Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Baroque, Symbolism and Hispanic Modernity: A Benjaminian Meditation on the Construction of History
- 1 Góngora and the Colonial Body Politic: Moriscos, Amerindians and Poetry as Protest
- 2 Violence and the “Tremulous Private Body” in Lazarillo de Tormes, Fuenteovejuna, and the Soledades
- 3 Trauma, Body and Machine in Don Quijote
- 4 Góngora and Darío in Constellation: On the Poetics of Rape, Colonialism and Modernity
- 5 Pilgrimage into the Trauma of History: Continuities of Góngora in Carpentier, Rulfo and Vallejo
- 6 Signposts in a Genealogy of Post-Symbolism in Latin American Poetry
- Afterword
- Appendix I: On Mallarmé’s “Un Coup de dés”
- Appendix II: The Annales School and Maravall’s La cultura del barroco
- Works Cited
- Index
6 - Signposts in a Genealogy of Post-Symbolism in Latin American Poetry
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 December 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Baroque, Symbolism and Hispanic Modernity: A Benjaminian Meditation on the Construction of History
- 1 Góngora and the Colonial Body Politic: Moriscos, Amerindians and Poetry as Protest
- 2 Violence and the “Tremulous Private Body” in Lazarillo de Tormes, Fuenteovejuna, and the Soledades
- 3 Trauma, Body and Machine in Don Quijote
- 4 Góngora and Darío in Constellation: On the Poetics of Rape, Colonialism and Modernity
- 5 Pilgrimage into the Trauma of History: Continuities of Góngora in Carpentier, Rulfo and Vallejo
- 6 Signposts in a Genealogy of Post-Symbolism in Latin American Poetry
- Afterword
- Appendix I: On Mallarmé’s “Un Coup de dés”
- Appendix II: The Annales School and Maravall’s La cultura del barroco
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
Invidia convocaba, si no celo,
al balcón de safiro
las claras, aunque etíopes, estrellas
y las Osas dos bellas,
sediento siempre tiro
del carro, perezoso honor del cielo;
mas ¡ay!, que del rüidode
la sonante esfera
a la una luciente y otra fiera
el piscatorio cántico impedido,
con las prendas bajaran de Cefeo
a las vedadas ondas,
si Tetis no (desde sus grutas hondas)
enfrenara el deseo.
Luis de Góngora, Soledades II. 612–25SATOR
AREPO
TENET
OPERA
ROTAS
Medieval Birthing Charm (“The sower (God) AREPO holds [his] works, the wheels [of heaven]”)“Bloy (lo repito) no hizo otra cosa que aplicar a la Creación entera el método que los cabalistas judíos aplicaron a la Escritura. Éstos pensaron que una obra dictada por el Espíritu Santo era un texto absoluto: vale decir un texto donde la colaboración del azar es calculable en cero. Esa premisa portentosa de un libro impenetrable a la contingencia, de un libro que es un mecanismo de propósitos infinitos, los movió a permutar las palabras es criturales, a sumar el valor numérico de las letras, a tener en cuenta su forma, a observar las minúsculas y mayúsculas, a buscar acrósticos y anagramas …”
Jorge Luis Borges, “El espejo de los enigmas” OC II, 105The “weak Messianic power” of which Benjamin writes may be evoked in the Symbolist play with possibility. The Symbolist language game signals impasse: the failure of the poetic word, its fall into reification. But it also points beyond such an impasse, like Mallarmé's “Sainte,” in its moment of pure evocation. What happens when this moment is politicized, when the fingers gesture, like Vallejo's Republican hero, Pedro Rojas, beyond the trauma of history? Might there be a literary space for a constellation of Benjamin and Mallarmé that points beyond the Baroque legacy of historical impasse? To consider such questions, I propose an investigation into a genealogy of Post-Symbolism in Latin American poetry, using a canonical sonnet by Mallarmé as a point of departure.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Spanish Baroque and Latin American Literary ModernityWriting in Constellation, pp. 123 - 142Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2021