Intervention
Textual Crossings (II)

II. Valente: “Al maestro cantor”

The Spanish poet José Ángel Valente wrote a prose-poem dedicated “al maestro cantor”:

Maestro, usted dijo que en el orbe de lo poético las palabras quedan retenidas por una repentina aprehension, destruidas, es decir, sumergidas en un amanecer en que ellas mismas no se reconocen. Hay, en efecto, una red que sobrevuela el pájaro imposible, pero la sombra de ésta queda, al fin, húmeda y palpitante, pez-pájaro, apresada en la red. Y no se reconoce la palabra. Palabra que habitó entre nosotros. Palabra de tal naturaleza que, más que alojar el sentido, aloja la totalidad del despertar.

Here is the corresponding passage from Lezama Lima’s “El secreto de Garcilaso,” an essay from the 1930s. I quote the text before and after the phrases Valente borrowed in order to give some idea of the relevant context:

Debemos distinguir orbe poético de aire pleno, de ambiente poético. El primero comporta una señal de mando por la que todas las cosas al sumergirse en él son obligadas a obediencia ciega, aquietadas por un nuevo sentido regidor. Orbe poético—ya en el caso de Góngora, ya en el de la mística del siglo XVI, que se va apoderando de las cosas, quedando detenidas por la sorpresa de esa aprehensión repentina que las va a destruir eléctricamente, para sumergirlas en un amanecer que el que ellas mismas no se reconozan. Animales, ángeles y vegetales, fines en su impenetrabilidad, en su sueño desesperante, son dentro de la red de un orbe poético, medios ciegos por la impetuosidad de la nueva unidad que los encierra.

(A very inadequate translation:

We should distinguish poetic orb from a full air, from poetic ambience. The first brings with it a sign of command through which all things, upon being submerged in it, are bound by a blind obedience, tamed by a new ruling sense. A poetic orb, whether in the case of Góngora or of sixteenth-century mysticism, that takes control of things, {which} become captured by the surprise of that aprehension that will destroy them electrically, so as to submerge them in a day-break in which they don’t recognize themselves. Animals, angels, and vegetables ... )

Valente’s minimalist prose-poem considerably simplifies Lezama’s baroque rhetoric, dropping the distinction between two kinds of poetic atmosphere and the specific references to Góngora and the Spanish mystic poets. The gesture of saying “You said,” together with the dedication (Al maestro cantor) indicate that the text has another origin, but only a specialist in Valente, like myself for example, will know that the “maestro cantor” is Lezama Lima. (Not even the typical specialist in twentieth-century Spanish poetry will necessarily know this if s/he is not an expert in Valente’s work: to search out the source text is a step that even scholarly readers will not take unless they are doing research on Valente’s debts to Lezama, as I happen to be doing.)

Just as Lezama attributed words to Jiménez, Valente imputes these words to Lezama, paying homage to him even as he alters his words to make them his own.

One crucial difference lies in Valente’s gesture of supressing Lezama’s name, leaving a weaker clue available only to specialist readers. Of course, if this were an academic article Valente would also be obliged to identify the exact source in Lezama Lima’s writing. As we will see in the next installment of this series, Valente repeats a similar gesture with a text of Federico García Lorca. In this next case, though, Lorca’s identity is even more submerged.

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