The written word has provided me deep satisfaction since about the age of nine. In my autobiography I have mentioned some of the salient authors who I read as a teenager and which stand out in my memory, as well as others I did not cite: Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas, Karl May, Emile Zola, Curzio Malaparte (La Pelle), Thomas Mann, Gogol, Tolstoy, Alphonse Daudet, Romain Rolland, etc. Later on, I discovered some of the great Spanish language writers: García Márquez, Julio Cortázar, Jorge Luis Borges, Arturo Pérez Reverte and, of course, Miguel de Cervantes.
I developed a taste for Spanish poetry starting in high school. One day we were visited at the school by the minister of culture of Uruguay who, before an assembly of upper class boys, proceeded to recite or rather declaim, a few poems by Federico García Lorca. It was electrifying and a revelation to me. I had heard the name of the famed poet before, but to listen to his verses was a profoundly exhilarating experience. For the non-initiated, Lorca was an Andalusian poet and playwright who was murdered, at age 38, by Nationalist (Francoist) forces during the Spanish Civil War because of his anti-fascist stance and because he was gay. Franco’s Falangist regime placed a general ban on García Lorca’s work which was not rescinded until 1953, 17 years after his death. Now he is memorialized and admired all over the world, from Spain to Argentina to San Francisco, in the U.S.
There are several additional Spanish language poets who I’ve come to love. Among many, Jorge Manrique, who lived all the way back in Spain’s medieval 15th century, to the Peruvian César Vallejo and the Chilean Pablo Neruda. I find that I have a much greater affinity to Spanish poetry than to the English one. To me, Spanish poetry, has a more gripping and intense quality than most English poetry. That affinity is often enhanced by the fact that I share much of the leftist political views of these poets.
At the risk of boring my forgiving readers, I will include here two examples of that poetry. The first, has become an oft cited classic, composed by the above mentioned Castilian poet Jorge Manrique, born in 1440, entitled Coplas for la Muerte de su Padre (Stanzas on the Death of his Father). Here are some of the initial and most famous stanzas with their translation[1]. Their 600-year-old message is truly insightful:
Recuerde el alma dormida
avive el seso e despierte
contemplando
cómo se pasa la vida,
cómo se viene la muerte
tan callando;
cuán presto se va el placer,
cómo, después de acordado,
da dolor;
cómo, a nuestro parecer,
cualquiera tiempo pasado
fue mejor.
Nuestras vidas son los ríos
que van a dar en la mar,
que es el morir.
Allí van los señoríos
derechos a se acabar
e consumir.
Allí los ríos caudales,
allí los otros medianos
e más chicos,
allegados, son iguales
los que viven por sus manos
e los ricos.
Let the sleeping soul
arouse its senses and awake,
to contemplate
how life passes,
how death approaches
so silently;
how quickly pleasure goes,
and how once remembered,
it gives pain;
and how, as we see it
any time in the past
was better.
Our lives are the rivers
that flow out into the sea,
which is death.
There lordships go
straight to their ends,
to be consumed.
There the great rivers,
and there the others,
of middling size and smaller,
are equal when they arrive,
those who live by their hands
and the rich.
The second poem is contemporaneous, by César Vallejo, a great Peruvian poet (1892 – 1938) and is entitled Los Heraldos Negros. It was sent to me recently from Quito by my dear friend Gustavo Fierro to whom I have made frequent mention in my autobiography. That poem embodies the soul of the moment to me: the tragedy of Ukraine and my vicissitudes at home. Here it is followed by its translation:
Los Heraldos Negros
Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes… ¡Yo no sé!
Golpes como del odio de Dios; como si ante ellos,
la resaca de todo lo sufrido
se empozara en el alma… ¡Yo no sé!
Son pocos; pero son… Abren zanjas oscuras
en el rostro más fiero y en el lomo más fuerte.
Serán tal vez los potros de bárbaros Atilas;
o los heraldos negros que nos manda la Muerte.
Son las caídas hondas de los Cristos del alma
de alguna fe adorable que el Destino blasfema.
Esos golpes sangrientos son las crepitaciones
de algún pan que en la puerta del horno se nos quema.
Y el hombre… Pobre… ¡pobre! Vuelve los ojos, como
cuando por sobre el hombro nos llama una palmada;
vuelve los ojos locos, y todo lo vivido
se empoza, como charco de culpa, en la mirada.
Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes… ¡Yo no sé!
The Dark Heralds
There are blows in life, so heavy… I don’t know!
Blows like from God’s hatred; as if before them,
the surge of all that is suffered
were to dam up the soul… I don’t know!
They are few; but they are… They open dark trenches
in the fiercest face and the stoutest back.
Perhaps they are the steeds of barbarous Attilas;
or the dark heralds that Death sends us.
They are the deep plunges of the Christs of the soul
of some blessed faith blasphemed by Fate.
Those bloody blows are the cracklings
of some loaves that burn at the oven’s door.
And man… Poor…wretched man! He turns his eyes, as
when, we are slapped over the shoulder;
he turns his crazed eyes, and the whole of life
is dammed up, like a puddle of guilt, in his gaze.
There are blows in life, so heavy… I don’t know!
[1] With the usual caveat of the imperfection of translation of poetry.
Pedro Lilienfeld 
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