I don't read poetry. There are only about a dozen poems that make me feel something. But sometimes I go back to it, and one day I tried it with about five sonnets by Dionisio Ridruejo, with a bleak result. If I did, it was because two of his books had interested me (Escrito en España and Casi unas memorias) and another seduced me (Cuadernos de Rusia). Cuadernos de Rusia is the diary of his stay on the Russian front as a volunteer of the División Azul during World War II. They are an exceptional text as a witness, for the lucid sensibility and the good invoice. In the words of Jordi Gracia, author of a suggestive biography of Ridruejo, "beyond the testimony (...) these notebooks distill a vividness of observation and an indisputable literary quality".
I took the book from the library of an uncle of my wife who had also been in Russia with the División Azul – the diplomat Pedro Salvador de Vicente – with the solemn commitment to return it, which I did not do never I have it in front of me. And I use it now to extract quotes from a fact that surprised me then and that has remained vivid in my memory: the difficult harmony of the Spanish soldiers with the Germans, in contrast to their proximity to the Russian population.
Ridruejo writes that "it is particularly admirable to see these Spaniards (...) cordial and familiar with the people of the country. (…) And the people, poor people hammered by the war, show them affection. Naturally ours continue - we continue - refractory to the local language. (…) The indigenous people, and especially the children, our best friends, are taking our language with increasing generality”. He tells an anecdote: "A soldier leading twenty prisoners (...) falls into a trap hidden by the snow (and) gives himself up as lost." But when he regains consciousness he sees that the Russians have taken him out of the well, they give him back his weapons and continue to let him be led calmly". Another: "An officer, Mora, meets a group of prisoners brought by a soldier. He is Andalusian. He does not carry his weapons, which he has ceded, for convenience, to two Russians (...). The officer describes him as foolish: "Don't you see that they can kill you?". The soldier looks disdainfully at the prisoner carrying his rifle and says, “This one? If he moves em c... in his father". And, concludes Ridruejo, after reviewing some successful missions of the Division, "all these things have filled the soldiers with pride to the point of despising all their colleagues of other nationalities. (…) The Germans in common units are already treated like passers-by”.
But what would not be my surprise when, years later, I found reflected in another book some situations that confirm - in my opinion - what Ridruejo had recorded. It is about Ideals and disappointment. Letters from Russia to a Brother (1941-1942)”, in which Montserrat Torra Puigdellívol – native of Manresa by birth and roots, philologist and teacher – has collected some of the letters that her uncle – Daniel Torra –, an officer of the División Azul , he wrote to his father – Albert – from Russia. In one of the first he tells her: "I'm already naked. I feel optimistic. But I haven't worn the German military uniform because I don't want to look like a face. (...) I am thinking that among the officers (...) there are few, very few Germanophiles. And plenty of shameless Anglophiles and Francophiles. They discredit and despise everything that Germany stands for. (...) The ensign in Berlin (...) they say he has gone so far as to comment that Germany will undoubtedly lose the war". And, in February 1942, Daniel Torra writes: "A few nights ago, an officer of my battalion, a Russian by birth, an officer (...) of the Tsar, as if remembering a time irrevocably past, sang, accompanied by the guitar, a recital of Russian songs in the purest traditional and eternal style. (...) The poor lights of a few small candles profaned the deep darkness (...) His blue eyes, transparent like those of all Russians, looked without seeing (...). I enjoyed it enormously".
I don't know why - or I do - what Margaret MacMillan remembers in 1914 crosses my mind: that the Mughals (Tatars to the Russians) ruled much of Russia for centuries, as did the Moors in Spain, with the the only difference - pointed out by Pushkin - that "they did not bring algebra or Aristotle to Russia". What has been said: so far, but so close.
