Political poetry: “Sobre una poesía sin pureza”

4.1.1 In the “Tres cantos materiales” (1934-35) of which “Entrada a la madera” is a good example, things suddenly signify in contrast to the forces of erosion suggested by the tarnished objects of the real world in “Arte poética”

Moreover, material things here signify the self: “Es que soy yo ante tu color de mundo, ante tus pálidas espadas muertas, ante tus corazones reunidos, ante tu silenciosa multitud. Soy yo ante tu ola de olores muriendo, envueltos en otoño y resistencia: [...] soy yo con mis lamentos sin origen, sin alimentos, desvelado, solo, entrando oscurecidos corredores, llegando a tu materia misteriosa.”

4.2 Manifesto in Caballo verde para la poesía

4.2.1 Calls into question the institutional role of the aesthetic

4.2.2 This is the main constituent of Peter Bürger’s definition of the historical/ revolutionary/ political avant-garde as opposed to aesthetic modernism (Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde)

4.2.3 Desire to trasnscend the aesthetic, dissolve it into life, produce an “eyeball-to-eyeball encounter with the real” (Terry Eagleton, “Capitalism, Modernism, and Postmodernism”, Against the Grain p.142)

4.2.4 Poetry should be made of sweat, worn away by acid, should be stained with food, impure like clothes, something you wear, something you use

4.3 The Civil War: España en el corazón

4.3.1 Poetry now aligns itself with the Republican struggle, and all the power of poetic rhetoric is deployed in its defence

4.3.2 Rejects previous poetic mode: “Preguntaréis: Y dónde está las lilas? Y la metafísica cubierta de amapolas? Y la lluvia que a menudo golpeaba sus palabras llenándolas de agujeros y pájaros? Os voy a contar todo lo que me pasa.”

4.3.3 Poetic trope of the simile is still rejected but for a different reason than in “Galope muerto”

“y por las calles la sangre de los niños corría simplemente, como sangre de niños”

To make a simile out of the blood of children would be an obscenity: it cannot be compared to anything

4.3.4 YET: the writing here is markedly logocentric, as opposed to the poetry of the first Residencia where the Logos was in crisis

There is a grounded subject who speaks to his audience, who has a simple but urgent message to impart

Rhetorical devices such as repetition with variation are used: “Venid a ver la sangre por las calles, venid a ver la sangre por las calles, venid a ver la sangre por las calles!”

The use of the vosotros form lends the poetry the authority of the pulpit (in Latin America, vosotros is used only in Church)

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Dr Geoffrey Kantaris	SP12 Learning Resources
Dr Geoffrey Kantaris	Last updated: 6-10-11

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	Avant-garde and Political Poetry: Pablo Neruda
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