Chapter II · I

On the cover of the book you have sent me, I see that you have already published, or announce the publication of several others, whose titles are: Epistles and Poems, Rhymes, Thistles, Critical Studies, Albums and Fans, My Acquaintances, and Two Years in Chile. The same cover also announces that you are preparing a novel whose title strikes the nostrils of our soul (for if the soul has eyes, it may well have nostrils) with a distinct whiff of pornography. The novel is entitled: The Flesh.

None of this, however, serves me today to judge you, for I know nothing of those works. I must confine myself strictly to the book Azul.

In this volume I scarcely know which I ought to prefer: the prose or the verse. I am almost inclined to find equal merit in both modes of expressing your thought. In the prose there is a greater wealth of ideas, though its form is more Frenchified. In the verse the form is more purely Castilian. Your verses resemble the Spanish verses of other authors, without thereby ceasing to be original; they recall no Spanish poet, whether ancient or modern.

Your feeling for Nature verges on pantheistic adoration. In the four compositions dedicated to (to or rather in) the four seasons of the year, there is the most heathen exuberance of sensual love, and, within that love, something almost religious.

Each composition seems a sacred hymn to Eros—a hymn which at times, in the very height of enthusiastic outburst, pessimism comes to disrupt with discord, now by a cry of anguish, now by a sarcastic laugh. That bitter tang which wells up from the very center of every delight, and which the atheist Lucretius experienced and expressed so well,

...medio de fonte leporum surgit amari aliquid, quod in ipsis floribus angat (from the very fountain of delights arises something bitter to vex them even amid the flowers)

frequently steps in to interrupt what you call

“The triumphant music of my rhymes.”

Yet since in your temperament there is a little of everything, I perceive in your verse, beside the longing for delight and beside the bitterness of which Lucretius speaks, the thirst for the eternal—that profound, unquenchable aspiration of the Christian ages, which the pagan poet perhaps would never have understood.

You continually demand more from the fairy, and...

“The fairy then led me to the veil that covers our infinite longings, the profound inspiration and the soul of the lyres. And tore it asunder. And there all was dawn.”

Yet even so, the poet is not satisfied, and demands still more from the fairy.

You have another poem, bearing as its title the Greek word Anagke, wherein the song of love ends in misfortune and blasphemy. Suppressing the concluding blasphemy, which is a mockery directed against God, I shall set down here the song almost in its entirety.

“And the dove said: ‘I am happy. Beneath the boundless sky, in the blossoming tree, beside the apple full of sweet honey, beside the soft shoot moistened by drops of early dew, I have my home. And I fly with my birdlike yearnings, from that beloved tree of mine to the distant woods, when to the joyful hymn of the awakening East, the naked dawn steps forth and shows the world the modesty of light upon her brow. My wing is white and silken; the light bathes and gilds it, and the zephyr combs it; my feet are like rose petals. I am the gentle queen who croons to her mate upon the mountain. In the depths of the picturesque forest stands the larch where I built my nest; and there beneath the fresh foliage I have an incomparable, newborn chick. I am the winged promise, the living oath; I am the one who carries the thought of the beloved to the pensive lover; I am the messenger of mournful, ardent dreamers, who flutters about whispering of love beside a perfumed head of hair. I am the lily of the wind. Beneath the blue of the deep firmament I display from my fair, rich treasure my jewels and adornments: the cooing in my beak, the caress in my wings. I awaken the chatterbox birds and they strike up their melodious songs; I alight upon blossoming lemon trees and shower down a rain of orange blossoms. I am all innocence, all purity. I plume myself on the wings of desire. And I quiver in the intimate tenderness of a touch, a whisper, a fluttering of wings. O boundless blue! I love thee. Because to Flora thou givest rain and the sun ever kindled; because while being the palace of the dawn, thou art also the roof of my nest. O boundless blue! I adore thy smiling clouds, and that subtle mist of golden dust whither perfumes and dreams take flight. I love the tenuous, wandering veils of drifting mists, wherein I spread to the affectionate breezes the silken fan of my plumage. I am happy! For mine is the woodland where the mystery of the airs is found; for the dawn is my festival and love my practice and my fray. Happy, because full of sweet longing, to warm my nestlings is my pride; because in virgin forests there resounds the heavenly music of my cooing; because there is no rose that loves me not, no gentle bird that hearkens not to me, no handsome songster that does not call my name!’ ‘Is that so?’ said an infamous hawk, and furiously thrust her down his gullet.”

I omit, as I have already said, the lines that follow, which do not exceed eight in number, wherein mention is made of Satan’s burst of laughter at this incident, and of how pensive the Lord remained upon His throne.

Among the four compositions on the seasons of the year, all of them beautiful and singular, the one dedicated to summer stands preeminent. It is a symbolic portrait of the two poles upon which the axis of life turns: love and strife, the urge to destroy and the urge to reproduce. The virgin tigress in heat is painted with masterly strokes, and perhaps even better the gallant, robust tiger who arrives to woo her.

“As he walked, one saw his body undulate with swagger and pride. The swollen muscles could be seen beneath the skin. And one would say that wild beast was a rugged gladiator of the mountain.

The bristling hairs of his lip he licked. As he walked his weight crushed down the green, soft grass, and the sound of his breath was like the panting of a blacksmith’s bellows.”

There follow the declaration of love, the yes in tiger language, and the first flatteries and caresses. Then... love in its fullest measure, without those indelicate details into which Rollinat and others venture on similar occasions.

“Then the mysterious touch, the impulsive forces that sweep all before them with wondrous might, and, O great Pan! the monstrous idyll beneath the vast, primeval forests.”

The Prince of Wales, who was hunting in that vicinity with a great retinue of huntsmen and a pack of hounds, arrives to put a tragic end to the idyll.

The prince kills the tigress with a gunshot. The tiger escapes, and afterward in his den he experiences a strange dream:

“That he sank his claws and fangs into rosy bellies and women’s breasts; and that he devoured for delicate desserts at dinner and supper, like a greedy tiger among the greediest, some few dozen tender, fair-haired, savory babes.”

It would almost seem that, in the poet’s view, the tiger would be less to blame, even were he a responsible agent, in devouring women and infants, than the prince in slaying tigers. The poet’s affection extends almost equally over tigers and princes, whom a fatal determinism impels to slaughter each other reciprocally, like the cat and mouse in Álvarez’s fable.

The prose tales are stranger still. They seem written in Paris, rather than in Nicaragua or Chile. All of them are brief in the extreme. You take pride in laconism. The Nymph is perhaps the one I like best. The supper at the courtesan’s country villa is well depicted. The scholar’s discourse prepares the reader’s mind. The boundaries which perhaps do not exist, but which we all imagine, trace, and erect between the natural and supernatural, dissolve and vanish away. Saint Anthony saw a centaur and a satyr in the desert. Albertus Magnus likewise speaks of satyrs that existed in his day. Why must this be false? Why should there not be satyrs, fauns, and nymphs? The courtesan longs to see a living satyr; the poet, a nymph. The appearance of the naked nymph before the poet, in the park of the villa on the following morning, in the secluded and silent shade among the white swans on the pond, is painted with such artistry that it appears authentic.

The nymph flees and the poet is left mocked; but at luncheon, the courtesan later remarks:

“The poet has seen nymphs.”

“All looked upon her in amazement, and she gazed at me like a cat, and laughed—laughed like a little girl being tickled.”

Queen Mab’s Veil is delightful. It begins thus:

“Queen Mab, in her chariot wrought of a single pearl, drawn by four beetles with golden breastplates and jeweled wings, traveling upon a sunbeam, slipped one day through the window of a garret where four thin, bearded, and troublesome men were bewailing their lot like wretched souls.”

They were a painter, a sculptor, a musician, and a poet. Each delivers his pitiable speech, setting forth his aspirations and disappointments. All end in despair.

“Then Queen Mab, from the bottom of her carriage of a single pearl, took a blue veil, almost impalpable, as though woven of sighs or glances from pensive, golden-haired angels. And that veil was the veil of dreams—of sweet dreams that make life appear rose-colored. And with it she enveloped the four thin, bearded, and troublesome men. Whereupon they ceased to be sorrowful, for hope penetrated within them, and into their brains entered the cheerful sun, together with the little imp of vanity that consoles poor artists in their profound disillusionments.”

There are in the volume several other tales, delicate and pleasing, wherein the same qualities are evident. All these stories seem written in Paris.

I shall conclude by speaking of the most transcendental: The Ruby and The Song of Gold. The chemist Frémy has discovered, or boasts of having discovered, the secret of making artificial rubies. One of the gnomes steals one of these manufactured gems from a medallion hanging about a certain courtesan’s neck, and carries it to the vast, deep cavern where the gnomes meet in secret council. The living, creative forces of Nature, the tireless and inexhaustible fecundity of Mother Earth, are symbolized in those active, powerful little dwarfs who mock the man of science and demonstrate the falsity of his work. ‘The stone is false,’ they all cry: ‘the work of man, or of a scientist, which is worse.’

Then the oldest gnome recounts the creation of the very first true ruby. It is a beautiful myth, redounding to the glory of Love and Mother Earth, ‘from whose brown womb wells up the sap of sturdy trunks, and gold, and diamond waters, and the chaste fleur-de-lis: all that is pure, strong, and unforgeable. And the gnomes weave a frenzied dance and celebrate a sacred revel, praising woman, with whom they are wont to fall in love, because she is a spirit made of flesh: all love.’

The Song of Gold would be the finest of your stories were it indeed a story, and the most eloquent of all did it not lean too heavily upon a ficelle that is much used and much abused in our day.

In the avenue of palaces, where all is splendor and opulence, where fair women and wealthy men are seen returning to their dwellings from banquets and balls, there stands a strange beggar, starving, shivering with cold, wretchedly clad in rags. This mendicant takes a bite from a small crust of coarse brown bread: inspiration strikes him, and he chants the song of gold.

All the sarcasm, all the fury, all the greed, all the spurned love, all the bitter jealousy, all the envy that gold begets in the hearts of the hungry, the needy, the ragged, and the lost, are voiced in that prose hymn.

For this reason I maintain that the song of gold would be admirable were the ficelle less conspicuous: that method or device of composition which prose writers, poets, and orators nowadays follow to excess.

The method consists in creating something by superposition or agglutination, rather than by organic development.

The simile is the foundation of this method. It is simple enough to mention nothing without a simile; everything is like something else. Presently it was noticed that in this fashion a multitude of likes and as’s appeared, and in their stead demonstrators were employed. For example: the earth, that fruitful mother of all living things; the air, that blue mantle enveloping the bosom of the earth, whose fringes are the clouds; the sky, that boundless field through which the stars revolve, and so forth. In this way it is easy to cover much paper. At times the demonstrative pronouns are omitted—though that is less emphatic and less French—and one merely says the bird, blossom of the air; the moon, nocturnal lamp, a host elevated in the temple of space, etc.

And finally, to give the discourse greater animation and movement, the device has been conceived of enumerating everything that bears any resemblance to the object of which we wish to speak. And when the enumeration is concluded, or the author tires of enumerating—for there is no other reason why it should end—he says: that am I; that is poetry; that is criticism; that is woman, and so on. The author may also, to lend greater variety and complexity to his work, state what the object he describes is not before stating what it is. And he may state what it is not by way of interrogation. The formula runs: Is it this? Is it that? Is it the other? No; it is none of these things. Then... the whole string of notions that occur to him. And to conclude: that is what it is.

This kind of rhetoric is natural, and we all employ it. The criticism here is directed not against its use, but against its abuse. In its abuse there is something akin to the children’s game of reciting words beginning with a single letter: ‘A ship has arrived laden with...’ And one goes on naming (if the letter be B, for instance) barrels, divers, bowls, watercress, and banter.

Compositions written according to this rhetorical method enjoy the advantage that they may be shortened or lengthened ad libitum, and that they can be read backward just as well as forward, without scarcely altering the sense.

In my wanderings through foreign lands, far from here, I made the acquaintance of a very intelligent lady whose husband was a poet; and she had discovered in her husband’s verses that they could all be read and made sense of beginning with the last line and ending with the first. Some malicious tongues insinuated that she had made the discovery merely to mock her household verses; but I was always persuaded that she, blinded by wifely devotion, discerned in this indestructible sense—read the lines however one might—a rare perfection that enhanced their merit.