“Everywhere we look for the Absolute but we only find objects.” With these words, the German poet Novalis proclaimed, in full romanticism, the frustration of a spirit which aspired to transcend real life. Thus he recognized the unique character of the true artist, … eager to rise to regions forbidden to ordinary mortals. As Bécquer wrote in one of his nursery rhymes, “in the sea of doubt in which I float / I don’t even know what I believe; / yet these desires tell me / that I am carrying something / divine here.” The Sevillian poet, disconcerted by his most intimate impulses, felt that an inner call placed him on the threshold of mystery, where only mystics walk, and where poets fight against the limits of language by taming it with “words that were at the same time sighs and laughter, colors and notes”. Later, Juan Ramón Jiménez would speak again and again of the “desire for eternity” that also drove him as an inner turmoil that gave his poetry an additional sacred character inherent in his linguistic creativity.
This is the differentiating element of the language of authentic poetry compared to other genres of less spiritual significance. This is why Antonio Machado defined poetry as a “hearty thing”, that is, something of the heart, understanding the latter term as the noblest part of the human condition. It is in this sense that poetry aspires to reveal the world in a recreation that analogically repeats the divine creation of Genesis. It is not necessary that the message be specifically religious, as happens in the poetry of the mystics of our golden age, but rather that it aspires to discover new worlds by analogically imitating the appointing God of “Genesis.” As the French poet Rimbaud, who formulated the archetype of the poet-seer, said in the second half of the 19th century, the poet is an explorer of his consciousness, a kind of visionary who discovers new worlds and articulates a new poetic language rich in metaphors and synesthesias. This is the aesthetic of symbolism. The symbolists taught us to read poetry as we read it today, accepting that each word can have a symbolic value, that Antonio Machado’s afternoons are not the afternoons of the clock but the expression of boredom, boredom and vital fatigue. This symbolization transforms each poem into a suprareal message, an “ascension” that transcends the path of human rationality and points toward higher forms of interpretation of the world.
In modern times, there have been poets particularly gifted for this higher-order adventure. The Italian Giacomo Leopardi, contemplating nature in his poem “The Infinite”, feels how “avviene l’eterno” comes to him, that is, how a sensation of eternity comes to him which makes him pleasant to be shipwrecked in that sea of calm and silence that the eternal implies. For his part, the German-speaking Czech poet Rainer María Rilke detected in Ronda’s stone architecture and its rugged mountain ranges an “eternal meaning” that elevated his work to the highest realms of the spirit.
In Spain, this function of the poetic word as creator of worlds of eternal scope is revealed above all in the poetry of Juan Ramón Jiménez, who coincides in his vision of poetic language with the definition that Ortega left us in his essay “Mirabeau or the Politician: “The word, nothing, a little quivering air which, since the confused dawn of Genesis, has the power of creation”. Just as God created things by naming them, so, in the divine way, the poet recreates them by discovering the essences which are beyond the simple enunciation of words. And if in the book “Eternities” Juan Ramón was still looking for “the exact name of things”, in his final phase and in a book like “Desired and Desiring God” he will already feel like a god who, by naming it, recreates the world: “The god who is always at the end, / the god created and recreated / by grace and without effort. / The God. The name obtained from the names.
The entire evolution of Juan Ramon’s poetry has been a sustained operation of the “name”, a semantic neologism invented by Moguereño which differs from the simple meaning of “fame, reputation” given to it by the Academy’s dictionary. Juan Ramón, faithful to a Platonic vision of poetic work, aims higher. It is a question of elevating the poetic word to a sacred dimension, to the certain fact that “in the beginning the Word existed”.
About The Author
