Chronicler. Such psalms of praise belonged to the general heritage of Israel's cult and do not need to be labeled as deutero-Asaphite. Thirdly, due to the late and uncertain dates of psalmic titles or superscriptions, basing a study on them is tentative at best. On the other hand, however, Nasuti has shown the benefits of taking psalmic superscriptions seriously. Readers will find this book on what appears to be an obscure topic useful in two different ways. First, it provides an example of how traditionhistory under some constraints can place materials in social and historical contexts. Second, it reminds us that biblical tradition remains much more diverse than normally accepted. For example, contributions from the northern kingdom of Israel obviously made more of an impact on the theology and cult of Jerusalem than previously has been allowed. J. Gordon Harris North American Baptist Seminary Sioux Falls, SD 57105 HEBREW POETRY OF THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE RENAISSANCE. By Dan Pagis. The Taubman Lectures in Jewish Studies 2. Pp. xvi + 84. Berkeley: University of California, 1991. Cloth, $22.50. The Taubman lectures in Jewish studies given by Dan Pagis at the University of California, Berkeley in 1980-1981 have been published in an attractive volume by the University of California Press. The volume should have been titled Secular Hebrew Poetry of the Middle Ages etc., as noted by Pagis in his introduction: "The three lectures that follow are devoted to the vast field of Hebrew secular poetry" (p. 1). Secular Hebrew poetry Hebrew Studies 33 (1992) 151 Reviews emerged in Spain around the year 950 as a "self-conscious poetic school which (for the first time in Hebrew) concerned itself mainly not with the congregation [as did the synagogue hymnography dating from biblical times] but with the individual" (p. 2). Although secular Hebrew poetry attempted to probe the inner recesses of the self and his relation to others and to the world around him, it came to be seen as stylized and conventional, using stock figures and conceits. Pagis agrees that not all of secular Hebrew poetry was "spontaneous... and expressive" but "an important part of it was." In his lectures titled "Individuality and the Poetic Tradition," "Play and Substance: Aspects of Hebrew-Spanish Imagery," and "Convention and Experience: Hebrew Love Poetry in Spain and Italy," he attempts to support his argument. Pagis begins by stressing the need for an understanding of the poem's "code," which, in modern times, has been misread. Familiarity with the "code" is required in understanding the wide mix of hints at self-expression in the diwan of Moses Ibn Ezra. Regrettably, Pagis did not elaborate on the "code" in these lectures. For a fuller understanding, one is required to consult his Secular Poetry and Poetic Theory: Moses Ibn Ezra and His Contemporaries (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1970 [HebrewD, pp. 285-286. Pagis then cites several examples of self-expression within the confines of the conventional genre. Even in the love poetry with its stock characters -the desirable and cruel beloved; the hopelessly infatuated suitor; the finger-pointing "reproacher" chastising the lover-the poet reveals his personal feelings. For example, Pagis refers to Samuel the Nagid's meditations on old age which transcend the classic images of wisdom poetry on the subject and go far beyond the familiar "complaint" figures. When the Nagid, responding to congratulations on having reached his fiftieth birthday , writes, "I have nothing in the world but the hour in which I am: it pauses for a moment, and then like a cloud, moves on," he is, as Pagis puts it, "not...

Alternative Poetry in Spain and Latin America circa 1900: Decline of the Centre of Culture

Alternative Poetry in Spain and Latin America circa 1900: Decline of the Centre of Culture