As every year, dozens of pilgrims traveled to Collioure (France) to honor the memory of the poet Antonio Machado, who died in exile on February 22, 1939. Some placed flowers on his tombstone, others recited verses, there were even some who introduced letters in the mailbox enabled for this purpose in the tomb.
Since Machado died at the age of 64 at the beginning of a brief and tragic exile that humbly culminated in a hotel in the eastern Pyrenees, the author of Soledades, Campos de Castilla and La tierra de Alvargonzález has continued to receive letters from poets, former republican exiles, teachers who make the path by walking, schoolchildren, wounded letters and pilgrims of all kinds and conditions. His case is not exceptional. Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Romeo and Juliet, Lord Byron, Oscar Wilde and Rimbaud, among others, also continue to receive hundreds of letters after their deaths from his admirers, not to mention Elvis Presley, Jim Morrison or Pablo Escobar.
Last Saturday, February 24, admirers of the Sevillian poet traveled from Barcelona, Madrid, Soria, Zaragoza and many other places to pay tribute, for yet another year, to Machado in the cemetery where he rests. Before a sea of verses scattered on the floor, someone recites: “Only your figure, like a white spark, in my dark night!”, while the rest of the members of a group of fifteen people wait their turn. It is a gray and somewhat rainy morning, similar to when the poet, his mother, his brother and his sister-in-law arrived by train at the small station.
Meanwhile, someone puts a new letter in the mailbox. In 2011, the Collioure City Council, the University of Alcalá de Henares and the Antonio Machado Foundation signed an agreement to catalog the 2,600 documents received by Machado on his deathbed. There were all kinds of them: supplications, post-mortem recognitions, requests, etc. “Neither hard and eternal marble, nor music nor painting, but words in time,” the poet wrote in 1924, and that is what the archive was called: Words in Time. The question is: What sense does it have to write to a deceased person?
For psychologists, this ancient practice can be cathartic, therapeutic, even restorative. It is a way to honor the memory of someone who, while he could breathe, became a reference and also to say goodbye, organizing feelings and expressing them without shame.
Sergi Rufi, psychologist and author of The Beauty of Rarity (Libros Cúpula), acknowledges having preached by example in front of Oscar Wilde's tomb in the Parisian cemetery of Père-Lachaise. The tomb of the English writer, master of wit and idol of London theaters, was designed by the American sculptor Jacob Epstein in 1914 and imitates the winged bulls of Assyria. Originally the sculpture had testicles, but they disappeared in 1961. “It was like connecting with someone who had inspired me throughout my life,” says Rufi about the meaning of writing to someone who lies two meters underground.
“It is one of the most used techniques in psychology – explains Rufi – to release emotions and air things that could not be said in life.” In ancient Egypt, these letters contained very varied requests: requesting help against enemies living or dead, especially in family disputes, as well as imploring special blessings, which usually had to do with pregnancies and healthy children.
“The second reason for writing to a deceased person – continues this therapist specialized in loss and grief – is to return a small part of the inspiration received.” From what those who gathered in front of Machado's bones said in Collioure, this was the main reason given by those who put letters in the mailbox.
According to Xavier Febrés in a chapter of Els últims dies de Machado (La Mansarda), placing a simple mailbox in the grave was a decision made in 1977. Since 1939, Manolo Valiente, another Sevillian poet in exile, went to the tomb of Machado to proceed to empty the overflowing mailbox. Paul Combeau, Councilor for Culture in the Collioure City Council, noted in 1997 that Machado received on average between 50 and 100 letters a month. A small anthology of letters was even published, hiding the identity of the signatories.
One of the letters compiled by Febrés in his book said: Machado, good friend, what does it matter if there are no roads when we find the path that, from Madrid to Collioure, you turned into a stele. A path that you filled with your life and even more so with your death, poet.
Another missive, written in Catalan, said: Dear friend: To you, Potxer is something else, but to us he is more than a poet (…) You may wonder why we are here, why so many people visit him constantly now and not before, why does everyone want to have him close (…) This ungrateful country of ours, which did not even offer him a piece of land to finally rest, now visits him in this strange land where he met death, wishing him to return definitively to his home and ours.
About five years ago, Gabriel Lara de la Casa, who this month publishes Literature on the Skin (Cúpula), also came out of his “burrow” and went to Machado's grave to bring him a letter. “It wasn't the first time, because I was there other times, but that day, I remember because it was at night and I was alone,” says this Literature professor at the Institut Escola London, who avoids traveling whenever he can.
“I have an almost personal relationship with Machado since his poetry has influenced me greatly. So I began my letter by thanking him for his work, because his poems have always accompanied me, especially in my worst moments,” he reveals. “I was also greatly affected by the poet's relationship with Leonor Izquierdo, her wife, so in the letter she explained to him that she had gone to visit him at the Soria cemetery where she lay buried,” she continues. “In the end, I wrote to him that I was sorry that we had to go so far to visit our great poet,” she concludes.
The feeling that Lara had after leaving the Collioure cemetery behind was the same as when she visited Kafka's tomb or that of Joseph Brodsky in Venice: having lifted a weight off her shoulders. In fact, Lara took advantage of her trip to the respective cemeteries to present her references, not only with a letter, but also with a book: “Campos de Castilla” to Machado (“but the 1917 edition”, she specifies) or “Marca of water” to Brodsky.
“Writing a letter is a way to discover what you have inside,” says Lara about a formula that she has put into practice in her latest book: ten letters to as many classic authors to claim that literature is true self-help.
