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Casal's Cuban Counterpoint of Art and Reality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

Ivan A. Schulman
Ivan A. Schulman*
Affiliation:
University of Florida
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It has been traditional to treat the life and art of Julián del Casal and José Martí as antithetical statements.

Si Martí encarna entre nosotros las nupcias del espíritu con la realidad, con la naturaleza y con la tierra misma, Julián del Casal (1863-93) significa todo lo contrario. Su incapacidad radical para asumir la realidad, que unas veces interpreta como signo de “idealismo,” de pureza y anhelo inconciliables con lo mezquino de la circunstancia, y otras, las más, como fatal “impotencia” de su ser, se resuelve en un estado de ánimo dominante: el hastío.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , 1976 , pp. 113 - 128
Copyright
Copyright © 1976 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

Supported as part of the project “Literature and Society: Aspects of Conformity and Disconformity in Mexico, Argentina and the Spanish Antilles (1830-1940)” by the Joint Commmittee on Latin American Studies of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies.

References

Notes

1. Cintio Vitier, Lo cubano en la poesía (La Habana: Instituto del Libro, 1970), p. 285.

2. Julián del Casal, Prosas (La Habana: Consejo Nacional de Cultura, 1963), 2:54. In preparing this study we have used the three volumes of prose of the Centenary Edition published by the Consejo Nacional de Cultura, 1963-64. References to this edition will be made within the text in abbreviated form: Prosas, 2:54. For the poetry we have used the Mario Cabrera Saqui edition: Poesías completas (La Habana: Dirección de Cultura, 1945). References to the poetry will be made within the text by title only.

3. Vitier, Lo cubano, p. 297.

4. “La perla” constitutes a rare example of allegorical embodiment.

5. Eduardo López Morales in his “Prólogo” to Jorge Isaacs' María (La Habana: Casa de las Américas, 1970), p. ix.

6. José María Monner Sans, Julián del Casal y el modernismo hispanoamericano (México: El Colegio de México, 1952), p. 73.

7. Charles Baudelaire, Oeuvres (Paris: La Pleiade, 1932), 2:647.

8. See our study, “Las estructuras, polares en la obra de José Martí y Julián del Casal” in Génesis del modernismo (México: El Colegio de México, 1966), pp. 153-87.

9. We are using this adjective in the sense of Monner Sans's characterization of Casal as “el primer lírico de formacion cubana.” Julian del Casal, p. 118.

10. Mario Praz, Mnemosyne, the Parallel between Literature and the Visual Arts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), p. 163.

11. See note 2.

12. Compare:

Porque al oír tu voz, amante y tierna,

la tristeza del alma, se evapora,

cual la sombra de lóbrega caverna

al resplandor resodado de la aurora.

(“Versos azules”)

13. Needless to say we cannot present a full study of Casal's analysis of Cuban society here. Instead, we have chosen those aspects that have a direct bearing on the explication of the stylistic elements of his work singled out for study in a social context. Among the significant essays not studied systematically are the articles entitled “La sociedad de la Habana” (Prosas, 1:131-57) and Casal's specific comments on General Salamanca (Prosas, 1:154-55).

14. See Tulio Halperin Donghi, Historia contemporánea de América Latina (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1970), pp. 278-79.

15. Praz, Mnemosyne, p. 164.

16. See note 3.

17. Quoted by Jean Paladilhe, Gustave Moreau (Paris: Fernand Hazan, 1971), p. 32.

18. José Pierre, “Gustave Moreau au regard changeant des générations,” in Paladilhe, Gustave Moreau, p. 80.

19. Vitier, Lo cubano, pp. 309-10. These lines were originally written in prerevolutionary Cuba.

20. Vitier, Lo cubano, pp. 291-92, n.3.

21. The enumeration of section 2 is based on terms of purity. But Casal's preoccupation with its antithesis is evident in the last three lines which precede the Envío:

Tal es, oh, Dios!, el alma que tú has hecho

vivir en la inmundicia de mi carne,

como vive una flor espesa en el cieno.

22. In verse, an interesting parallel might be drawn with Casal's use of the monorrimo in “En el campo.”

23. Dámaso Alonso, with Carlos Bousoño, Seis calas en la expresión literaria española (Madrid: Gredos, 1951), p. 25.