At dawn, the world kisses me on your mouth, woman.”
It's in my book: it's from La estación total, by Juan Ramón Jiménez, and in it you can guess the influence of haikus: the poet had already married the Catalan Zenobia Camprubí...
Married? They would already have some quarrel...
Another poem by Juan Ramon, Clear , describes the tension of love:
“You are before me, yes.
But I forget about you,
thinking of you" .
What do you think when you read it now?
In the intensity of the light when you wake up with the one you love.
More Juan Ramón: “Butterfly of light / beauty leaves when I arrive / to its rose.”
The poet wants to write...
“I run, blind, after her... / I half catch her here and there...”.
But inspiration eludes him; she gets frustrated...
“Only the way of his escape remains in my hand!”
He tells of his failure, but the reader glimpses that this fleeting form is, after all, a victory for the poet over the word. It's haiku. Along those lines, Tarde is also found in Juan Ramón:
"Sometimes the stars
They do not open in the sky.
The ground is the one that shines
in a starry firmament.”
And his famous “Don't touch it anymore, that's what the rose is like!” ?
That well-known definition of Juan Ramón's naked poetry is only two lines, because he has learned from haiku that they are enough.
What is your favorite haiku in Spanish?
"Cicada!
Blessed are you!
that on the bed of earth
you die drunk on light.”
It's from Lorca... Magnificent!
Was Lorca a haikúphile?
Lorca knew that for Japanese poetry the cicada is sadness, fragility, and he included in his images other creatures, such as the frog, that European tradition did not consider poetic.
Because?
Because in European culture there is a desire for transcendence induced, above all, by the weight of Christianity and God, until Lorca and others rescue popular tradition along with proximity and intimacy for poetry.
The first Spanish haiku?
Now I remember Díez-Canedo's translation of Arakida's haiku:
“Again on the stem does it rest
the detached flower?
Miraculous virtue!
But it's not a flower:
"It's a butterfly."
And in Catalan?
Excellent Carner, D’Ors, Junoy... but I will quote a fragment of Salvat-Papasseit:
"Now at night in the Pyrenees
it seems to snow from so much moon
- it is true that there is still snow on the peaks
and it is also true that the plum does it
all the flowers that can be seen now".
Accurate...
...Also unforgettable is the one who wrote when he was sick, his swan song:
"Thus the rose carried by the torrent,
like the spark of mimosa in the wind,
your life, under the firmament”.
Why are you impressed with that Papasseit?
In this Catalan haiku one does not sense sadness at the end of his life, but rather the serene decision to accept death. And that lesson of maturity is universal. When the echo of his words has already died out, his meaning endures.
“The Creole curve of a voice / makes the street American /.”
It is the haiku of Buenos Aires by Díez-Canedo, another of the introducers of the Japanese tradition in Spain, where the Student Residence was its great focus of irradiation.
Any of your favorite residents?
I Remember Night, by Emilio Prados:
“The sun, like a mirror,
On the one hand it is brilliant
and for the other black.”
Astropoetic lucidity.
In that line of revelation and ingenuity:
“In the swan they come together
the angel and the serpent.”
Powerful visual metaphor.
It is a well-known greguería by Ramón Gómez de la Serna, influenced by the European avant-garde fascinated by haikus, as in:
“The head is the fishbowl of ideas” or
“The swallows quote the sky” or. ..
“The hare is free”...
Your favorite gregueria?
“If man is so afraid of death, why does he kill himself?
¿...?
–Because by taking your life you take away your fear.” And there are the haiku line verses by Antonio Machado that give the title to my book:
“Like a crossbow
in the blue air (...)”. Can't guess what's next?
¿...?
It's a stork.
