The 1930s

I've been increasingly interested in the 1930s. Zambrano's first works, the beginnings of Lezama Lima. Lorca's duende lecture and Diván del Tamarit, Unamuno's San Manuel Bueno, mártir. The 30s represents the end of historical modernism and the beginning of late modernism. The Civil war is 36-39. The years right before are fraught with ideological conflict. The historical avant-garde has its last glorious moments before dying or becoming something else.

The late modernism of the 1975-present period is steeped in the 30s and 40s, that reorientation of modernism that occurs then.

What do you do, then, with social realism of the 1950s and 60s? Speaking of Spain, I guess we could see Sartrean engagement as an influential but short-lived movement. Any good poet from about '55 on was trying to find a way out of the realist nightmare. Even before social poetry reached its high-water mark the good poets were already trying to make an end-run about it. It took a while to develop in the later work of Valente, Crespo, Gamoneda, Atencia, but it was already in early Rodríguez.

Maybe I need chapter on Atencia? It couldn't hurt.

Conocimiento

Is Zambrano's "conocimiento" the same as Valente's? I'm trying to argue that it is. If it were obviously the same, then I wouldn't have to argue it. If it is too different, then my argument is wrong. If it has must enough connections to be plausible, then my point will be interesting.

The same would go for Zambrno's "materialism" and Valente's concept of the same name. It would be too coincidental if Valente took these terms from Zambrano without thinking about her, right? It's like the detective who "doesn't believe in coincidences."

More Zambrano

To know enough about María Zambrano to write about her with confidence, I will have to know much more about her than I need to know to support my basic points. Only a small fraction of what I learn will fit in the 30 pages I am writing about her. I cannot even estimate a percentage, but let's just say I'll have to go through a few thousand pages of secondary material in addition to understanding what she is about in several of her own works. She is not a verbose writer, but she wrote quite a bit and her prose is dense. I will have know her at the capillary level just to be able to make a point confidently at the level of veins and arteries.

Now here's the interesting thing: I actually like learning more than I need to. That's one of the pleasures or luxuries of my profession. The pleasure of mastery. If I just studied and thought enough until I could barely fill 30 pages, then I my work would not have the depth that I want it to have.

I will know when I know enough because I will reach the point where everything I am reading about her falls into the category of dejà vu.

The Spanish Soul

Nobody writing on Zambrano (almost nobody) seems to question the idea that there is an essence to Spanish culture, a Spanish soul that can be found in the poetry of Saint John of the Cross.

None of the American poets I studied in Apocryphal Lorca question the duende and its expression of a Spanish essence. These are supposedly postmodern poets. (Only Sorrentino when making fun of Bly.)

I think I see a pattern developing.

I've been playing around with the idea of counter-reformation poetics. What I mean by this is a very specific tradition that looks to Spanish mysticism (16th century) in order to create a Spanish cultural poetics for the modern age. There are a few dots I haven't connected yet, but the figures I am looking at are María Zambrano, José Lezama Lima, and José Ángel Valente, with some Unamuno thrown in. My basic question is how secular intellectuals can sign on to this project. Zambrano and Lezama were both practicing Catholics, of course, but their models are influential on many other, much more secular thinkers.

Mysticism almost has to do the work that the enlightenment does for other national traditions.

The notion of the counter-reformation was invented much later, and the term itself is fairly charged. I'm using it with some trepidation but also with some deliberate provocation.

One of those "duh" moments last night. My topic is "late modernism," and I suddenly put that together with the fact that Zambrano, born in 1904, published (or re-published) many books in the 1980s, and some even posthumously. The main frame-work for her reception, then, is the exact period I am studying.

There's a lot in Valente that was in Zambrano before: the interest in mysticism, "passivity," the union of poetry and philosophy or "pensamiento," Lezama Lima... He owes as much, if not more, to her as to Cernuda. What kept me from seeing that was my relative unfamiliarity with Zambrano. Of course he's written about her so he wasn't exactly hiding this influence, but for me it was "hiding in plain sight." Zambrano was an exile in Cuba during and after the Spanish civil war, and contributed regularly to Lezama's Orígenes. Valente didn't meet Lezama until 1967. You can see letters where María Z is writing Lezama about this young poet (Valente) who is about to make the trip to Cuba, and then letters afterwards about how happy she is that the two of them got along.

This is significant because there is this religious, mystical strain that comes out of Lezama and Zambrano that gives an interesting twist to Spanish modernism--kind of a de-secularization of Ortega y Gasset. It's interesting for me because as a non-religious type person it provides me with a problem or a source of resistance. I had thought that Valente's religiosity was just a metaphor for poesis, but what if is something more than that?

This is a very inchoate part of my project. I love that word because it means "unformed because in its early stages." A particular kind of formlessness deriving from something not yet having taken shape. That's a cool concept.